need help with MIDI controller mod

[jimminy]

I put this in the wrong topic by mistake, so I'm reposting it here...sorry!

Hey,

I really want to mod this thing:

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7...ase_pid/701525/

The Evolution uc 16 controller

to have faders instead of knobs. Not a big job I think, but I was wondering if it would it be possible to use motor faders of one kind or another? I don't know how those thing really work, but I'm curious to know if this is even remotely possible. either motor faders, rotary encoders, or those cool linear encoder things...

The price is right though at 60 bucks, so I'll be getting one regardless, but seems like a good candidate for hacking to pieces in my spare time.

Thanks!

[leadbelly]

That link doesn't seem to work for non-account bearers, I guess.

What is it?

[jimminy]

Oh sorry about that!

It's a midi controller made by Evolution called the uc-16. I think it's just a basic usb port midi controller for controlling softsynths and the like. If you want to see it just go here:

www.musiciansfriend.com

and search for evolution, it'll pop up a couple products. actually, I just tried it and I had to go to a different evolution product and click on "view all evolution products' to find it.

[Marvellous]

Here is the correct link!

Curious Too!

[Optical]

Yeah ive had a bit of a play with some of these midi controllers
you should be able to just pull it apart and switch the pots for faders..
anything motorised you would have to do seperatly, so long as the resistance changes in teh same way everything should be good!
the pot is essentially a voltage divider feeding an ADC if that helps

[jimminy]

I can't decide whether I want to do the mod of the evolution, or build a midibox http://www.ucapps.de/ which would give me encoders instead of pots. cost is about the same, but midibox is way more work

see, I like to work on more than one song at a time, or really, a lot of different things in a session. So the idea of having to reset the faders every time I switch songs isn't very appealing. On the other hand, I've never used a controller for my DAW, so maybe it isn't as bad as I think. Using something with encoders would solve this, if I'm not mistaken.

Has anyone had a chance to work with both and can tell me if there's such a big difference? It would certainly be easier to just go buy this POS Evolution and maybe switch it out with faders in the future when I have some time.

Also, I presume motor faders require some feedback from the computer, so would be a totally different thing.

[peterpan73]

Hello everyone,

I have this idea in my head about building a really Cool Mix for stage use with 32 channels and motorised faders. NOw I am new to MIDI and my knowledge of MIDI and MIDI devices is sketchy.
Although I am more practical than theoretical I am looking for someone to help me build this mixer by feeding me tech info on two things.

1. The Mix I intend to build would employ motorised faders to change the mix for a certain scene in a song when I perform live.

2. This would of course involve changing the fader positions by the motor which I hope to control with a piece of hardware that would communicate with my PC(or notebook) either via LPT or serial.

3. As my tracks are MIDI, I would therefore like a software to read the MIDI files for the song I intend to perform and tell the hardware to move the faders for a certain channel or channels up or down depending on the MIDI scene programmed in the MIDI file.

This would eliminate the need of anyone around the mixer,like a soundman who being human could err in playing his instrument
well.

I am unaware of anything like this in the market for a live sound Mixer or even DIY. If its already there.. please let me know about it.. or even a software.

Patrick

[laserbeak]

Originally posted by jimminy
I can't decide whether I want to do the mod of the evolution, or build a midibox http://www.ucapps.de/ which would give me encoders instead of pots. cost is about the same, but midibox is way more work

see, I like to work on more than one song at a time, or really, a lot of different things in a session. So the idea of having to reset the faders every time I switch songs isn't very appealing. On the other hand, I've never used a controller for my DAW, so maybe it isn't as bad as I think. Using something with encoders would solve this, if I'm not mistaken.

Has anyone had a chance to work with both and can tell me if there's such a big difference? It would certainly be easier to just go buy this POS Evolution and maybe switch it out with faders in the future when I have some time.

Also, I presume motor faders require some feedback from the computer, so would be a totally different thing.

yeah i really want to do the ucapps stuff myself