Sim'n Tonic Forums

Couldn't find anything on this. Maybe because nobody cares...

The main knob on the Midronome has an 'accelerating' nature, which is fine I guess, considering the wide range of tempos to scroll trough. As a drummer, I got used to scroll through bpm-s on Roland modules which have a linear wheel, so this new feel is not precise enough (my setup is Midronome controlling the drum module and spd-sx), in live situation that gets cumbersome.

Maybe there could be some option to choose between different knob responses for different situations? For live gigging, even when playing a wide range of genres, there is rarely a need for tempos outside the 60-180 bpm, which does not require the knob to jump to extreme values as fast as it does now, so I guess the option to flatten the response would be very usefull.

Interesting! Yes that's correct, the knob will "accelerate" when you turn fast, so that to switch from 50 to 300 you do not need 250 clicks (the knob has 24 clicks per turn, that would be more than 10 turns!).

I actually spent a lot of time on this part of the code, to get the best feel when turning fast and keep the "per click" precision when turning slowly.

There could be a simple option to turn that feature off (as I understand this is what you want?), so that 1 click is 1 bpm change, never more.
But I thought you were changing the tempo from the app over USB anyways?

Simon

PS: Moved this topic to "Discussions & Debates" where it belongs

Simon wrote: ↑24 Jul 2023, 14:02 But I thought you were changing the tempo from the app over USB anyways?

Not to get into much unnecessary details about my gigging, there is always a possibility of going outside the BandHelper list, then turning the knob is the fastest way to set the new tempo. That happens pretty often (I already know most tempos by heart), so I use the jog wheel regularly. There are also times that I transition directly from song to song or have to change the tempo on the fly, so a good knob response is needed.

If there is an easy way to implement this, I would appreciate that. Setting the response to 2 clicks per beat would maybe be a third option for more robust action?

Edit: just realized, I haven't answered directly to the question if I suggest the option to turn off the acceleration... Yes, that's my idea, to have a linear response regardless of the speed the knob is turned at.

Simon wrote: ↑24 Jul 2023, 14:02 Interesting! Yes that's correct, the knob will "accelerate" when you turn fast, so that to switch from 50 to 300 you do not need 250 clicks (the knob has 24 clicks per turn, that would be more than 10 turns!).

I actually spent a lot of time on this part of the code, to get the best feel when turning fast and keep the "per click" precision when turning slowly.

There could be a simple option to turn that feature off (as I understand this is what you want?), so that 1 click is 1 bpm change, never more.
But I thought you were changing the tempo from the app over USB anyways?

Simon

PS: Moved this topic to "Discussions & Debates" where it belongs

Some hardware have a knob acceleration setting where you can increase or decrease or completely turn off (= linear) the knob acceleration. That would be ideal.

I do like the current acceleration though, although I do think it accelerates quite fast. But for tempo, I think it is perfect.

The issue for me is that, like pitch, tempo is fundamentally logarithmic. That is to say, the difference between quarter notes going from 60 to 61 bpm (a one bpm change) is like eighth notes going from 120 to 122 (two bpm change). The higher the BPM number, the more it needs to change to cause the same perceived change in tempo. You can see this on hardware metronomes, where at the lower end of the scale the numbers go up in twos (40-42-44) and at the high end they go up in eights (192-200-208).

So in an ideal world -- for me, anyway -- a given radial movement of the knob would change the tempo the same perceptual amount, not the same linear BPM amount. 30 to 400 bpm (or Hertz) is nearly four octaves, so it should take about 16 clicks to go from 30 to 31, 8 clicks to go from 60 to 61, 4 clicks to go from 120 to 121, 2 clicks to go from 240 to 241, and 1 click to go from 480 to 481 (if it went that high, and I wish it did!). Then we'd get equal granularity across the whole range, versus what we have now where at the top end the perceptual tempo changes are very fine and at the bottom end very coarse. This would, of course, require being able to set and display tenths of a BPM, at the lower (two-digit) end of the range at least.

And then the knob acceleration would sit on top of the this curve. (I agree that "knob acceleration amount" ought to be configurable all the way down to zero, as it is on most of the synths and control surfaces I've encountered that incorporate it.)

Having logarithmic taper like this would give me a feel on the knob that is a lot more in line with how it feels to conduct accelerandos and ritardandos with my hands or a baton.

While we're at it, I'd also love the ability to reverse the knob direction. For reasons I can't explain, clockwise rotation feels more to me like a "slow down" gesture than a "speed up" gesture.