When you touch the knob it “clicks and holds” until you let go of the knob.
Rotation can be up and down or side to side dragging.
The left switch decides if the mouse pointer returns to the start location or stays where it ends up. So when you let go and grab for a second rotation it will be back on the virtual knob.
It’s more precise than anything else. It’s much easier to hit precise values with the nob then it is with a mouse.
There is a companion app (which I haven’t used much honestly) that lets you adjust some of these things. Maybe speed and acceleration? I think there is a way to do modifiers by touching the switches as well.
Since your mouse and nob control the same thing I found it’s best to have them on the same hand. Move your mouse pointer to the location. Then switch to the nob for control.
You can close your eyes at that point. Even if you take your hand off the nob, it’ll still control the same control again until you move the cursor with your normal mouse.
One last note:
The nob is very large and very smooth. You can put a thumb on the front surface and turn many rotations without moving your hand off the nob. Think of a semi (tractor trailer) truck. The big steering wheel with the nob that allows many rotations without removing your hand.
It’s still one control at a time, but I personally love it.
I’m the sort whose brain is tuned to obsessing about minutia.
I would rather worry less about “fidelity” than creating works end to end.
Nothing is wrong with being happy with the greatest effort you can put forward, but I optimize for stuff that in aggregate does not matter so much with letting creative works exist in a completed state. Not turd polishing, but the need to work faster and “fidelity” is but one excuse to avoid working fast, cheap, and competing more tracks, albums, concepts.
Basically-
If it’s not holding you back at all, get on with your bad self
If you ever feel that modern standards of fidelity require somehow more time and $, there are plenty of examples of work that are done with literal toys and dogshit lo-fi gear that people LOVE.
Everybody could get a little more punk, and DIY often means doing the thing over trying to do everything to arbitrary standards of perfection.
Hardware is tactile and tangible, it affords the creation of certain music, where sequencing a sound-source on a computer does not. The inclusion of something as simple as a modwheel can completely change how you engage with an instrument. You can find convincing guitar VST’s but it’s not the same as playing a guitar.
This is also why something like a Maschine is a popular choice - as it affords a workflow and tactility in addition to access to sounds.
Had a Boog but sold it when Moog put out the Minimoog iPad app. Sounds the same but is polyphonic with patch memory. Still have my Sub 37 though. That won’t ever be sold, especially as all the knobs can be mapped to the same controls on the iPad so I can use it as a iPad synth controller with the baked in muscle memory of hardware.
I also run a small DIY eurorack rig. I find software great for ‘normal’ sounds but if you want to get weird and grimy with feedback loops, self oscillations and other types of (semi) organised audio chaos, software’s not there yet.
I completely agree.
In a way I could’ve rephrased it to “lower expectations” keeping it more in a subjective context.
I was really just trying to think through the original sentiment, which I still don’t understand if it’s a pro or a con, or both? IDK
I prefer it to sound good to me, whatever that means, while playing, or listening to my own tracks.
Not so much about how gear is rated by sound, price, standards or design, but how the culmination of my rig feels/sounds to me personally.
In any art medium, I’m trying to refine my efforts to a personal style. This rules out most of outsider opinion for me, especially once I start getting a tunnel vision for it.
I own a few synth modules, a few samplers etc… I think for samplers, hardware is all about the tactile interface and imposed limitations that paradoxically end up enabling the user in their creativity. Apart from that I see little that software doesn’t have hardware samplers beat on in pretty much all the categories.
When it comes to synths, I’m not sure I can equate hardware/software that easily. I have, for example, yet to find a VST that would give me the raw and alive sound that my Dreadbox Erebus with its rude filter and many little oddities gives me.
That said, NI Monark gives me a very nice Moog-ish sound that has my itch for a real Moog totally covered.
As many of you have already said, the tactile interface and bodily involvement in sound creation with hardware synthesizers makes a big difference to me…I have a cupboard full of midi controllers but have come to the conclusion that no matter how great the controller, mapping midi interfaces to VST just never quite feels right to me.
I like to “figure out how stuff works.” Hardware synths give me a lot more satisfaction in this regard than software. My hobby interests used to be 70% photography, 30% music. Now it is 90% music, 10% photography (including my drone). Why? To be honest, because I know my camera and lenses inside and out, and I have become bored with it. I can buy a hardware synth and spend years on and off getting to know what it can do. I suppose this is just another way of saying I suffer from GAS. I don’t get a lot of GAS satisfaction with software, or not for as long anyway.
…sounding “bad” is one of those hypersubjective things…
…“the music maker” should simply focus more on his/her truu content originality in very very first AND very very last place, than wasting nerves and time and effort with discussing and worryworrying what might cause the most possible hyperprestine sound quality to be finalleeee able to make “good” music…
it’s never the tool that translates and touches, end of the day, it’s always the content u CREATED with those tools…
Very close to what I was trying to discuss.
In the digital/analog conversation, I often see the rebuttal,
“If the audience doesn’t notice or care, then the user should______?”
I just don’t understand those replies.
I see it more of a, “if I care to a point thats pleasing to me, I enjoy my music and that translates to whatever audience the way I intended”
To that end, I have a great deal more interest in “learning” a hardware workflow (hence why I use Elektron…) with muscle memory over flipping through and mousing over pages through a computer UI.
Those sort of overreaches occur when someone conflates their personal opinion over what someone else enjoys or appreciates. Best to not worry about what someone else worries about, universally!
