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Eurorack Knob Idea

mitxela.com

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Re: Eurorack Knob Idea

#51

Post by robotresearcher »

ericwood wrote: post #28
JKCalhoun wrote: post #6

It's interesting. I haven't been sucked into the Eurorack thing though — do people want not just patch cables all over their mixing desk but knobs as well? Eurorack (and modular synths in general) seem like funny things. Like guitar pedals, I sense there are a lot of enthusiasts that do a lot more tinkering than actually playing them. Watching Rick Beato and guests on YouTube ... seems like a lot of musicians are loo…

> Like a few good sounding pedals that, ideally, each have just a knob or two. It makes for a nice narrative but I haven't found it holds much water; musicians are all over the place on this spectrum. You'll find both extremes very well represented, and a good chunk of people who compartmentalize their "dayjob" music and tinkering. I've found a lot of successful musicians love to tinker and are always on the search f…

I swing bimodal on this. For a while I enjoy the most exotic modular patches and loaded pedalboard. Then for months I am all about piano and acoustic guitar, as vanilla as can be.

It’s all so deep I’m not going run out of fun in any mode.

Re: Eurorack Knob Idea

#52

Post by recursive »

ecolonsmak wrote: post #46
m_kos wrote: post #44

1. I find Tim's work always so impressive and humbling. Compared to software, hardware projects seem infinitely more complex. 2. Speaking of knobs, I am writing a toy software synth for smartphones. Are there any design guidelines for mobile UI for audio? Knobs are hard to use and sliders take up a lot of space with only a little more precision. I experimented with curved sliders (inverted parabola or sine), but they…

Knobs shouldn't be hard to use - hold down the knob that needs the adjustment and then drag in either of two directions to set the value. Maybe have a pop-up over the knob that displays the value as it's in use.

Loopy Pro has a cool convention that I haven't seen elsewhere for this. Drag up or down to change the knob value. While doing that, drag left or right to zoom in. That makes the up/down movement more precise.

Re: Eurorack Knob Idea

#53

Post by robotresearcher »

Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote: post #19
weinzierl wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dream is a piano keyboard with entirely software controlled mechanical key response. Every key individually mounted on a servostepper. As a bonus it could be used as a fake player piano. Or for practice you could make the wrong keys hard to press. Endless possibilities.

Great idea and I’m shocked this doesn’t exist.

It would likely be very, very expensive.

A compromise that is affordable and does exist is programmable response curves to key velocity and aftertouch pressure. It can make sense to have different curves for eg. piano vs harpsichord even if you can’t change the mechanical key impedance.

I haven’t seen it in the wild, but using this you could make the wrong notes quieter/louder or even play a different sound. But I think we all know when we play a wrong note, so the utility might be small.

Re: Eurorack Knob Idea

#54

Post by csours »

Ok, but why stop here? You've effectively created a rotary potentiometer in one dimension, you could add two more dimensions like an analog thumbstick on a game controller. Do any controllers have a twistable thumbstick?

Also, like other commentors have stated - this could be a jack too, so you could have a jack knob analog stick.

BUT WHY STOP THERE?

You could mount it on a linear pot/slider.

BUT WHY STOP THERE?! (help me)

You could daisy chain pluggable rotary analog stick jack stacks...

----

The madness has taken him

Re: Eurorack Knob Idea

#55

Post by m_kos »

ecolonsmak wrote: post #46
m_kos wrote: post #44

1. I find Tim's work always so impressive and humbling. Compared to software, hardware projects seem infinitely more complex. 2. Speaking of knobs, I am writing a toy software synth for smartphones. Are there any design guidelines for mobile UI for audio? Knobs are hard to use and sliders take up a lot of space with only a little more precision. I experimented with curved sliders (inverted parabola or sine), but they…

Knobs shouldn't be hard to use - hold down the knob that needs the adjustment and then drag in either of two directions to set the value. Maybe have a pop-up over the knob that displays the value as it's in use.

Thanks! For me, this works well for knobs that don't require frequent adjustments. Currently, my knobs have little pills next to them that switch a knob to a "precision mode." It is a little quicker, but you may need to remember to disable this mode next time you use the knob.

