Should I buy this?

Anyone has this?

http://www.musik-service.de/ProduX/Recording/Computer/Behringer_BCONTROL_ROTARY_BCR2000.htm

I have a RS7000 and a Korg Electribe AmkII, an old CS1x is my masterkeynoard. There are enough knobs but I like the idea to have the knobs all in front of me. The mixing with P5 will bring more fun with this bcr...I think I will order it. I'll drink 2 or 3 beer then it will be easier to throw my cash away :-)

I have one - it's pretty neat. I'm in the middle of putting together a set of templates for controlling PSYN. PSYN has a lot of controls, so it's actually going to take a couple of templates to get them all mapped onto the BCR. Currently my template will control the four oscillators and the two filters. Sometime this weekend, perhaps, I'll get onto the envelope generators and LFOs. When it's done, I'll post it to the P5 website.

The nice thing about the BCR is that you can (using MIDI remote control) control whatever you like in P5. The downside is that I haven't yet figured out a way to get any edits I make with the mouse echoed back to the BCR. This means that if you make a change to a control on the screen and then use the BCR to modify that parameter, then the control will immediately jump to the value given by the BCR, i.e. there is not a smooth transition between mouse-edits and BCR edits. (Of course, BCR edits do make the corresponding on-screen control move OK). If you can live with this, then you'll be happy with the unit.

Furthermore, if you check out the Yahoo universalcontrolsurface group, there are some people writing a control surface plug-in for Sonar and Home Studio that will permit full-duplex operation (i.e. mouse movement of on-screen controls do cause the BCR state to be updated) in those programs.

It would be nice for P5 v2 to allow control surface plug-ins. I suggest that we add that to the hoped-for features list.

ben

Yes, whitefalcon, you're right but:
I don't need this only for automation. Think of mixing, it's nice to have 8 ore more channels direct at my fingertips. Also I use Cubase SE, so with this amount of knobs I don't have to reconfigure the knobs all the time. I can work with the knobs I have but the bcr will bring some ergonomic to my desk...

Definitely both.

ORIGINAL: ucacjbs

The nice thing about the BCR is that you can (using MIDI remote control) control whatever you like in P5. The downside is that I haven't yet figured out a way to get any edits I make with the mouse echoed back to the BCR. This means that if you make a change to a control on the screen and then use the BCR to modify that parameter, then the control will immediately jump to the value given by the BCR, i.e. there is not a smooth transition between mouse-edits and BCR edits. (Of course, BCR edits do make the corresponding on-screen control move OK). If you can live with this, then you'll be happy with the unit.

Hey there Ben - I was thinking about picking one of these up for Sonar. There's not going to be any way to get your changes on the screen in P5 reflected back to the BCR, though, without midi output. Have you tried using the MIDI Out plug-in to send midi data back to the BCR2000? I'm just wondering how that'd work since I'd of course like to use this for P5, too.

ORIGINAL: blipp

Definitely both.

OK, your beer is here!

ORIGINAL: blipp

Cheers.

Cheers...and...order!

ORIGINAL: Kered

Hey there Ben - I was thinking about picking one of these up for Sonar. There's not going to be any way to get your changes on the screen in P5 reflected back to the BCR, though, without midi output. Have you tried using the MIDI Out plug-in to send midi data back to the BCR2000? I'm just wondering how that'd work since I'd of course like to use this for P5, too.

Hi Kered,

I tried a couple of things with the MIDI Out plug-in, but no joy yet. If I just made a track for the MIDI Out and drew in some MIDI controller automation, I could send that the to BCR and see it reflected in the LED movement, so at that kind of level it works. However, as a pass-through, I couldn't get anything going. As a stab in the dark I put a MIDI Out plug in the output bin of the PSYN that I was controlling with the BCR, but that didn't seem to do anything useful, although I didn't expect it to. I wasn't particularly methodical about any of this, so it probably bears a second look.

ben

Opted for z3ta+ instead....

How's that going, DA? I haven't heard you comment on the synth since the demo. Is it all that (and a bag of chips) for your uses? [You know that it is for mine.]

There's always room for more control. One of the keys to these control surfaces is utilizing the templates to set up multiple functionality for your workflow. A programming template, several synth-specific templates, one or more mixing templates; that sort of thing.

Before settling on the 01X, I seriously considered the BC(X) units: I liked the slider idea with the BCF, but you get more control with the rotary (BCR) version. The lack of bi-directional communication is definitely a downside, but from what I recall, there was an update that uses a Mackie emulation that helps out Sonar users.

Until Project5 moves from adolescence to include control surface support, the best that you can do is to save your remote assignments in track patches. You might want to try out the Jesse Jost Registry hack to augment the number of assignable controllers in Syn:Ops. I haven't hit the ceiling with that hack yet, but 16 assignables is a nice round figure, and it fits well in my dual-screen setup. I think that 30 controllers might be a practical limit, as I couldn't stretch Syn:Ops to see any more at 1280 X 1024 (actually, 2560 X 1024).

BTW: You can also hack the number of assignable FX controls in the Registry, as well. But I can see no practical application until you have the ability to resize only the Mix section in Project5. You may be able to add two more, for a total of 6 controls, but the bottom two will be partially blocked from view (although still accessible).

ORIGINAL: b rock

Before settling on the 01X, I seriously considered the BC(X) units: I liked the slider idea with the BCF, but you get more control with the rotary (BCR) version. The lack of bi-directional communication is definitely a downside, but from what I recall, there was an update that uses a Mackie emulation that helps out Sonar users.

Yup - the BCF has the Mackie emulation mode that permits the full bi-directional communication using Sonar/Home Studio's Mackie control surface plug-in, but not the BCR (at least not yet). I think my use of tense in my previous post obscured the fact that the plug-in available from the universalcontrolsurface (UCS) folks does currently support bi-directional comms under Sonar and Home Studio. Anyone who's interested should search the Sonar forum for BCF2000. There are some comments in the Sonar forum from poeple who said that they couldn't get the UCS control surface plugin to work with the BCR, but from what I've tried so far, I managed to set up a few tracks such that I could record pan, volume, mute, arm for record and solo from the BCR, and have the BCR displays update appropriately to any recorded automation or mouse clicks in Home Studio.

As far as my efforts to date on setting up the BCR for programming PSYN, I'll post (within a week or so, with luck) a set of BCR templates together with a PSYN track patch that is programmed to respond to them. Of course, I'll add a README to explain how to use it all.

ben

EDIT:

p.s. The UCS group can be found here.