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Looper's Delight
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Hi guys, I'm just into replacing my five year old generation one MIDI mixer with the new third generation mixer from German Faderfox, The LV3, and as I just got my brain wrapped around this little cutie I thought I could write up here for those that might be interested. http://www.faderfox.de/ Small, light but sturdy and all powered by USB this is a dream controller - in some aspects. It only sends CC#, the continuous data that perfectly matches controlling seamlessly sweeping parameters. 4 rotary pots with a light led, one rotary pot with no led, 8 faders, 2 X/Y joysticks and three rows of 8 buttons each plus five more buttons. That's what you see, but there is more on the inside because "track selection" buttons change the output of the 4 upper rotary pots to send four different CC#s for each track. There are 3 effect buttons that also offer unique CC#s for the four upper rotary knobs, so you reach a lot with quite few buttons thanks to this smart design. The two push buttons down by the joysticks have green leds to indicate on/off status. But the 8 vertical faders never change their output, which makes them perfect for parameters like "track level" that you may want to always have handy no matter what else you are fiddling with for the moment. Same goes for the two joysticks, but there is a two second process to call up one of five optional CC# setups for the two joysticks (and a digital number display that tells you what preset is loaded for the joysticks). All five rotary pots also send a certain CC# value when pushed. The four top row rotary pots send value 127 when pushed the first time and value 0 when pushed a second time. Between these pushes you may hit one of the eight track selection buttons to use the very same rotary knob to send another CC#, for a completely different task, but when you get back again by pushing the original track selection button this rotary knob's led goes red to indicate that it sent the value 127 and thus will follow up with the value 0 if pushed now. Genius design, isn't it! Have read this you might understand that pushing the four top row rotary buttons is perfect for setting parameters into some kind of mode that is "on" or "off". Or if using a host like Mainstage, that offers scaling of incoming MIDI control, you may define two exact values for the targeted software parameter to toggle between (not having to stick with the "0" and "127" that the LV3 is actually sending). On thing that is different compared to the two earlier versions of the LV is that now you don't get any MIDI Notes sent out. I found that some of the buttons that send out only the CC# value 127 (not alternating between 0 and 127) actually can trigger some functions and scripts in Mobius. Not all though and I suspect this is a murky Mobius area that might get improved. As said, Mainstage can handle any CC# value in the traditional "MIDI note style" manner to target whatever on/off function there might be in the software. The LV3 has also dropped the option to push a button and reassign the eight vertical faders to send over eight other CC# channels (like controlling track 1-8 and push a button to control track 9-16 by the same physical faders). I don't miss this because having reassignable faders used to confuse me and I never used that feature in the LV1. If using Ableton Live there is a template you can load into Live and achieve native support for the LV3. Then the LV3 also doubles up as a tool for navigating around Lives spreadsheet-like mixer view screen. The four top row rotary knobs can be programmed to for absolute mode or incremental, and some more options, but I run the LV3 in its default setup and perform data scaling in Mainstage when needed. Greetings from Sweden Per Boysen www.boysen.se www.perboysen.com www.looproom.com internet music hub