I was going to wait until Jan to pick this up, but I saw one pop up used on Reverb today for well below market price and pounced. IDK if it comes with the PSU or not, so might be picking up a pedal power supply as well.
Anywho, I wanted a high end analog delay and this is pretty much the rolls royce right now. Only one I could find with stereo in, which I want to try with my Super 6. Should also be plenty of vibe for anything else I want to throw into here.
About a year ago my BCR2000 died, the MCU shorted and cascaded to some other components and it’s probably not repairable.
I had a love/hate relationship with the thing - it’s Behringer, it’s of questionable quality control and build (ie it’s Behringer), it’s chonky but cheap in a way that 20 year old hardware tends to be, it hasn’t had an update in ages… but at the same time it gave me ALL THE KNOBS with 14-bit precision and lots of customization to act like Ableton/Max/Cardinal were really just hardware and let me ‘play’ them.
My surprise is the niche hasn’t really been filled, at least at a similar price point. They teased a replacement BCR32 that looked nice but is apparently vaporware. I wonder if post-COVID pricing drove the cost too high for Big B or if they just got distracted stealing other people’s designs.
The obvious replacement (and what I ended up with for now) is the Novation Launch Control XL - 8 less rotary, 8 faders, $100 used and it feels like it - cheap and shitty and has some funky software limitations, but it gets the job done. I’d just like something with a bit more build quality and maybe a few more knobs.
From what I can find, after that you end up with a bunch of boutique options. Faderfox EC4 is 16 knobs for like $450. Velours Devices KARL is stunning but ~$2000 and I’m not sure you can actually purchase them. Yaeltex has a bunch of insanely cool options in the $800-$2000 range and will build you a custom one to your specs in exchange for the limb of your choice. They’re all very beautiful and sleek and probably feel great, but goddamn I just want a bunch of knobs without any bling that don’t fee like they’re coming apart when I twist them.
I’m starting to think I’m part of some secret club who’s looking for something like this. I guess everybody likes the button/grid things like the Push now? Or everyone will lose some knobs in lieu of keys? It’s like there’s just not enough market for this where a big company can Econ of Scale it to a reasonable price point. I guess quality and cheap don’t Venn diagram much but it’s disappointing there doesn’t seem to be anything in the middle.
Yeah, this is something I’ve heard people complaining about for it feels like the last 10 years, and the answer has continued to be to buy a used BCR2000.
If I were going to dabble in this market, I’d dabble at the high end and look around for Monome (not sure if they still make them or not) or the Melbourne Roto Control. Something along those lines. Not cheap, very overbuilt and probably both have functions I wouldn’t fully utilize, but those look like some of the best control surfaces around IMO.
the new XL 3 has 8 Custom Modes that you can set up and move between to effectively have more knobs, if not all at once. They’re endless encoders and you can change the colors of the LEDs to organize. The LED brightness tells you levels instead of a circular set. The screen tells you what MIDI CC is being sent if that matters. It has MIDI DIN out, too.
Frustratingly, to me, is that the transport buttons only work connected to a DAW with a controller script.
higher end is these guys,they magnetic lock together however you want:
They’re like $400+ used now. I ain’t going down that road for decades old tech that honestly wasn’t that special except it was the only game in town.
Only rotary from Monome I know of is the Arc, which is only four knobs (really, really nice knobs) and is $1100. It’s cool, it’s art, but not what I’m looking for. Roto Control is likewise in a direction I’m not interested in - $500 for 8 knobs and a bunch of buttons and stuff I don’t need. Does look nicely built, though
Yeah, I looked at the XL 3. It’s slightly shinier than my crappy original, but I’m not convinced of the build quality in the long term (though I haven’t put hands on one). It’s definitely closer to what I’m looking for, just don’t really need the faders and would love an extra row of knobs. The endless encoders are a nice bonus for sure.
That is really stinkin’ cool. 16 knobs in that form factor, price point and expandable…damn. Definitely going to dig into the details on those, might be just what I’m wanting. Thanks for the heads up.
In another direction, I came across this - totally not what I need and it’s bordering on ridiculous, but also really damn cool and about half the cost I expected.
I have the XL 3 and it’s good quality, imo. I traded in a Livid DS1 which took up a lot of space not quite as refined, and the “colored” LEDs were courtesy of some plastic discs that didn’t fit right.
I forgot about this thing XD Its too busy for me personally.
I came across this, but for the price you could get two of those Intech modules
Or if you want to nerd it up (Arduino DIY)
That’s good to know. I actually don’t dislike the original despite my dumping on it. It’s obviously a budget piece of gear but for what I paid second-hand it’s really been nice to use. I’d be interested in the XL3, and may still be, if I hadn’t come across all this other stuff.
