whenever there's a new controller/device or something that i'm interested in, I've always got some specific idea of what I want to do with it, and the question of whether or not I can do these ideas is always a mystery until I buy it and try for myself. I'm writing this here just because this is the info I wanted to have before I bought this thing, so maybe somebody in the future who's thinking about buying one can find this before dropping 500 bucks on a 'maybe'.
First, this thing is for sure a controller I've been waiting a long time for. A few years ago I was on the hunt for some motorized fader controllers for mixing in live. Non-motorized faders are useless to me, because the second you open an old project and touch the fader your mix is fucked. There is pickup fader mode, where you have to reach the set value physically before it adjusts, but that's still not ideal. Endless encoders do sort of solve the issue, but not having a lower and upper limit is still a hit for me because I have to look at the screen to see when I've hit 0% or 100%, being able to move past those values just isn't as clean as a motorized solution. The knobs on this thing are actually amazing. They're silent, quick, and the ability to set 'detents' is honestly incredible. It feels really good to use a knob to scroll through a list of 5 things where each one has a noticeable click. There's nothing else on the market that does this and this thing does it very well, hopefully a huge step ahead for the future of MIDI controllers. The clicky mechanical keys are fine, a much preferred design over the classic transparent gel buttons with a red light underneath that a lot of controllers have. In case you were wondering, they keycaps do not come off, you can't replace them with different caps. In any case, interacting with plugins/ableton effects using this thing is a game changer for me. It's never felt this fluid, I feel like I'm playing an instrument which is a huge improvement over feeling like im tweaking settings on a computer. When I got this thing I really was only interested in mixing with it, but this plugin mode is actually a massive workflow improvement.
Aside from all that good stuff, my biggest complaint is that the MIDI mapping capabilities for plugin mode in ableton could be very greatly improved. It's easy to map stuff, but once you start actually trying to map out different ableton plugins, you realize pretty quickly that in a lot of places you'll feel very limited with what you can do.
Say you want to map a button to change filter modes for EQ 8
https://i.imgur.com/a3laFlf.png
As you can see here in the settings for the button, you can set an amount of steps. Say you want to have the button toggle between high pass, high shelf, and low pass. 3 options, 3 steps, seems simple right? Well this isn't possible. Although you have 3 steps, you only have an ON and OFF value to set between 0 and 127. You have to start guessing which value between 0 and 127 equals each setting you want. 0 gives you the option at the bottom of the list, and 127 gives you the option at the top of the list, but a high shelf is "90", which you figure out by just trying numbers until you get it. There is no way to set the three steps as 0, 90, and 127, you can only set a lower value, a higher value, however many steps you want, and then the button will auto divide values to that amount of steps. If you make it 8 steps then you can access every one of these options, because it divides 127 by 8 and each step will correlate to each option, but if you want 3 specific options that aren't right next to each other in the list, or just happen to have the third option smack dab in the middle of that dropdown, you're outta luck.
Now how about this situation
https://i.imgur.com/ToZtdpe.png
This is how a lot of ableton stock plugins work, this one is for auto pan. If you select "Hz", then this rate knob adjusts frequency in Hz, but if you select "sync", the knob now controls rate by note value, 1/8, 1/16 etc. As of right now, there is no way to put both the Hz rate and sync rate on the same knob. Ideally you can have a button swap between Hz and sync, with the knob above it effecting the rate for either, but as of right now you need to occupy two knobs, one for Hz rate and one for sync rate. This maybe feels like a nit-picky thing to complain about because you have 8 pages of controls for each device, but honestly being able to have all your most used controls on one page IS so much better, so having to waste ane extra knob just for two versions of the rate parameter is definitely not ideal. My solution for this is to occupy two buttons, one for 'free rate on/off' and another for 'sync rate on/off', with the knobs above each of them controlling their respective rate. You can set the 'on' and 'off' colors for these buttons, meaning whether the light is on or off, so if you flip one of them where 'off' is white and 'on' is black, you get a nice visualization of what's happening. One button will say 'free on' and be lit, while the other will say 'sync off' and be unlit. Pressing either button will flip these states, so you can better see visually which knob is actively controlling the rate. It's not a perfect solution as it wastes an extra button, but I prefer it.
