faroit
commented
9 years ago Okay this is interesting. I absolutely agree and found this to be a huge issue myself. Actually I had a little conversation with @dvhdr on twitter. I am pretty sure this can be fixed at the firmware level since this this is just the threshold value at which the ADC values are recognised as note-on. For most power users it would be okay to set the threshold by SYSEX msg. I think Livid Instruments does this for some of their products as well.
micahscopes
dvhdr
GuitarAlex
whibble
Kyran-C
kindlychung
atriantafy
ShekkyVD69
malkomalko
duffcat
JacobiusWrex
skylarrcaverly
jcurtis
jrcurtis
mccrabney
aedancullen
ben-richardson
Okay, this is a very cool controller. You guys did a great job. It's awesome that it's so customizable too, and that you've made this firmware available.
So I wanted to give honest feedback. As a keyboard player, I'm having trouble with the minimum sensitivities for triggering pads on and off. I've tried playing with the velocity settings but that doesn't solve this.
In the open source firmware, is there a way to adjust with the minimum pressure threshold for triggering pads off and on? The current minimum feels much too high. Ideally I'd be able to rest all ten fingers lightly on the pads and get a "consistent" response from each pad, using less than the weight of the hand alone. Holding my arm stiff, right now I can rest my left hand fingers on five pads and none of them will trigger.
Since the pressure applied from the arm is divided over fingers, playing one or two pads per hand is doable (although still clunky), but each additional note becomes more and more difficult. My arms are having to exert a lot of force with this controller, and my fingers are tired.
So if the right hand is already pressing on four pads, a fifth pad becomes difficult to press without releasing pressure on one of the less advantaged fingers. Playing chords and melodies simultaneously is very hard to do because I'm losing notes every time I shift a little to accommodate new ones.
If the issue here is a hardware issue (too much noise at lower pressures), one thing that could help is to make the 'pad off' minimum pressure lower than the 'pad on' minimum. If someone still has their finger pressing on a pad, after having already pressed it with the minimum 'pad on' sensitivity, it's significantly more likely that they want the note to stay on.
For example, sometimes I will play a chord with my thumb, pointer and middle fingers and the melody with the ring and pinky. The pressure from the thumb might pass below the pressure needed to trigger the pad on in the first place, but I still want the note to to be down. Another case for this is when you're holding pads for a long time. I don't want to have to hold the same pressure required originally required to trigger the pad on on for long periods of time.
Right now, it seems like the minimum "pad on" and "pad off" thesholds are set the same. If I slowly press on a pad, I can find a narrow range of pressures the pad flickers on and off with very little change in pressure. This leads me to believe that the sensors are pretty accurate near the current minimum settings, and that some software changes could make me very happy with the controller.
Without much idea of what's going on inside, my hunch is that this controller is physically capable of performing at least as well as the ableton push, which feels a lot more playable to me, but right now it just doesn't feel tuned like a performance instrument. Even using musical typing on a PC keyboard feels hugely more expressive, regardless of the lack of velocity sensitivity, because my fingers have so much more control at the pressures required to press down on PC keyboard keys. That's not meant as a diss :) I'm just being real with you. Since this is marketed as a professional "performance" instrument, I'd expect it to be more expressive than a PC keyboard, not less expressive. Right now, the controller feels tuned like a drum machine.