Re: [Jack-Devel] using MIDI controller surfaces with jack. any one that provides feedback?

On Wed, 11 Jun 2014 01:35:50 +0200
Ralf Mardorf <[hidden]> wrote:

> On Wed, 2014-06-11 at 01:57 +0300, Athanasios Silis wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > I am looking for a usb/midi control surface that provides feedback
> > on the surface.
> > 
> > most surfaces nowadays have some sliders/knobs/pads and usually the
> > pad buttons are coloured.
> > 
> > Ideally, I would like to be able to control these colours so as to
> > get some feedback from the application that I program and is being
> > controlled by the surface.
> > 
> > Is there any such device?
> > 
> > This one
> > (http://createdigitalmusic.com/2014/04/100-beatstep-sequencer-controller-everything-want-know/)
> > is a pretty ideal controller as far as programmable inputs is
> > concerned, but the pad colours are not assignable.
> > 
> > Is there some other device you know of / worked with ?
> > 
> > thank you in advance for your help and information.
> 
> If the pads don't need to provide touch sensitivity you could consider
> to use a tablet PC with a touch screen and if needed to program the
> colour feature yourself, but perhaps there already is software
> available that support this feature. I've seen amazing remote
> controls on my iPAD, unfortunately I can't connect the iPAD to my
> Linux DAW and even if I could do this, this amazing software only
> supports remote controls for proprietary DAWs for other, Non-Linux
> operating systems.

I just bought a Nexus 7 [also] for that purpose, and so I've been
experimenting a bit with the avaible software on Android (most are
avaible for iOS also).

There's TouchOSC which sends OSC and MIDI, though AFAICT only
OSC is useable with a linux server. There's a nice layout editor
written in java with which you can create custom layouts, though I've
found at least one problem: the controls cannot be made to send the OSC
path only, they will always send also a float, so for example you can't
just send "/ardour/transport_play", but it will send
"/ardour/transport_play, 1.0" and ardour won't recognize it. Easily
solvable with pd or python, but still... 

Otherwise there's TouchDAW, which seems to work with Qmidinet on the
linux pc, but I don't know if you can use only the layouts the provide
for you (all for non-linux daws of course) or can roll your own.

And there's also FingerPlayMIDI, which you can recieve midi with on the
linux pc by loading the snd-virmidi module. With this too you can make
your own layouts, which are simple xml files; there's also webapp that
lets you place faders and buttons and generates the xml file.

Regarding OP's feedback question, I *think* TouchOSC features
recieving feedback data, though I'm not 100% positive on it, and I
really don't know about the others. You would then need a DAW that
supports feedback too though, Ardour for example can do it.

My 2 cents: if you go the tablet way you'll certainly find a way to
have a very customizable surface, though having it work smoothly with
the software you want may require a non-zero amount of hacking on
pd/supercollider/python, especially if you want automation feedback to
be displayed on the tablet. But I guess that is true for dedicated
controllers also, since it's not due to something inherent in tablets,
but rather that all this software is meant to use with proprietary
non-linux DAWs, so you have to work your way around it.

cheers,
renato

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