[sdiy] Digital modular backplane - update

[Roman Sowa]

W dniu 2014-03-31 10:59, John Slee pisze:

>
> (a) motorised pots/faders (do these introduce a bunch of noise?), or
>
> (b) encoder + digital pot + some kind of position indicator (LEDs?)
>
> (c) ordinary pots and no "balancing" as you describe it, a la Roland
> Jupiter and probably countless other analog synths
>
> Of these, (a) and (b) are going to be expensive (relative to decent
> quality ordinary pots), (b) will require a more complicated design, and
> (c) is just plain awful.

and there's also pot ala Poly6. When you reach top of the knob, and 
still wish to go higher, you have to first turn it down, to push down 
the virtual range. I don't know if it sounds clear. It's a bit anoying 
when you have to pump the value quickly down for a moment, but 
guaranteed no sudden jumps with touch of the knob.
For me the best choice is no-detent high resolution encoder with at 
least 30 tiny LEDs around. Far from being cheap or affordable.

> And then you have other inputs, such as toggle/rotary switches. I
> suppose you could replace those with momentary buttons and some
> kind of indicator. I'd prefer that most of the time actually.

I like the irreplaceable feel of flat lever toggle switch, but on the 
other hand nice pushbutton with maximum 4 LEDs around indicating current 
state is just as much appealing

and now the time for a very stupid joke, please don't ban me for this:
why not use touchscreen displays for entire module panels and forget 
about all the knob-related problems? Or simply make special brackets for 
iphone to match rack rails, put a few dozens of those in, and voila, 
modular synth of our times...

Roman