Dear Native Instruments (Open Letter)
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  1. #1
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    Default Dear Native Instruments (Open Letter)

    Would you please hire some user interface designers from Ableton to improve Traktors controller management. Also replace the managers who hired the designers of the original with people who care about the users just a little bit. It just needs to be started over because this thing you have going on is an atrocity against users. It does not even attempt to follow user-friendly interface design principles. Newsflash: mapping a real knob to one on the screen does not have to involve scrolling through ridiculous massive trees of confusing submenus. Ableton did it and there is no reason why you can't.
    Last edited by tekki; 10-21-2013 at 08:16 AM.

  2. #2
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    Default

    Controlling the onscreen knobs is only a fraction of the things you can do with mappings.
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  3. #3
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    Default Dear Hotshot,

    Ableton's MIDI implementation is terrible. Yes, at the most superficial it seems more user friendly - but it's also nowhere near as powerful as Traktor's. Want to control LEDs? Learn Python and Live API. Want to change the sensitivity of encoders? Learn Python and Live API. Want to set a variable that changes what controls do? Learn Python and Live API.

    To do ANYTHING in Live other than the most basic mapping, you need to be a programmer.

    So yeah, you can either deal with a few menus and oddly named commands, or you can begin here and start learning this. Personally, I prefer not to have to write a script every time I want to map a new controller.

  4. #4

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    Just wanted to point out that the title of this thread is " dear native instruments" and this is clearly the DJ Tech Tools forums.
    Traktor/Ableton /Komplete /MBP OSX el capitan

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  5. #5
    Tech Mentor 0Notice's Avatar
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    Check out the controller mapping threads... Maybe the "Ultimate FX Thread" so you can see just how powerful mapping can be. Personally, I did not think the learning curve was difficult after about an hour I was able to do most of the things I wanted to do. Keep at it, and don't complain about your apparent lack of desire to learn or inability to do so.
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  6. #6
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    @nem0nic, Most people, especially me, don't care about lighting up LED's. We just want to knobs on the controller to be mapped directly to software features most of the time. I agree that Traktor mappings system provides more functionality than Ableton's, short of Python and Ableton API (and, I'm sure a bag of Max's "features") But that doesn't negate the fact that what most common use-case should be easy, quick, intuitive = user-friendly.

    BTW, thanks for the link. As a software engineer, I can really appreciate it. It documents the API amazingly well. I wish the API I deal with at day work had data model diagrams like that attached to them.

    @makar1 @0Notice I don't doubt the powers of Traktor's controller management UI or it's "learning curve." It's easy to figure out. It just takes a long time to get anything done even after that. Not to mention that it lacks any features that everybody takes from granted from any program that's not open-source freeware. Where is copy/paste, for example. How about making that window resizable? It took NI something like 10 years to make that tiny little improvements.

    What I'm pissed about is not the lack of some feature, or that it's too complicated. It's the complete lack of empathy for people using that UI. In fact it appears to be hostile to users. Let's say their UI designers were college dropouts with heroin problems (that's the caliber of the UI), the managers could choose to make the ui mappings saved to an XML file. That way more ambitious people could write software to mange the mappings. But nooooooo. Fuck you, users. It's proprietary file format. Anyways, thanks for reading me rant.
    Last edited by hotshot; 10-21-2013 at 02:52 AM.

  7. #7
    Tech Guru Patch's Avatar
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    Default

    I'm just now learning mappings in Traktor. I've found a couple of useful guides on the 'web, but it's still a lot of trial and error when you're learning.

    Unless I've missed a guide/tutorial/manual that is out there that gives a decent walk through of the basics, through to the more complicated functions?
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  8. #8
    Tech Guru deevey's Avatar
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    Take a note from TORQ 2 perhaps rather than Ableton, now that was straightforward - easy to map multiple effects to a single knob, easy as hell to set LED outputs. No need to go through a million settings/submenus.

    Click, Learn, setup parameters, it SHOULD be that easy on any software that implements midi ...

    Unless of course your endgame is for users to only use your specific pre-mapped controllers at which stage making it a PITA is beneficial.

  9. #9
    DJTT Mapping Ninja Moderator Stewe's Avatar
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    If NI didn't go "easy mapping" route back 10 years ago why should they do it right now when current user need more advanced mapping interface? Especially at this age of controllerism when DJ techniques are going wild.

    Wish they care more for the mappings though, luckily I have a time machine to access all of the 32 modifiers from Traktor pro 4

  10. #10
    Tech Guru MaxOne's Avatar
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    ive never used it but there is this http://xtrememapping.com/
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