Local control on synth knobs

Hi everyone,

General question here on synthesizers , midi, and the DT. I searched first, but couldn’t find a thread that stated the expected behavior.

On a synth should you expect to have the ability to turn on/off local control of the knobs/panel and only send them over midi? My new synth the Argon8 has local on/off but only for the keyboard/notes. The knobs will always make local changes, and send midi CCs simultaneously.

As-is, it has the advantage of being able to mess with the synth knobs regardless of the active midi track on the DT, but I’d prefer to have them only modify the local sound when the Argon8s channel is active (14 in my case, with the auto-channel being 15 on the DT).

Before I get too far, I wanted to know if what I’m trying to accomplish isn’t supported by most keyboards.

Best regards,

Gino

Some keyboards have local off that works for all the parameters but the way a lot of things send and receive midi cc isn’t and additive/subtractive to the current midi cc and instead you would have jumping values or having to find latch points. Honestly I wish my dsi had local off for keys only as it would avoid some midi loop back from the digitakt but I could still use the front panel fully. As is digitakt doesn’t pass through stuff like pitch and mod wheel so I lose too much control with a full local off. I dunno its probably currently the biggest downside to the digitakt currently, that or at least give me a way to not resend input notes to avoid loop back double triggers.

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The MIDI specification itself is rather ambiguous. It says that Local Control interrupts the path between the “keyboard” and the sound-generating circuitry, but that “sound-generating circuitry is controlled only by incoming MIDI data”.

It’s obviously useful to also disactivate front panel controls, and many synths provide this facility.

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