Analogue-sequencer

On Wed, 10 Aug 2005, Sascha Matzke wrote:

> While we're in this "a free wish everyone" mood ;-). I think it would
> be great if the P3 had endless encoders with LED rings - but that
> would be another "feature" to push the price up.

I think we've talked about that before on the list... I sure know I've
come up with a few P4 designs incorporating those elements. But I now hate
them all. Know why? Look at the range of values the parameters behind
those knobs can have, 0-128. That's *far* too many values to represent by
an LED ring.

Your typical bass line doesn't even extend over an octave, so even if you
had a luxurious 32 LEDs in the ring (do those even exist?) that would
leave you with 4 notes per LED (assuming a range of 128). So in a bass
line using F2, F#2 and G#2, for example, all these notes would be
represented on the same LED, which actually misleads us into thinking all
the notes are the same.

And this doesn't even touch the special issue that the P3 has, different
note ranges.

The only way to reach the goal we're attempting to reach via these LED
ringed encoders is to incorporate some sort of plasma display around the
encoder itself. (I have seen this done in a mixer somewhere... I can't
remember where though.) That display can show the range as well as the
encoder's position within that range. I guess there are other ways of
doing this, but my point is that they're all ridicuolously expensive.

Whoa... sorry for the soapbox, folks...

Fred.

bleep.
out.

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