Analogue-sequencer

Hi again folks, just letting anybody interested know there's only 4 days left to run on my 
P3 being auctioned on eBay, but you probably guessed that already from the 'Subject' line 
of this post... Cheers!

As the main reason I'm on this list is to get news about the P3
follow-up, I thought now'd be a good time to chime in, as I'll
definitely be buying one.  Here are a couple of recommended features.
 Sorry this is long, but these are the result of a lot of playing live
with other hardware sequencers.

Interface:
- A big, informative screen that lets you see the true values of all
steps in the current track.  IMO this is the one respect in which the
Schrittmacher is nicer than either P3 or Octopus.
- rotary encoders!  I know this has been discussed lots of times
before, but when knobs can change functions and values with each
keypress, this really makes a big difference during performance.  If
you have the screen, I don't think you need LED-ring indicators.
By the way, I know the range vs. precision problem is often raised. 
The Elektron machines have push-buttons under the encoders to change
the sensitivity (push in to do coarse adjustments), but actually I
find this a bit annoying and feels like you are straining the
encoders.  On the other hand, I know they spent a long time selecting
those encoders, and they can take a lot of wear.  As an alternative,
you could have a coarse/fine toggle button.  This requires two-handed
operation, but if set up properly I think it could actually be a
useful performance effect.  For example, suppose 'coarse' mode sets
the octave and 'fine' sets the semitone, then you can tweak a single
step in the sequence so that it jumps octaves without going through
all the intermediate values... 

Functions:
- a few UI elements that can be user-programmed to make large and
complex changes to the sequence would be great.  At the moment the P3
is incredibly deep for doing self-modifying sequences, but it would be
cool to have a similar level of depth when tweaking sequences live. 
For example, scaling the contribution of an aux line to the output
value, or muting groups of tracks with a single button.
- add 'snapshot' and 'undo' buttons so you can do radical tweaks and
return instantly to a known state at the touch of a button.  This is
definitely one of the best performance features on the Elektron
Machinedrum.  The idea is that at any time you can hit 'snapshot' to
save the current state of the sequencer to a buffer, then tweak things
into chaos, then hit 'undo' and go straight back to the state that was
saved in the 'snapshot' buffer.  You could even have a stack of
buffers that you could go back through by hitting 'undo' multiple
times, but that might start getting confusing.
- have a look at Digidesign's "Strike".  This has one killer feature
in the sequencer, and that is the ability to assign a trigger
threshold to each step in the sequence.  This basically allows you to
control the complexity of the sequence parametrically (i.e. you turn
up a single "complexity" knob and additional user-programmed notes
start showing up in the loop, and if you turn it back down again, you
break down, parametrically, to just the base sequence).  You could
make this either deterministic (i.e. play note if and only if its
threshold is below the global "complexity" parameter), or
probabilistic (i.e. the threshold sets the probability that a given
note will trigger, and "complexity" is an offset that makes all notes
more or less likely trigger).  I prefer the deterministic version
myself...

On the analogue side:
- make trigger- and CV lines completely dissociated, like on real
analogue sequencers, so you can do legato effects that are not easily
implemented with MIDI.  In other words, don't just have a trigger
pulse for every MIDI Note On event: every step should have a CV
associated with it, and a separate line for specifying which steps
release trigger pulses.  You can do this on the Elektron Monomachine
with 'trigless trigs', but it's a bit of a hassle.  It's much better
if there is a dedicated track for CVs and a separate dedicated track
for triggers.
- please, please include an analogue clock out.  The more trigger and
CV outs the better :-)