I recently got an AK with the plan to use it as my main midi controller.
I was really looking forward to those nice rotaries, but now am a bit bummed out, as I can’t seem to find a way to make them work in a relative fashion.
If that’s not possible, I absolutely don’t understand why, because relative changes are THE biggest advantage with endless rotaries, and just artificially giving them the limitation of absolute values, especially without an option to change that behavior, makes zero sense to me.
I searched for posts mentioning this, but couldn’t seem to find any.
Most synths implement the receipt of MIDI Control Change messages such that the the values correspond to actual values of the corresponding synth parameter.
Relative changes and endless encoders work well on the internal synth engine of many synths because the synth already knows the current value of the particular parameter (which is generally not true in the case of control by an external unit, unless there is a two-way MIDI connection between the external unit and the synth).
Absolute values only really make sense with bidirectional MIDI, which isn’t always possible, but relative changes don’t necessarily need to work bidirectionally, unless you need an indication on the controler as well, which I don’t need.
The thing is, I want to avoid parameter jumps where things only work one way.
Why not give me the choice?
EDIT: I’m only using it to control VSTi and other mappable parameters in the box, no external gear.
This is mostly down to the manufacturer of the VSTi (and most other synths): if they don’t bother to implement data increment and decrement messages appropriately, then Elektron (and other controller manufacturers) are unlikely to bother to support this function either.
Okay, but I don’t see any reaason to just not implement relative changes in case users need it. Not at this price point.
Again, I don’t need a corresponding display of state on the device, as I see the current value on the computer screen. I can’t change the fact that in many cases bidirectional MIDI just isn’t available. I used to have a much cheaper controller with endless rotaries where I was able to use it with relative values.
