Control surface experience?

wwswws
edited February 2022 in General app discussion

Anybody ever used a control surface with Drambo, share your experience?

I am somewhat GASing on a faderfox or behringer x touch one, but really I don't know if they will be useful. My only use case so far is midi mapping parameters and playing with sound design

tx!

Comments

  • Yes I've used quite a number of different controllers with Drambo and the MIDI mapping features go beyond what most other iOS apps can do.

    Before giving in your GAS and instabuying one, make sure you have a very clear picture of what you really want to control with it.

    Everybody has different preferences so while a DJ style controller is great for some, others might prefer a mixer style interface or a whole bunch of knobs or just a launchpad with 64 buttons.

    I would only use MIDI controllers in a live setup. Holding the iPad in my hand and operating on-screen faders and knobs is just too convenient ;)

  • edited February 2022

    I'd recommend looking for a controller with encoders that can be set to incremental mode. Drambo supports incremental and it's really convenient, since you don't have to align the knobs with screen parameters.

    Not sure how useful the Xtouch One would be, with two encoders, one motorized fader, and a lot of buttons. Even if you scripted the buttons to map the encoder to different CCs, you'd go crazy with the modality (adjusting unintended parameters), like trying to drive a car with one pedal and a switch between brake and throttle. Any feedback to the controller would have to be via a script, since Drambo doesn't send much.

    I have the Xtouch Mini (8 encoders, 16 buttons, 2 layers), and it works pretty well, with a StreamByter script between it and Drambo.

    The nice thing about using a controller is that you can map the parameters you want to tweak into one location, where they may be scattered in Drambo. The not nice thing is that you need to remember which parameters they are. Also, when I use my keyboard, the iPad is on a sloping shelf (like a piano music stand), so tweaking screen parameters can be a bit unsteady, compared to a solid knob.

    Edit: Removed erroneous comments about Xtouch One.

  • Is the behringer mini incremental encoder? And why do you need streambyter?

    Thanks!

  • Anybody use midi fighter twister with Drambo ?

    so shiny!

  • Yes, the Xtouch Mini encoders can be configured as incremental or absolute. I left Layer A on absolute and changed Layer B to incremental. This requires a Windows PC, unfortunately. You could change them all to incremental and have 16 knobs in the two layers. I haven't found a use for the fader since I already have lots of volume controls.

    I use StreamByter to implement 8 banks of 8 knobs mapped to different CCs, selected by the first row of buttons. Having Layer A absolute is handy for me since there aren't very many apps that accept incremental.

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