That N32B maybe the closest thing to what I had in mind as far as function, form and price. It looks like a legit successor to the BCR2k. I need to dig into the differences between it and the
This is something I’ve considered. I have several prototyped MIDI controllers in various states of disrepair (I keep scavenging things for the next project). I just keep getting scope creep, like if I use a RaspPi instead of an Arduino I can add LCD(s) and maybe a MIDI-to-CV unit and multi-mode to swap between presets, and do I actually need any of that shit or am I just spinning my wheels. I dunno, I should probably just buy something and get on with the music lol
Pi would take 20-30 seconds to boot or more depending on the Pi. Microcontrollers are way faster, but many just lack in power to drive high-res displauys. 320x240 is about the biggest to go from what I can tell unless you have something like an ESP32, Teensy, Seed, etc. AdaFruit actually sells a ESP32 board designed to drive many of their LCDs with just a ribbon cable to plug in; microcontrollers can talk to each other over serial connections like UART.
Don’t ask beyond that, I’ve only just begun and read a lot lol.
Generally a good idea lol. I overthink a LOT
unrelated, someone upscaled the OP-1’s “tape” to 8 stereo tracks, and it’s $1500 EUR (oof)
I dug into specs for the N32B and Intech Grid, and wow, night and day difference. The biggest is that the N32B are analog pots, not rotary encoders. That makes the $350 price tag a bit of a concern for me, because as far as I can tell it’s an Arduino Micro, two 16-channel multiplexers, a simple little display, the (admittedly nicely designed) PCB and the case. It’s maybe $50 in parts (most of which are the pots) and could be thrown together with not much effort using pre-built libraries. Like if you were going to design a simple MIDI controller with 32 knobs as a learning project, you’d probably end up with something very similar to the N32B.
It seems to have started as an open source project where they just sold DIY kits. They have a pretty good github, though it’s several years old and entirely possible they’ve made some major advances since they went closed source, but it doesn’t read like it. I won’t begrudge them the price because it looks well built and designed, I’m just not going to pay it when I could make it.
The Intech on the other hand is rotary encoders. It is considerably more work to get 16 of those packaged up and working nicely since you can’t just throw that many digital things at your standard dev board due to GPIO limitations, and you can’t easily mux them like analog due to interrupt/polling issues. Usually the fix for that is using little monitoring sub-MCs that do the readings and report back to an MCU like an STM32/ESP32 via SPI, but man that’s not even in the ballpark of “plug a bunch of shit into an Arduino”. Assuming encoders are a must (and I’m not sure they are for me), I’d say the Grid is a great value.
I actually wondered about the difference between using pots vs encoders and how many pins would be needed. I’ve also been thinking about using “sub boards” that talk to each other since many of these things are just really cheap. Heck I have an Arduino Mega clone laying around, too, lots of IO there, but a lot of these boards are $5-10 roughly. I’d think using one microcontroller per 8-10 encoder bank wouldn’t be too terrible to manage but I’m not an expert.
That said I have an AdaFruit Trellis set up that can address 128 different buttons with LEDs ran by an Arduino Leonardo. I never did fully assemble the thing lol, soldering the Trellis’ together was a pita because they wanted me to just bridge solder pads across each PCB. Maybe some day I’ll redo it, but they’ve updated the Trellis to RGB now.
forgot about the Soundforce SFC-5, it’s a knobby controller for Prophet 5-based plugins
I THINK it can be programmed for any CCs, but out of the box is meant for Uhe Prophet or Arturia. You can always map it to your plugins via DAW.
The Akai MIDIMix is half the price of the new Launch Control XL3, but pots vs encoders and still has faders
This guy will make a custom controller with up to 32 analog controls but I bet it ain’t cheap
https://www.etsy.com/listing/4316060856/custom-midi-controller-faders-buttons
Apparently the Modal SKULPT’s encoders send MIDI CC:
From the manual:
All of the encoders on SKULPTsynth SE output MIDI messages (The appropriate CC message
depending on the SHIFT state) This allows Skulpt to be used as a fully functional plug and play
MIDI controller!
But that’s only 14 knobs and maybe 28 with shift?
Oh.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1574294616/midi-controller-bb-xl-8-led-arcade
and this DIY thing that supports 32 encoders and/or 32 analog inputs
I found my old Axoloti boards. Basically an Arduino with a PD/Max-like patcher, built in I/O and MIDI jacks, USB, on the PCB, etc. The project kinda died off but the guy open sourced it when he left it and another guy took up the mantle with the Ksoloti and its software will even talk to my old boards 
The Ksoloti board has more pins and is smaller with USB C
Apparently Oxi just released this
I love mine. I’ve had it since the first run and put a lot of miles on it. It’s a great little ecosystem and was sad to see it fall apart. I’ve followed the Ksoloti off and on and am happy Johannes had the presence of mind to open source it when he quit and that someone picked it up. Gills is like half the cost of what I paid for the original Axoloti (but I ain’t mad, got plenty for my money) so I’ll likely pick one up at some point as an extra/backup. It’s just such a fun piece of kit for the cost I’d hate to be without it.
last night I printed a platform to mount an Axoloti and some breadboards for prototyping.
