Dave Smith Instruments SYNTHESIZERS

OK.. the one *major* issue with having CCs to control evolvers parameters,
as discussed before, is that the evolver has more than 128 parameters that
people might want to control... and there's only 120-ish available CCs per
MIDI channel. The reason your other modern synths can have CCs assigned to
parameters is simply because they don't have as many as evolver does....
also, the evolver has a couple of parameters with ranges greater than
0-127... which isn't so great seeing CCs only have that range of values.

So any kind of extended CC control would be a compromise...  which I guess
is fair enough, and better than nothing - but it's just something to keep in
mind. I think its safe to assume that CCs will never be a viable way to
fully program the synth, however there is definately a place to assign them
for realtime parameter modulation by sequencer...


For what you are all asking, there are two things to do.. globally assign
CCs to parameters for all patches, which would mean that your basic setup
would be compatible with a single generic set of controllers and whatever
you wanted to edit would work... but the downside is there will only be
about 120 CCs you can have assigned, which means some parameters will never
be controllable via CC. and chances are, somethig specific like a particular
brand of wind controller might have problems if it can't set different CCs
for the desired parameters...

The other option would be to have the CCs assignable per patch... but then
you get upto 120 CCs controlling 120 different parameters on each patch =
HELL for controlling your synth generally.  you would need to work out what
parameters you wanted to modulate in a patch, and then assign CCs to
parameters before you could use them.. On top of all this... if you are to
have a way to assign CCs to parameters, where would this functionality go on
the programming matrix? remember none of us get a new front panel with a new
OS update, so it's got to be something that fits around the way the existing
code works, as well as being intuative enough that you can use it without
any front panel notes, and just a 3 digit LED display...

We have a great developer for our synth here, and he does obviously care
about keeping us happy... that v2.0 update was excellent..... But if we're
going to go asking for these kind of changes, can we at least work out a way
to do it that won't make his beautiful synth a complete mess?  Also,
providing a path to a solution is a much more powerful way of asking for
somthing that you want, rather than just posing an open problem...

so everyone.. what exactly do you want (within these limits)? and thinking
about how it already works, how exactly do you want this new functionality
to work?

Maybe start with a list of what parameters everyone actually cares about
having realtime sequencable CC power over?



julian