[sdiy] dave smith *instruments*

[Benjamin Budts]

I agree with what you're say... I've never had a synth that had rotary 
encoders. And as a matter of fact I play gigs with my sytnhs and use em 
in studios...

Within minutes testing a synth with rotary encoders I found those rotary 
encoders total garbage (its ok to go through a patch list, but that 
that's a paramter having nothing to do with an instrument like you mention).

Being on stage with a synth, with smoke lots of noise and light is a 
very different situation then back home in the studio with some nice 
vangelis music in the background, a well lit room etc... ;-)

Like you say you know you're instrument, if I turn that pot x degrees I 
know it will make the sound I expect it to make...

But about that parallax mode :p, I never heard about it, care to 
enlighten me ?

cheers,
B.

cheater cheater wrote:
> The reason why people requested the pot edition is because encoders
> are completely crap for anyone who does music as more than a hobby.
> Anywhere you see musicians they are trying to learn their instrument
> and how it works and how best to operate it, and get better at it by
> developing muscle memory which is a way of operating your instruments
> through subconscious reflexes. This is not different with electronic
> instruments and hardware that processes sound.
>
> Encoders completely disable positional muscle memory (i.e. the sound i
> want was halfway down the string / the knob was on 1 o'clock) as well
> as movement muscle memory (i.e. i have to turn it right by 90 degrees
> to get my sound). This can be compared to the frets on a guitar
> changing places as you're dragging your fingers down the strings.
>
> It is especially annoying when the encoders don't do what they're
> supposed to because they glitch out: either because the gray code was
> completely corrupted and the encoder suddenly jumps to a random value,
> or because we skipped 'just one value' like Antti mentions. This
> skipping is quite aggravating and feels as if the encoder was greased
> up and you can't turn it properly, especially if it happens in
> sequence, i.e. multiple times during one movement of the knob.
>
> I truly cannot come up with an idea of where in a musical studio
> encoders are a good idea. Maybe alpha dials to move through menus
> quickly. But for editing values?
>
> On a musical instrument you want to be able to change the sound to
> what you have in your head quickly, and you get there by remembering
> how the knobs were set up and how they were positioned. This is the
> whole function of the user interface of a synth. We are of course not
> talking here about people who are on a  'sound journey' and are
> 'discovering sound spaces' i.e. have no idea what a knob does and turn
> it and listen to what it changes - those people use the confusion of
> an encoder in their own way, but I assure they will be equally
> confused with potentiometers.
>
> It's even worse on a performance instrument where the knobs are your
> performance tools. In that case you might want to, for example,
> rhythmically move a knob and the crappiness of encoders completely
> disables this.
>
> So let's look at consoles: useful or not? Some people like the icon
> and stuff like that. Maybe it's done well, I can't argue without
> having ever used it. But I know one thing for sure - if you're in a
> recording studio, you want to get to places quick, and you do this by,
> again, using muscle memory for what you are doing, when setting up
> reverb send levels, when setting up the EQ for the vocal and rhythm
> guitar, and so on. The icon has presets so it does away with the
> aggravation of using encoders for that, but I am certain that using
> silly bouncing encoders that skip over values to set up from scratch a
> whole 24 channel board of knobs one by one is a bad experience.
> Similar applies to outboard gear which is used in the same way.
>
> You might want to argue 'oh, but you need to be able to recall patches
> and stuff and you cannot do that with normal potentiometers' to which
> I can only tell you to learn a bit more about programming and hint you
> on a term called 'parallax mode'.
>
>
> -----
>
>
>   
>> Reminds me of a German computer mag in the 1980s, where they applied all
>> kinds of endurance tests to joysticks like lassoing, bathing them in coke,
>> fall tests from 1m and 2m heights, etc. Failing these tests resulted in
>> deductions on usability grades as they didn't withstand "typical" accidents.
>>     
>
> I remember similar things! I think no laptop withstood the 'tile floor
> fall from a desk', but carpeted floors definitely scored higher. I
> can't remember if I was reading a PC mag or a home improvement catalog
> :D
>
> D.
>
> On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 08:37, David G. Dixon <dixon at interchange.ubc.ca> wrote:
>   
>>> Sorry I forgot to mention that there are also optical encoders from
>>> grayhill and other companies.
>>> They cost about twice compared to the mechanical version but may work
>>> longer...
>>>       
>> That crappy old Farfisa organ I tore apart for its keyboards had an optical
>> encoder volume pedal.  Maybe someone can replace all the knobs on their Dave
>> Smith synth with volume pedals from 30-year-old Farfisa organs!
>>
>> (Go analog!)
>>
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