It warped a lil bit at one corner 
and the breadboard area was sized for AdaFruit’s “proto perma breadboard” which is not an actual breadboard -_- it’s just a PCB with a lot of holes
so either way I am redoing that platform XD
it’d cost me almost $120 to get a Ksoloti and it basically has nothing my Axoloti doesn’t other than more space for storing a patch and USB C (as far as I know).
I had to revisit what I was looking at after you posted. I saw ~$60 shipped for the populated PCB, which is about half of what I initially paid. Just needs some jacks and headers which I have plenty of. Digging a little deeper, it’s out of stock pretty much everywhere but Thonk, and after VAT, shipping and conversion it’s like $110. That’s honestly steeper than I’m probably willing to pay.
It’s an awesome piece of kit, even better if you’re already familiar and using the ecosystem, but I think it’s also been overtaken by other offerings in the DIY space. I’d be tempted to throw money at a Norns Shield XL (which I’ve been eyeing anyway), an Organelle, Zynthian Pi, or just a RaspPi with an audio shield that I can throw Max RNBO stuff at. I feel like all those have better developed ecosystems and loads of free shit to play with compared to the Axoloti at $120.
Polyend is selling Play+ for 20% off atm - use code Play20
Yeah I’m not willing to shell it out just for USB C and more storage for a patch. The processor is still a 32-bit 168MHz ARM. ESP32 @ 200MHz, Teensy @ 600MHz, Daisy Seed @ 400Mhz iirc, all with more flash and RAM. I ran a “super saw” factory patch on at 6 voices it was 92% CPU use. Pushing it to 8 was just about 100% and there was nothing else, no EGs, no LFOs, no filters…
And I have four Axoloti around somewhere lol. I went all-in back then with Big Plans 
Between those and other stuff, I just can’t bring myself to go in on a Ksoloti board for the prices it’d cost now.
I have some ESP32s and a Teensy 4.1 to get on with, now, anyway. I finally got the VS Code pioarduino IDE set up. I guess it’s time to get my learn on.
It doesn’t happen all that often anymore, at least for prepackaged musical equipment, but man, I got the GAS. This thing keeps popping up everywhere I look and I just love the sounds people get from it. It looks like a ton of fun. It does a bunch of things and all of it’s weird.
It appeals to me the same way Soma Labs stuff does - one person’s unique vision of what a piece of gear should do. It doesn’t try to recreate the wheel, it doesn’t crib off all the standard things, it’s opinionated in the extreme and pretty out there.
As far as I can tell, it’s a couple of wavetables doing inappropriate things to each other with a funky reverb/delay in the mix. Kinda wondering if I could recreate it in something like Phaseplant. On the other hand, somebody already went to the trouble, just don’t know if it’s $600 worth of trouble…
seriously?!
Yeah, it’s crazy. Looks like there’s current one on offer on Reverb for $450, and a couple on eBay for $450+ if you don’t mind it shipping from Japan.
I think they had a resurgence with the Zaquencer firmware (Benn Jordan did a video on it years ago and single-handedly managed to Hainbach used market). I think at this point it’s a useful curiosity that’s well past it’s end-of-life and there just aren’t that many functioning ones out there, or they’re in the hands of people using them. Supply and demand shit, but it’s pretty insane to think people would pay those sort of prices for Behringer crap lol
fact of the matter is there aren’t many “kirnsumer level” rotary centric controllers. and i mean, with more than 12/16. $400. that’s nuts. i bought mine for (i think?) $150 back in 2008. sold it for $200. the world is weird.
rotary knobs (parts) are like five bucks. how hard would it be to just solder our own? this is assuming time doesn’t exist and we all know how to do this easily without fucking it up.
i’d love to have a dedicated rotary for controls. i really dislike the Push2 at this point, it’s kind of trash. i actually liked my BCR but it didn’t travel well. i’m not known for being kind to my hardware but when i was doing the summer festival circuit i packed all of my gear quite meticulously and at some point it stopped BCR-ing very well. i don’t wanna talk hella shit about the company but they aren’t known for using quality parts. i’m not sure if anyone knew that 
and no i didn’t take it to Burning Man. we all know that’s where gear goes to die.