I also played with the idea of letting users slide their finger off a knob (tap and slide away from the center). This allows for moving the finger over a longer circumference, hence enabling a great degree of precision. The problems with this approach are that it takes longer to operate such knobs, you need to communicate to the user what the max allowable distance from the knob is, it can interfere with scrolling, and it doesn't work for knobs close to the edge of the screen. (Your idea works well for knobs at the edges.)

And this is just knobs! There are many other components, interactions between them, as well as associated accessibility challenges, haptics, etc. Instead of reinventing the wheel, I was hoping that human factors people had developed relevant guidelines, but perhaps it simply is not a prevalent enough problem.

Re: Eurorack Knob Idea

#56

Post by ericwood »

robotresearcher wrote: post #51
ericwood wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like a few good sounding pedals that, ideally, each have just a knob or two. It makes for a nice narrative but I haven't found it holds much water; musicians are all over the place on this spectrum. You'll find both extremes very well represented, and a good chunk of people who compartmentalize their "dayjob" music and tinkering. I've found a lot of successful musicians love to tinker and are always on the search f…

I swing bimodal on this. For a while I enjoy the most exotic modular patches and loaded pedalboard. Then for months I am all about piano and acoustic guitar, as vanilla as can be. It’s all so deep I’m not going run out of fun in any mode.

100%, there's weeks I just plug straight into an amp because that feels right! At the end of the day it's great to have options.

Re: Eurorack Knob Idea

#57

Post by naikrovek »

alnwlsn wrote: post #38

> any jack can have a knob plugged into it to set it to a fixed value. I'm kind of surprised he didn't start with a knob with a tiny accelerometer, mcu and battery in it to produce some sort of output signal into a stock plug depending on how the knob is oriented with respect to gravity. Putting electronics inside the plug is nearly a mitxela trademark. https://mitxela.com/projects/flash_synth

Probably because pulling on cords can twist them. That’s what I thought when this occurred to me.

Re: Eurorack Knob Idea

#58

Post by dimal »

I like it, but the best modules already have knobs and jacks for everything. When you have CV going into the jack, the knob acts as an attenuator or attenuverter. This means that the modules are generally larger. Make Noise generally does this and their modules are consistently bigger than everyone else, and they're also some of the most popular. Look at Maths. It's a slope generator and a mixer. It's fucking huge. But everyone has it because it's patch programmable. The problem in Eurorack is instead of making things patch programmable, they try to fit in a ton of functionality into a small space, so you have a lot of modules that have multiple modes where buttons and knobs all have different meanings depending on what "page" you're on. Fuck that. Almost every time I try a module like that, I end up selling it.

He's right about the interface being the point of Eurorack. Plugging things into other things is the whole point. When I have a module that has hidden state, I forget what state it's in or what the knobs mean. I end up avoiding those modules. With cables and knobs, I can see the state of the whole system. I need good cable management to make sure it's not spaghetti, but I already do that in code already, and it's not that different.

Re: Eurorack Knob Idea

#59

Post by tpm »

csours wrote: post #54

Ok, but why stop here? You've effectively created a rotary potentiometer in one dimension, you could add two more dimensions like an analog thumbstick on a game controller. Do any controllers have a twistable thumbstick? Also, like other commentors have stated - this could be a jack too, so you could have a jack knob analog stick. BUT WHY STOP THERE? You could mount it on a linear pot/slider. BUT WHY STOP THERE?! (he…

There are several 'joystick' controller modules (Doepfer a-174-4 or Intellijel Planar come to mind) and the Doepfer also produces 3rd signal by twisting the knob.

Re: Eurorack Knob Idea

#60

Post by tpm »

spankalee wrote: post #14

Wouldn't it be more universally compatible to have a powered knob that outputs a adjustable constant control voltage? You'd probably want trim adjustments on it too. Yes, there'd be an extra wire to the power supply module, but that seems fine for a modular.

Yes, but there are already many of these in modular form (usually attenuators normalled to +5V in the absence of input voltage or just fader modules without inputs). This is new :)
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