14-bit MIDI and the VCI-100
For all you tech-heads out there, my latest burning question is whether or not we may be able to develop a firmware flash for the VCI-100 that gets it to send 14 bit midi on the jogs and pitch faders. My hunch is that it’s not possible owing to the hardware, but I’ve seen the DJTT community pull off a lot of amazing stunts, so…
(Dreaming of crystalline super-precise articulated scratches on the controller that’s got it all. Well, almost.)
Reverse engineering the firmware is one way, another way would be to pray to god that the 1.4 firmware contains 14bit midi !
Yes… i said v 1.4 
Can someone explain what 14 bit midi is, or point me in the right direction .. i’m new to all this.
Cheers
Gav
14 bit midi is basicly using 2 midi messages instead of one, the two messages form a single message which is the range ends up being about 0 - > 16000 while standard midi only has a range between 0 → 127.
The result is that 14bit midi is alot more accurate.
wow … amazing !!! and theres a chance of this happeing in 1.4 then ?
I think that that is the most obvious improvement for the VCI-100 so I would be suprised if it didnt.
If/when v1.4 is released would the current firmware upgrade kit allow you to flash to 1.4 or would a new piece of kit be available?
Its still the same unit so no reason why the existing kit could not upgrade the firmware as its just a way of connecting to the machine and the firmware is just software blasted to the hardware.
Thanks for the quik reply! I can’t wait until the kit is back in stock
I’m working on the next batch of update kits with Ean, hopefully wont be to far off.
cooooooool … what would you class as not far off ? Sorry to be a pain just really cant wait to get one of these for the fw upgrade
Hey,
With this 14bit midi signals, will we be able to have a higher resolution pitch fader, kinda those lovely .02% increments in the cdj1000?
Thats correct 
I remember this being discussed before by FatLimey. Oh what I wouldn’t do to get it. Would it be possible for someone to ‘rip’ the firmware programming from the vcm-400 and apply it to vci-100?..Wishful thinking…
VCM-400 does not have the same cpu ,faders, etc, as the 100. They are same as the vci-300, I was told.
Thats correct 
Side-tracking just a bit, there is a thread on the Hercules site where someone asked if the RMX firmware could be upgraded for 14-bit messages which netted this interesting reply →
I agree 14-bit CC messages can give a more precise control than 7-bit, but
I see 14-bit MIDI message advantage only for potentiometers (faders or rotary potentiometers), as a 14-bit resolution provides up to 16384 steps on the potentiometer run, while a 7-bit resolution provides only 128 steps on the potentiometer run, so having more steps gives indeed a more precise control,
I see no advantage in 14-bit MIDI message compared to 7-bit MIDI messages for jog wheels or rotary encoders, since jog-wheels and encoders have unlimited runs, so they only send increments (the absolute value of a position is useless, what is important is how precisely the position changes are reflected in the MIDI increment command), with no Min and Max position, and their resolution is not linked to the size of the MIDI Control Change since the manufacturer of the jog-wheel can map 128 steps (=1 CC message of 7-bit) on a complete circular run, but he can also map 128 steps on each degree of rotation (=1CC message of 7 bit), so 360 degree x 128 steps = 46080 steps on a full circular run, which makes a 360 times higher resolution still with 7-bit CC messages.
Funny that you mention this because Fatlimey and i were talking about this same approach not that long ago.
This method is do able but the restriction is the bandwidth of the midi protocol - during a backspin for instance that method would produce an absolute ridiculous ammount of midi message - 720 messages in a single rotation at full rotation speed to be exact. If your wondering why its 720 messages and not 360 messages is because you have to take into consideration that 64 of the 128 7-bit messages is also used for going backwards.
Id say i can backspin one of my jogs so it spins about 3 times in a second which would produce roughly about 2160 midi messages in a single second which is much higher than the roughly 1000 messages a second that the current specification supports - you can read more here about the bandwidth issues of the protocol Cakewalk Music Software/MIDI Editing: MIDI is not an ideal data format for editing . Sequencers *could* improve it..
I am not saying that this is a bad method, however a single midi message would have to represent a larger percentage of the jog wheel than 1% which would bring the total midi resolution down a bit for this to be a practicle approach.
The most important things when taking into consideration this approach is what is the maximum spin someone can possibly put on the jog wheel, how much time passes inbetween each midi message that is going to be sent.
Another consideration that needs to be taken is that other midi messages have to share the same pipe as the jog - so the jog wheel just cant hog up the entire midi pipe while its being usesd.
Then after all of this messages of this nature need to be supported by the software - which i am not too sure the current software(like Traktor) thats out there at the moment would very work with messages such as this.
Ideally what there needs to be is some kind of “standard jog” message so theres assured cross compatibility across products.
Just a heads up, we have been working on a new firmware for the VCi-100 that will add many improvements including high res jogs and faders. Feature requests for this firmware are being fielded here in this post:
You beauty Ean!!