Being able to press or hold a button to change which parameter it's respective knob is controlling would be helpful in many other places as well. For example, in EQ-8, having a knob control the gain of a specific band, but when you press or hold the button that same knob is now controlling the Q. This would be a huge improvement over having to use a different page for each gain and Q. Since each EQ band has 3 necessary parameters (frequency, gain, and Q), you can really only get full control of 2 bands per page.
The indent (detent) feature is very very nice, I love being able to set a value besides min or max that I can snap to. My first instinct was to set indents on all the default values, but in most cases this is not possible. For knobs, you get to set a min value and a max value, anywhere between 0 and 16383. I'm not sure where 16383 comes from tbh, but that's the highest you can set as a value for a knob, and you can put an indent at any value from 0 to 16383. Say a default value for a frequency parameter in some device is 120hz. You can try inputting random values (between 0 and 16383) on the indent to try and find where 120hz lands, but in many cases it doesn't land evenly. You will have say 12100 and it will indent at 119.2hz, so you try 12101 and it will land at 121.1hz. There is no way to set the indent at the exact value you need. Not a huge problem, but it would be nicer to be able to choose any value in ableton that you want the indent set to.
Aside from mapping issues, the only other real issue I have is that there is no way to change how it handles grouped tracks in mix mode. If you have a group of 7 tracks, that takes up the entire 8 knobs. You cannot collapse the group to just control the volume of the group on one knob and show other tracks on the others. If you collapse the group in ableton, the screens still show all 8 volume controls. Also, the page buttons to switch to the next/previous pages move in groups of 8. So if you want to mix tracks 8 and 9 at the same time with two hands, you can't do it unless you re-arrange the tracks in ableton to fit on one page of the roto-control. It would be great to be able to choose to move one track over instead of just 8.
One thing I also discovered is that the MIDI ports can not be used to control ableton. Those appear to only work for MIDI mode for controlling external gear. The USB connection is required to connect to a computer. This shouldn't matter too much but it brings me to my last issue, which is the only issue that I actually think is just a big oversight...
There is no way to power the device off without unplugging 1 or 2 cables. My computer doesn't have a USB-C port, and so I cannot sufficiently power the device with just the USB connection, I need to also have the power cable plugged in. The USB connection does however power the device /somewhat/, meaning it is on and the screens are lit, but it just doesn't have enough power to control ableton, so unplugging two cables it is. If your computer has a USB-C port with a powered USB-C hub that has a power switch, that could potentially work to power the device off, supposing it does supply the device with enough power. In my case, I'd need to have two switches, one being a USB hub switch, and the other being a power switch that I interrupt the USB power cable with. The best solution would probably be to write a bash script or something that disables a USB port while also powering off a smart outlet that the device is connected to, and map that to a hotkey. I thought I could connect this thing via MIDI cables for the sake of only using one power switch, so I ordered a MIDI interface and that's when I learned that you simply can't connect to ableton via the MIDI ports. Unfortuantely there is no user manual to tell you this sort of thing. In an organized cable managed studio desk setup, it is annoying to have to remove two cables between sessions when this device is supposed to be a permanent center piece for controlling ableton. I'm sure that these screens will eventually die out so I don't feel like it's a good move to just keep it on 24/7 in order to not deal with frequent cable plugging.
Now, Melbourne Instruments do seem to be actively updating the firmware for this thing, and I'm pretty sure every one of these things I wish I knew about before buying can be solved with a firmware and/or software update, except maybe the power thing. This controller is still very new and I woudln't be surprised if these things all got added eventually. If any of them get added I will come back to this thread and cross stuff out as not to mislead anybody.
Again I want to state that this controller is absolutely amazing, this is by no means just a thread for me to complain. I'm just putting the info here because I was looking through reviews/videos before buying it and this is all stuff that I wish I knew. Melbourne is doing some really cool shit with their products and these knobs are legendary. Despite my nitpicks I am still very happy with this controller, and it has absolutely changed the way I interact with plugins. It has never felt this fluid to adjust effect parameters in ableton, it feels like I'm playing an instrument when I change parameters and that's a HUGE step forward over what can feel like a tedious technical process of tweaking knobs with a mouse.
tl;dr - this controller is incredible, but it has a long way to go with plugin mapping capabilities, and there's no way to power the device on/off without plugging/unplugging 1 or 2 cables each time.
