Midibox And Renoise

Help, Support & Bugs
1

Anybody made and used one of these with renoise, or anything similar at all?

For those that haven’t a clue what I’m talking about
(vvoois edit:link corrected)
http://www.ucapps.de
Pretty sure I saw Exile mention suing one with Reaktor in (I think) the video of him demonstrating the capabilities of Reaktor 5 on NI’s site.

Just starting to look at it again and it makes me realise quite how much I have forgotten about the MDI side of things. Got a very basic question I should know the answer to…

Say I had a midi controller (could be a MidiBox or master keyboard ect) and I wanted to aassign some of the knobs to parameters of a paticular VST(fx). Could I then happily assign different knobs to VSTs in other channels? Talking just about effects at the moment.

What about if I wanted to control the filter cutoff and resonance of a few different VST instruments? Would I not get problems with the synths having to be on the same MIDI channel to do this?

As to what I would like to control of Renoise. Would probably consist of 8 channels, of which 5 would be tracks, 2 would be sends and 1 would be the master. Each channel would have a fader to control the volume (although I would proabbly have it control a gainer at the end of the chain so it doesn’t efect the sound of any effects the sound is being fed into) and probably 7 analogue knobs per channel (this would fully utalise the possible analogue inputs. Would be tempted to use rotary encoders rather than the linear potentiometers but would work out a lot more expensive. If I did it would proabbly be two groups of 4 (or 4 groups of 2 even), rather than a group of 4 and a group of 3 knobs per channel.)

I’m assuming that with Midi Learn none of that would be a problem to set up…

There are a hanful of other option I would like to have as well though. A button on each channel to toggle mute on and off with indication. Buttons next to the groups of knobs to turn on and off the effect entirely (again with indication leds)

Would also be good to have a rotary encoder for sample select (well 2 as sample could be a different slot of the rni) and then a section to adjust envolopes and/or lfos for the sample.

Stepped rotary controls on pattern oder and editor could also be useful. Much like using the mousewheel to either jump pattern, or up/down a few lines for the different effects I’m sure we all know are possible.

And I suppose transport controls should be included somewhere really. Pretty much standard really ;)

So firstly, has anybody had any experience with making and using these boxes?

And secondly, how much of what I would like to be able to control is actually possible with the current situation of renoise?

Many thanks, I feel like I’ve just written a whole bloody essay ;)

2

To be short on this one and it will sort of answers most of your other questions as well:

Yes, you can use the same controller on different parameters as long as you use different channel numbers.

Just pick for example the modulation wheel which is CC number 1, assign channel 1 to slide one of your vst and then change the channel number, then pick another slider and let Renoise autodetect the settings again.
You could also manually assign it if you want to program the channels in advance.

The method i would rather advice you:
Reassign your midicontrollers to one of the 119 different CC messages, as you only have 16 channels.

Your MIDI device may support reassigning your midi-controllers to more than 119 cc messages, Renoise itself caps from 119 (due to keep a few default messages intact, like pitch wheel). Still, 16 times 119 is 1904 possibilities for one knob!

So if you have five buttons you can assign those five buttons to 1904 sliders (still only have 119 messages to assign each).

Using midi signals to control patterns, orders and instrument-slots seem to me rather difficult to implement if the same signals also have to be cought by your VST(I)s for handling.
You may get undesired side effects when applying such things if they were possible.

Still, with the upper description you are able to do some hardware mixing on your tracks or apply various filter effects and suppose that you would like to have a default set of compressors, filters and every track has a default slider assigned to a midi-cc command?
Then set up an empty song using these settings and save it as startup-song (Misc/VST in the configs)

3

That’s pretty much how I expected it to be if I’m honest. Also, after furthre studying, putting all of what I’ve put above into one MidiBox controller would be a pain, and I decided it’s better to have one for that channels, as discussed and would work, and then one that could be multi purpose and quicxkly ste up for mixing, or for just a couple of VSTs etc.

One thing I would really like to still be able to do is mute the channel from a button on the controller. Doesn’t sound like this is possible from your description. A lot of the bigger sequencers allow this and there are modules for the logic and mackie type controllers. Is this something that isn’t likely to be seen soon and would have to live with just the level faders?

4

Also, just had a look in the tutorals and can’t see mention of which 119 midicc values are available. Only real mention I can find is in the effects commands section and it only mentions mod wheel as being no1. Is there a list of which I can use. Searching the internet brought up this: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/nigelpwstevens/ccdef.HTM where there is nothing listed for 20-31. Am I right in assuming this is it?

5

You can always try the general MMA table of Channel Control messages here:
http://www.midi.org/about-midi/table3.shtml

So to be short, there are a few messages that are generally used for the same purpose in every application or MIDI hardware.
In Renoise, you are free to use them all at will but you may affect other MIDI equipment with it if they operate on the same channel.