undefined | Better HN

0 pointsvunderba3mo ago0 comments

Lol, you read my mind. I’ve been wanting a generic-looking, wood-grained “tablet display” covered with a dozen PHYSICAL faders, sliders, and knobs that you can leave permanently hooked up to a DAW that interfaces with virtual synths for over a decade now!

When you switch to a different VST, the hardware’s display would dynamically update all the text around each dial and button to match the corresponding virtual control.

Slightly related, there was a programmable guitar pedal based on the Pi Zero called the Pedal-Pi a little while back that might interest you:

https://www.electrosmash.com/pedal-pi

0 comments

PaulDavisThe1st3mo ago

> I’ve been wanting a generic-looking, wood-grained “tablet display” covered with a dozen PHYSICAL faders, sliders, and knobs that you can leave permanently hooked up to a DAW that interfaces with virtual synths for over a decade now!

https://faderfox.de/

Just one of several. These have existed for at least two decades, save for "dynamically update all the text around each dial", which has a variety of complications that I won't go into here.

vunderbaOP3mo ago

Yeah I should have clarified - I have plenty of generic MIDI controllers. The special sauce is reflecting the "VST" rendering/presentation of its own sliders/dials onto physical ones.

This means not having to look up and down constantly between your computer monitor and the physical hardware since the knobs/dials each have small screens/displays are 1:1 matches (so Frequency Range, Sub Audio, Clamping Point, Oscillator Frequency, etc).

VSTs are rather inscrutable and I think it would be difficult to design in an agnostic way that played nicely out-of-the box with the majority of them. Doesn't stop me from lusting over the possibility though.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse