With the added MIDI Expander, would the K-Mix be able to be used as a mixer for the Octatrack, similarly to the Oktakontrol?
Pretty sure. The Control Surface mode seems to use midi, as Oktakontrol or any midi controller.
If it’s midi class compliant it should work with usb to midi devices like Kenton, IConnectMidi4…(Mpc Live ?)
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following
It works but not without it’s limitations.
On the K-Mix all faders/rotaries are programmable to midi CC #s, and buttons are programmable to midi notes.
So while you could program the faders to control the track volume/amp level, etc, you can’t program the buttons above the faders to mute tracks ( which would seem to be the most intuitive use, IMO.)
Though you could use those buttons for any other note-mappings.
The K-Mix’ three control surfaces have a single midi channel each, so you would need to program it to the OTs auto-channel.
You can download the K-Mix editor and run it in demo mode in order to see what’s available under the midi tab.
K-Mix doesn’t allow you to switch MIDI channels per MIDI control surface 1-3. They are hard coded to MIDI channels 1, 2, etc if I’m remembering correctly. In my experience the K-Mix control setup was very limited. Also the controls are fiddly, especially the rotaries.
I tried using it with an iPad and it barely ever worked. If I got it to work it only worked for a while and then it would go silent. I’d have to restart apps, iPad, etc and fiddle more to get it to work. It was a waste of time and frustration inducing experience so I gave up trying to use it with an iPad.
On top of it there was a noticeable quality loss when mixing on it vs a Mackie VLZ mixer. The output levels are very low too. I sold mine because if these things and I rarely sell my gear (usually store it away for a rainy day).
It’s a great idea but poorly executed in my experience.
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Perhaps it’s due to a firmware or editor upgrade, but the global midi channel of each control surface bank is programmable. The K-Mix covers a lot of bases, but like most swiss-army knife solutions, there are compromises…
That being said, I’ve most recently been using an older iPad with a touchOSC panel for OT control; cheap enough and very flexible.
Can you set them to the same channel? In the image each bank is on a different channel. So you’d only be able to use one set for Octatrack’s Auto Channel. Previously they couldn’t be set to the same channel. So you can’t progressively add more than 8 faders of control on the same MIDI channel. I’m sure I’m not the only one who thought that sucked. Admittedly I haven’t owned one for over a year now.
No - there’s a popup that mentions that “banks must set to different midi channels.”
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