later's Recent Posts
Ha! I'll make room for it whatever size it ends up being.
@rsdio, that's a good question. What were your thoughts on how the touches would be allocated? If I had four touches and four midi outputs, would each output send out all the voices or would it be possible to allocate individual touches to individual outputs? Regardless of the answer, I imagine I'd be less inclined to use MIDI in.
I do think that having a USB MIDI out would be desirable for a lot of folks, but all of my desktop synths and outboard gear is DIN only, so having both options would be ideal if possible.
Happy to see all the progress on this since I last visited the forum!
I tend to agree with Kirr that a two-touch base module with 4hp expanders feels like the most straightforward solution. Another example of this would be the recent expanders made for Monome's Teletype (panels made by MPC: https://www.mpofcinci.com/metal-panels). It would also offer the (admittedly minor) benefit of allowing people some flexibility in how the cv outs are laid out in a case.
If it's at all helpful in terms of user surveys, I'd be interested in 4 touches and a MIDI expander, however that comes about.
Keep up the good work!
On a different topic, I was thinking about a name for the module again today and thought it might be nice if it was in keeping with the Finnish/water theme of Aalto and Kaivo.
The only word I know that fits is Pato, for dam. Any Finnish speakers on here that have any suggestions?
"zone maps and presets are created on a computer before a performance, downloaded into the module, and then the module could only call up presets without the ability to edit them"
That's exactly what I was imagining, I just wasn't able to express it properly. I personally don't feel that that is too minimal. The ability to just switch between between presets or zone maps on the module is more than enough in my opinion.
Feedback from people who have already experimented with Soundplane and CV/MIDI would be great, I agree. When I try to imagine use cases for the module I feel as though LED feedback for the gates would be sufficient, but obviously there may be some out there with experience who would say otherwise. That kind of input could only help.
Focusing on tightly coupled CV with the addition of MIDI support sounds great.
I'm still of the mindset that keeping the feature set to a minimum is the way to go, for practical, musical and aesthetic reasons. I'm also in the no display camp – I think it's easy enough to represent information about zone maps or presets with only knobs, and I'm not sure that endless encoders and OLED displays really adds that much value to the module.
As far as width goes, obviously as small as possible without being cramped or difficult to navigate. Something in the neighbourhood of 16-20hp as a maximum seems reasonable to me...
I'm very excited to hear this as well. I don't (yet) have a SoundPlane (hopefully we will see another run this year, to coincide with the release of the module?), but I do have a little eurorack setup and it would be great to have a direct connection.
In terms of layout I would prefer vertical voice groups to keep the width of the module to a minimum, and I think that having two voices is sufficient (with an option for expansion).
I personally am far more in favor of CV with tight SoundPlane integration and higher resolution data over a MIDI/general purpose design. As several people in this thread have mentioned, there are already a lot of options for general purpose MIDI interfaces and CV to MIDI.
If I had one trivial wish I'd like to see the jacks used on the latest Expert Sleepers modules (assuming they're not proprietary). Besides looking nice IMHO, I find the visual indication of voltages quite handy.