can anyone explain, how a rotary knob works as opposed to a pot? The point is that I´m meditating about ways to transform a Total Control into a poor mans mixer (oh cheeeaaap me likee aaaall night loooooong!) capable of controlling three or four decks. Do you know if you could replace an endless rotary with a pot and vice versa without running into major problems. If yes the unit itself does have quite a lot of capabilities for mapping out tracktor and leave some rotary knobs for a dedicated fx box. As I have a Nano Kontrol too Ide even think about giving it a shot and map out BentoSans Smart Mixer, would be awesome wouldn’t it???
Most rotary controllers for midi use a incremental 2-bit quadrature signal, and pots are pretty much just variable resistors. Pots use a simple analog signal, and the encoders use a digital/analog combination.
Now there might be a way to swap them out, depending on the brains of the controller, but it will definitely be a hassle.
Thanks for the info,
well, since the idea of experimenting with an OEM pcb of unknown capabilities is weel beyond my skills
I guess then the easier approach to achieving a cheapish four deck controll would be to leave the rotaries where they are and add an extra set of fader and pots on a joystickpcb or something like that.
If you want to add some more features, i would recommend the Hale UMC-32. It’s really easy to set up, and they have a great support form. But, explore your options, it’s all about what you want the controller to do for you.
thanks for the input.
well, the Hale Micro surely seems to be an attractive option, especially for the plug and ply kind of functionality that a lazy bastard like me needs if there is nothing like spare time in reality. I read your threads too and you mentioned it a couple of times..
But as I understood it does “only” have 16 faders or buttons. Or was that both?
So making a four deck array of pots for low, mid, high, filter/key rotary including cue and kill switches will not be possible with it. Is that right or am I getting something wrong?
It has 32 inputs which can be set to either analog(pots/faders) or digital(buttons), in any combination. If you need more than that, i’ll be glad to help you come up with a solution.
awesome, thanks a lot!
in that case, that would leave enough for making a small four deck mixing unit and then use the Total control as a pure transport and effect unit. Kind of like a poor man`s xone or something…
you can even use up to 8 umc’s’ together for loads of controlls (236 to be precise!). all you would need is a usb to link them all, think of it as x number of seperate controllers all mounted in 1 box? obviously 256 is uneccesary but 64 should be ample
thats true but as I take it each UMC is around 70 Dollars plus another 20 for shipping to Europe, I have to watch for the budget. Another point is that the faders of the TC are starting to give up already, so Ide have to take it apart and replace them to sell it and usually if I take anything apart be it the stereo, motorcycle or whatever the inner Mc Giver takes over, and there`s no way to stop it really.