Hi there!
This question goes out to all of you who use a midibox or a similar midi-controller (like b-control) to control vsti’s and not mixer parameters (for that purpose LC works finde in most studio-apps). What are your experiences regarding workflow and ease of use?
At the moment I’m really getting angry because there doesn’t seem to be any host which deals with this issue properly (and I downloaded almost any trialversion available) although it should be quite easy for them to implement it.
What am I talking about?
FULL DUPLEX Midi-Controller support for softsynths!!!
I usually use Sonar and it works fine with MbLC for mixing, but controlling synths with it is a pain in the arse…
Many softsynths can more or lesse be controllled via cc or nrpn but without feedback to the controller…
result: you are creatively fiddling around, change patch touch some knobs -> everything is f***'ed up.
I think feedback could be implemented in the dxi-wrapper easily.
I didn’t find any vstis supporting relative controller-events either.
In Sonar I can also arm vsti-parameters for automation and assign 4 of them to the midicontroller… no feedback either 
So far for sonar, I don’t know about cubase as I don’t have it (maybe I would by it If the situation was much better there).
Now I’m coming to Ableton Live 4:
The controller-support is just like I want it too be in every other app. You assing any knob to anyparameter in the host-app and get a feedback when you change the patch in you synth (ledrings update…)
Could be like a dream and I woul surely buy this one if it wasn’t such a CPU hogg. I get at least 10% more CPU-use and dropouts much earlyer compared to sonar (or anything else). Other let-down… when rewired into sonar you can’t use vstis (can’t be so hard to fix
that). Well… the trial will expire in 3 days anyway and I’m not willing to spend 450€ before these issues willbe adressed in ver.5..
So you read all of this lament and get my point?
How are you dealing with this? How is your creative workflow with softsynths and their patches. Do you safe a snapshot in your controller for each and every patch you use? (doesn’t sound practical to me).
What do people with classic pots and no encoders usually do?
What do the manufacturers of devices like behringer (bad example I know) think we should do when advertising things like:
“control you softsynths with flexible ledrings and display for real-time parameter indication”? are they taking me for a ride?!?
Maybe you think, what’s the prob… but I am really angry at the moment because I don’t want to fight with hardware when Ideas are hitting me…
I sometimes think I should throw everything out of the window appart from the virus and get back to Atari ST and a tapedeck ;D
Maybe someone can calm me down a little…
best regards
rambinator
