I understand a lot of djs aren’t the ‘rocking out’ type, lol. I am definitely not. But I can see using the accelerometer features in a normal way.
A lot of monomes have accelerometers, and those aren’t thought of only for ‘rocking out’.
The viddy of Ean rocking out with it is him doing his style. And probably also meant to showcase the extremes of posibility. But I don’t think it’s the only way the 3d feature would be useful.
Also, the RGB buttons, new build design, and extra shift buttons look awesome!
They were originally looking into making this wireless from what I could tell; there was a similar video a few months ago and a couple pages of speculation in the forum as I recall. This is something I was working on about a year ago (the wireless thing, not the accelerometer) with a MF classic. I have a guitar hero controller that is perfectly wireless with a USB dongle; it sends IR signals like a TV remote and it works fine. But strangely enough you can’t just buy the wireless mechanism itself - I would love to buy a USB dongle and a little remote interface that could be added on to any project to make the controller wireless; but the best I could find was going from USB-MIDI on the controller and getting a MIDI wireless and then MIDI-USB on the computer. But clearly somebody manufactures something like this since they’re in guitar hero controllers. No idea how to find one on the open market though.
I’ve been experimenting with wireless MIDI and in my experience bluetooth has three problems:
Latency is terrible when a lot of data is being streamed. Probably not an issue with the MF3D, since it only has buttons, but would certainly be a problem if it had knobs or faders.
The biggy: bluetooth has no notion of MIDI like USB does. That means the only way to get it working is to either use some kind of bluetooth-to-midi bridge program (I’ve done this) or writing a driver. A driver is the more fool proof version for the end user and is the only real solution for a consumer device, but adds a lot of development, support and maintenance work (ie its an expensive option)
Adds to the cost of the controller - I imagine DJTT were trying hard to keep the costs down and adding any kind of wireless would definitely have brought the cost up a bit more
The lack of HID compliant MIDI on bluetooth I think is the real deal breaker for bluetooth. The best option, for the end user and for latency, would be to build a USB base station and communicate wirelessly between the controller or base station.
I’ve spent a lot of time over the past six months looking into various wireless solutions (not just for MIDI) and I think the only real way to get anything at a decent price is to order direct off the manufacturers (in bulk) - most are in China. No idea if theres a ready-to-use product already available though.
wow… i love the form factor of the original midi fighter classic and wished it had different led colors and an extra four small buttons for bank changes… huzzah! plus the extra 3 shift buttons are cool
i think the tilt+shift possibilities of this new MF could be pretty cool as part of a performance… but even without using that i still want one
plus it’s not like you have to go over board and hold the thing above your head for the tilty goodness to be useful. small movements to help modulate a control could be very very useful…
was never over impressed with the midi fighter pro’s but this looks cooooooooooool
I was never impressed with the previous versions - but this is an awesome piece of kit. 4xbanks, and 6xshifts? That’s good stuff. Love the GUI, and the buttons look sick. This is a LEAP forwards. You can see that a great deal of thought has been put into this.
Well done DJ Tech Tools.
Now - what I would LOVE to see, is a version that DOES not have the accelerometers, but has pots instead. I love the idea of holding down a button then changing the value with a knob.
(While I’m dreaming, how about a 8x2 grid with 2 pots at each end - this would live nicely behind my DDM4K and between my 1200’s)..
Accelerometers. I did not ask for this. But man, the look on peoples faces when you add a clearly audible effect such as a filter to the mix by just tilting your controller. They must be amazed whether they are DJs or not.
And full RGB, yes, hell yes.
Edit: and am I the only the price of 249 dollars or 185 euros is really low for such a device ?
This controller is the answer to all my questions!
-Why are the blog post so lame lately?
-Is this site just for making money instead of promoting controllerism?
-Is this just a digital shrine to Eans gospel?
So, like, a cross between the MF3D and the MF Pro? Basically Pro with RGB leds, dedicated bank buttons and six shift buttons. Would be pretty cool alright.
I feel like if I used this at a gig I would need to explain to ppl what the hell I am doing but then it would get quite a reaction…still I probably would always keep one corner on the table, ive just never been able to get that into the music I’m spinning haha. Still if there is a combined sample deck mapping with the instant grat/wtf mapping then it could be perfect to go with my s4.
The MF3D has a lot of performance possibilities and not just for show-offs, especially when you have full control over the LEDs and can use them to give you feedback about the program state. With the right MIDI mapping there’s no need to look at the screen any more, you know right away which bank you are in and what functions are currently active. Key state is persistent so setting an LED color on a Bank is remembered throught the session as you swap banks. Want to know if a deck is playing? Turn a key on bank 1 from white to red.
The rockout moves aren’t the only thing you can do with the LEDs. For instance, hold the box above your head with the LEDs pointing towards the audience. Move the MF3D side to side in a 180 degree arc above your head and the audience can see the values changing. That’s audience interaction and direct control all at the same time. How could you use that to engage your audience? What other features would you want to see?
The MF3D also has absolute orientation tracking so subtle movements can also be output as MIDI CCs - mixing subtle tracks or controlling slow tonal events is just as easy as tracking the “rocking out” movements. Once you get it in your hands you really feel the machine reading your movements - it’s Apple-style natural once you get it in your hands, we’ve worked hard on that.
It also outputs a storm of MIDI data - three orientation CCs for every button held down and buttons “pick up” from the place they were pressed allowing you to do up-sweeps and down-sweeps with just one motion by timing the keypresses. That’s a huge amount of control and way more CCs than you could ever tweak at one time using just two hands. These features are really a solution looking for a problem and we’re hoping that people will play with the device and find ways of using it we’ve never thought of. That’s the kind of capabilities tht good artistic tools provide.
So go be creative with it, show us what it can do.
In a booth. Completely uselss imo. Unless you hold it in the air and do stuff.
BUT I could see this working awesome for a duo. One person mixing, another person in the crowd mashing effects. If they do it right cue juggle etc. Let people in the audience try touching a button or two. You can really engage your audience in that manner.
