hello 
how do you use the Faderfox editor offline?
Hi,
all you need is to download this repository, then open the index.html file in the ec4 folder.
that’s it!
1 Like
thank you very much!
Hi @thetechnobear did you ever get to set up the electra one with the octatrack? how did you find the pairing?
1 Like
Would have happily given feedback but I don’t have the Electra One unfortunately! I’m mostly using an ERAE Touch these days. 
Ooops my bad, sorry!
1 Like
I think the question, mainly, what do you want an external controller for?
I did at some point create a full preset for the Octatrack (and there are some shared by Electra One community)… and it worked well… basically it did everything the midi implementation of the OT allows.
BUT, whilst doing this… and also doing something similar with my Virus TI, I quickly started asking myself the question…
Why am I doing this? Why do I need ALL controls on the Electra One?
the Octatrack has a pretty good UI…
I realised, what I really wanted was just a few controls to be more ‘readily’ available, things like mixer levels, send fx … perhaps filter on some tracks.
… actually having ALL controls was unnecessary, and overly complex - as if I wanted to really dive into the Octatrack, Id just reach over to the Octatrack
so instead, I changed completely my approach to the Electra One.
what I started doing was building presets that were dedicated to a particular setup/session.
so rather than loading an Octatack preset on my E1.
Id have a preset that exposed controls of multiple instruments…
so, the front page of my preset, might have some controls of the Octatrack, and some (e.g) from my Virus, or some from my eurorack. had they were laid out (which page etc), was down to ‘function’ rather than instrument… e.g. Id have all ‘levels’ on one page, regardless of instruments, and fx on another.
another preset, might be a combo of controls from the Octatrack, and some vst controls running on my computer.
in last years “jamuary”, I did this a lot
so, for me, this is the ‘power’ of the electra one…
rather than mapping to a particular instrument (like OT) , it can be a central place for the ‘main controls’ of many instruments…
so you can quickly get to important controls… but I then still reach over to the instrument, if/when I want to focus on it.
what I also preferred about this approach is , its was simple… I wasn’t trying to make it complete/perfect … it was simply a matter of making something usable for my needs.
I guess, if you go this route for long enough, you will end up with some ‘go to’ templates for certain combos of gear - that you’ll tweak/refine over time.
of course, Im not saying this approach is ‘new’
people have had this ‘performance focus’ for setting up midi controllers forever…
but for some reason, with E1 there seemed to be a focus on ‘presets’ for particular instruments… not quite sure why
(perhaps because often its used with old synths, that have very poor UIs or none at all?)
cons?
well the electra one has 12 encoders (and does bi-directional midi - yay!) , but if you have many controls, you need to select other groups or pages (you can have 3x12 on a page) to ‘activate them’. though its a touchscreen , so you can use that too … though, I prefer the encoders
BUT, you could get a box with many potentiometers if you want more hands-on control, albeit it with less flexibility.
however, the other main draw the E1 had for me was, I changed my setup around a lot.
and I didn’t want lots of ‘unlabelled’ pots, which id forget what they were mapped too.
so being able to have proper labelled controls on the E1 as a bit thing for me
so yeah… technically, E1 does what it promises ‘on the tin’, and I’ll say, its by far the best midi implementation Ive seen… (though really the OT doesn’t need much ;))
all really comes down to if the form factor (and price/availability) suits your needs, and what knowing what you want to solve… and the approach you want to take.
2 Likes
I can 100% relate to this - I started out with mapping/reproduction of whole instruments, and after a while also found the performance-oriented approach much more productive.
1 Like
interestingly, the Electra One editor has a concept of instrument definitions.
so the idea is that you have these full instrument definitions, and then you can assemble a preset from these - this means you don’t need to remember things like midi CC numbers, or things like CC mapping to enumerations (e.g. 1 = saw, 32= sine etc )
so in perfect world, you grab an octatrack, virus, eurorack definition - -then just assemble your preset selecting the controls you want for that preset.
however, currently you cannot define these in the editor itself
i.e. you can use instrument definitions but not create them. it would be nice if this was built out a bit more.
also, this mainly works for ‘fixed’ instruments e.g. it doesn’t really mean much for something like VSTs, which by definition rely upon not just the VST but how its mapped in the DAW.
but its all very workable as it is now
anyway this is all better discussed on the electra one topic
1 Like
Sometimes I use my Launchcontrol XL with a Kenton usb to midi converter to control my OT and AR. But I couldn’t use it for both machines at the same time. Is there a way to control the same parameter on both machines e.g. track level, fx etc.?
+1 on that.
The main Synth I use is the Virus TI and I went the route, that I have one Section of the Screen (12 Buttons) having 3 Parameters each for 4 MIDI Channels. In my Sound-Design Process I use the Modulation Matrix to use the CC Parameters as Source so I can define per sound, what I want to change and even be able to change more than one Part with different weight with one knob of the E1.
Add some Volumes for the OT-Tracks (Mainly for Drums) onto another Section of the Screen, and I am mostly good to go for most of what I do with it.
1 Like
LCXL gets my vote as well. I love that it can stay plugged into my iConnect and with one push on a button, it can control the OT, or my DAW! sweet…
1 Like
Yes, LC XL. Best bang for the buck.
If you already have a Midi hub though, no 5pin Midi.
I’d opt for a controller that can allow Midi handshake to receive OT values, like a Faderfox.
2 Likes
Yeah. that’s true. I’d love to have a launch control with 5pin midi.
i understand that approach. if you get to the point where you’re looking at several boxes and would like them all to handshake, with or without your computer, i highly encourage you to look into iConnect products, they make so much more possible.
1 Like
i have iConnect Mio4 and while it can do way more things, i use a merge for setup. Does that great!
Thanks for the in depth answer technobear! Interesting about the instrument definitions i know the sequencers Pyramid and Cirklon have this makes sense for this controller too!
1 Like
yeah, the hope is midi 2.0 (midi-ci) will address this in a consistent way…
once that happens, I think we will see a number of products that will use these definition files to bridge midi 1.0 instruments to midi-ci… this will be cool, no only for products like E1 that can be made to support midi 2.0 - but also expose that to other things (e.g your DAW)
BUT… (unsurprisingly) the take up of midi 2.0 is pretty slow, so its going to be a while yet!