Digitakt livemix demonstration

[mzero]

Here’s my setup on my desk, rehearsing for tonight’s session:

The FaderFox UC44 is a great MIDI controller, and runs the rig: Eight of those faders are mapped to the 8 track levels on the DT. Other knobs and faders control various post-device filters and effects (including both EQ and sweep filters, reverb, and delays.) The post effects and all MIDI routing is done by the RaspberryPi (the white box in the top left) in the picture).

My computer is in the image - but not used in the live rig at all.

[depuratumba]

nice video! digitakt only?

[BudsatWork]

only with the digitakt. as said I have the idea only with the digitakt a liveset to play. I think it will be cool.

@mzero
the midi-controller looks very good and nice setup, my consumer heart beats to 180

[BudsatWork]

what kind of controls do you have on the green buttons? controlls from the digitakt?

[falconetti]

Cheers !

Any problems with CC value jumps from pattern to pattern?

Also which level are you controlling with the faders ? (there is : sample level / amplitude vol / track level)

Can you define CC range in the akai editor (besides MIDI channel / CC number) ?

[falconetti]

Would you test the DT with the LCXL ? Would be great to hear your feedback.

Apparently the OT can send feedback data to the controller, not sure about the DT.

New FADERFOX MIDI controller system for ELEKTRON devices (12-track-design for ANALOG RYTM)

you can control 3 devices with MX12 but note to have different midi channels for each device to avoid any conflicts. the problem with value jumps can be solved when the devices send feedback data by changing projects. for ELEKTRONs this works afaik only with OT. not sure how the tetra works. so you would have these jumps after changing projects on A4 and RYTM. a little help is to use the fader mute function on MX12 to move the faders near to the new value (holding shift and move fader). I h…

[thelightshineth]

Hey will you be streaming this by any chance?

[flocked]

Main problem with all non-octatrack devices:
If you change the pattern, track volume will jump to the values set in the pattern, not the faders. You would need to move the faders again to get the track volume to the same value as the faders.

All non-octatrack devices don’t send any feedback or have a global track volume (which doesn’t change on pattern change)

[mzero]

Not tonight’s session, it’s a more open improv. session I hold in Silicon Valley. (If anyone’s interested in these, I hold them monthly - PM me). The work I do as electric.kitchen, which is often streamed, is on a short break but back again in May.

[mzero]

I know this problem well… I’ve been planning on programming the RaspberryPi to notice the Digitakt pattern change, and then resend all the volume CCs again to work around this.

[flocked]

I already did this, but with a teensy 3.6. Just make sure to add a small latency of 2-3ms after the pattern change, else the machine isn’t reacting to the track volume cc (or any cc).

[mzero]

I originally had solos on the green buttons… but found I never used them. SO, now they serve as “reset” points: Each resets a part of the audio effects chain: One resets the EQ, one resets the reverb, etc… Useful for fiddling things to crazy-town, then…bam… back to normal.

Also, the left-most five green buttons route the small keyboard to four channels of synth (when I use a PreenFM, it is four part multi-timbral), and the fifth goes to the DT’s auto-channel. This way I can either play a synth directly, or play an audio track on the DT, or play the synth via the DT, recording into a DT MIDI track.

[PlumWrinkles]

Yes! I will try to do this by saturday. not at home with the LCXL right now

[sinewave]

Hi mzero,
I am just curious, which program you run on raspberry pi? is it pd maybe? And do you use onboard audio interface? I am planning to install pd on rpi (yet to buy one) but I am worried for latency. TY

[Sebas]

i found this…

[mzero]

I’m running a RasberryPi 3, with the Pisound add-on audio card. The on-board audio interface is pretty “lo-fi”, where as the Pisound is excellent.

I run the stock Raspian Lite image as the OS. The main audio software is indeed Pd, with a mediumish patch I built for it.

The trick to making this work well is to run the patch at the sampling rate of the Pisound: 48kHz. With this I run 64 sample buffering size - and so get very low latency… low enough that I haven’t been tempted to measure it exactly yet… though I should, probably! I’m going to say it is < 4ms.

As for power, here’s a list of all the things running in the effects chain on the RPi:

• Looper, beat sync’d
• “stutter” LFO’d gate, geat sync’d
• full-sweep LP & HP filters
• three band parametric EQ
• reverb (based on freeverb)
• triple, beat sync’d, delay lines
• gain controls at most stages
• Ableton Link - with generated MIDI Clock to DT and synth
• Keyboard routing - switchable between DT and synth
• Control surface routing - giving control over all parameters of the audio effects, and routing some controls to the DT and synth. This is where the faders get sent to the DT to control the mix of the sample tracks.

All of this runs consuming ~11% of the RPi… so I’ve got plenty of room to grow.

[BudsatWork]

Yes, you have to plan how to switch to the next pattern and change the faders before. It’s a little bit of work.
I’m controlling the track level with the faders.
Unfortunately you can not define a cc range with this controller.

[sinewave]

wow, great info. ty!

[BudsatWork]

hey guys,
Pavl and I played a very cool technosession yesterday, Have fun!

[Judsumsun]

I use a Novation Launch Control XL with my Digitakt. A Kenton USB Midi Host connects the two without a computer. The setup is super reliable and a lot of fun to jam with. The Launch Control feels great, I really like the faders and knobs. You do get value jumps from pattern to pattern but I try to use the same type of sounds on each channel every time, which makes it more manageable. The Launch Control XL editor is well made and easy to use. I have a few different pages of controller mappings set up for the Digitakt. The faders always control track level, the buttons on the bottom are mute and temporary solo (like a momentary switch instead of a toggle). The solo function is a lot of fun to highlight a few parts really quick at the end of a sequence. User preset 1 has each track’s effects sends and filter cutoff mapped to the knobs then the other presets just control different things like the reverb and delay, the envelopes for certain tracks, and so on. In fact the only time I have ever hooked up the LCXL to a computer is to edit the midi mapping. I looked into getting the FaderFox UC44 but really wanted the Launch Control’s knobs and the ability to program 8 user presets.

As far as connecting the two the Kenton box works great, I just wish it had a power switch but you just unplug it to power it down. I picked up a Kenton 5 way midi splitter at the same time because I have a few synths with no midi thru. With Digitakt working as a midi brain I can have conditional trigs on everything! I also have a Hosa Midi to USB cable I use with my C&G Organelle but have not tried that with the Launch Control yet, don’t know if it would work as the Organelle is a midi host. I think you have to have a midi host for it to work with devices without going through a computer first. All in all I am glad I got the controller for my Digitakt, it has made the machine more fun to jam with. Once we have Overbridge and I can use the Digitakt as an interface this setup will be perfect for me.