Motorized knobs. Gimmick or Game Changer?

[happyrat1]

 

[DungBeatle]

I would love it, but specs say it takes 8 amps! I can't afford it.
~Bob

 

[delaware dave]

Dexibell J7 has motorized faders, as you switch programs the faders move to let you kmow where they are positioned for that program. Meh ..... the Kurzweil Forte put light ladders on each slider that essentially give you the same info without another motorized failure point

 

[amwilburn]

Motorized faders: absolutely! Motorized knobs: well, sure, but you could porbably get around needing them at all with registrations (memory snapshots) and continuous knobs (that don't have a min/max point), which is a much cheaper (and less current draw) solution.

But for non continuous knobs (admittedly, especially for synths), that is pretty cool, yes

 

[Tahitijack]

The Fender Showman Amps used to have motorized knobs. Some of my band mates liked them...others gave it a 100,000 mile stare or eyes roll up to the ceiling. It's all personal preference for me.

 

[happyrat1]

Hydrasynth has an interesting approach. The mod matrix is a graphical pushbutton array which when selected register on one of 8 tiny secondary displays, each with a devoted knob and displayed parameter depending on the mode selected. Once you get used to the workflow the ease of selecting and modifying parameters is brilliant.

The sequential take 5 also has well thought out controls but tends more toward the "guess what I'm set at" category.

The controls are effective enough though, when compared to the Prophet Rev 2. Honest to god, too many parameters and too much disconnect trying to match up the knob with what shows up on the teeny display when you're looking to modify a sound. Even. though the workflow between the two is virtually identical, I simply find the available prophet parameters overwhelming.

The Deepmind though, has rapidly become my favorite parametric synthesizer. The cheezy little sliders tell you nothing but the slightest touch and they are lightning quick and howl like a flock of geese in a burning meth lab.

.

 

[anotherscott]

Dexibell J7 has motorized faders, as you switch programs the faders move to let you kmow where they are positioned for that program. Meh ..... the Kurzweil Forte put light ladders on each slider that essentially give you the same info without another motorized failure point

but for those who call up presets but then like to be able to manipulate the drawbars from their current sonic positions, motorized faders eliminate the "jump" vs. "catch"dilemma, all the faders are in the right place for immediate and smooth subsequent manipulation. LEDs don't solve that problem. (Of course, not everyone cares about doing that, but it's a nice feature.)

Motorized faders: absolutely! Motorized knobs: well, sure, but you could porbably get around needing them at all with registrations (memory snapshots) and continuous knobs (that don't have a min/max point), which is a much cheaper (and less current draw) solution.

That's why the Nord Lead 3 was my favorite dedicated synth, from a UI/ergonomic perspective. All front panel controls were either buttons with status lights, or endless knobs surrounded by a ring of LEDs similarly indicating their current position. All front panel settings always visible, and everything adjustable without surprises from its current sonic position.

 

[delaware dave]

but for those who call up presets but then like to be able to manipulate the drawbars from their current sonic positions, motorized faders eliminate the "jump" vs. "catch"dilemma, all the faders are in the right place for immediate and smooth subsequent manipulation. LEDs don't solve that problem. (Of course, not everyone cares about doing that, but it's a nice feature.)



That's why the Nord Lead 3 was my favorite dedicated synth, from a UI/ergonomic perspective. All front panel controls were either buttons with status lights, or endless knobs surrounded by a ring of LEDs similarly indicating their current position. All front panel settings always visible, and everything adjustable without surprises from its current sonic position.

Kurzweil has a "live" vs. Preset mode in KB3 mode, have you tried it?

 

[happyrat1]

Just about every synth with knobs or sliders has a choice between snap and absolute modes, or passthru or something similar.

 

[anotherscott]

Kurzweil has a "live" vs. Preset mode in KB3 mode, have you tried it?

Lots of boards have a way to make the sound instantly reflect the current drawbar positions. Not just Kurzweil, but also boards from Nord, Yamaha, Numa, Hammond, Viscount, at least. But what we're talking about here isn't about having the sound automatically match the drawbar positions, but rather, have the drawbar positions automatically match the sound. The benefit of this is that you can call up a preset, and if you want to tweak the drawbars in real-time from that recalled preset starting point, you don't have to worry about jump or catch.

For people who may be unfamiliar with this... Let's say you call up a drawbar preset of 888000000 (first three drawbars all the way out, and nothing else). Now you decide you'd like to bring in the sound of the fourth drawbar. Well, if your fourth drawbar is physically already at position 0 (whether by coincidence, or because you having moving drawbar controls), you're golden... just reach for that drawbar control and move it as far as you want, at whatever rate you want. But what if that drawbar were physically already at its full-out (8) position? Now, as soon as you nudge it, the value will disconcertingly jump from nothing to full-on. It's not sonically smooth, and it may even be jumping to a value you didn't even want (e.g. maybe you'd only wanted to pull it out halfway, and now you'll have to push it in to get it back down to the halfway point, making "wrong" sound in the process... no gradual bringing in of the new tone, instead a jump to a dramatically different tone that you now need to correct). That's the typical "jimp" mode.

On some boards, there is an alternate setting, a "catch" mode where moving the drawbar will do nothing until it first matches (or "catches up to") the currently recalled value. This prevents the audibly undesirable jumps in sound, but now, in order to make that 4th drawbar do what you want in the above example, you have to first move the 4th drawbar from all the way out (i.e. its current physical position) to all the way in (the stored value), before it will do anything. As awkward as this is, it's even more awkward if the stored value is not 0 or 8 but rather something in-between. For example, if the stored value is 888400000 and you want to bring that 4th drawbar value up from 4 to some higher value but your physical control is already at 8, you need to push that top drawbar in from its current position (8) only as far as its middle position (4)--if you push it too far, you'll actually be adjusting the sound in a way that is opposite to your intent--and then start moving it back out in the other direction. It's an awkward, unnatural operation, and it prevents you from e.g. grabbing a bunch of drawbars and manipulating them at once while getting the expected results--but at least the sound never disconcertingly jumps.

So those are two very imperfect solutions for a problem that goes away with moving drawbars which instantly go to their saved positions when you call up a new preset.

Of course, not everybody needs to manipulate the drawbars once they invoke a preset, and then none of this matters. And in fact, on a real tonewheel Hammond, you could not use the drawbars to manipulate a preset. If you wanted to use drawbars, you always had to put them in the mode where the drawbars were already synchronized with the sound. So any board with the kind "live" mode mentioned earlier can replicate this, particularly if they can invoke that function with a single button. But sometimes people like to tweak from their recalled presets, because they can. ;-) And also because it's so much more common for the sliders to be in an undesirable position to begin with, because, on many boards, the sliders serve multiple purposes. But I'll get back to that.

Though also, even though a real tonewheel organ doesn't allow you to manipulate its presets in real time, that organ does provide an alternate facility for being able to switch to a sound that already has drawbars in whatever position you want while also allowing you to continue to smoothly manipulate those drawbars from those recalled positions... each manual has a second set of drawbars which serves that purpose. Seen that way, moving sliders are largely a way to compensate for the fact that the boards don't have two sets of dedicated sliders to begin with.

Which brings me back to that other complication, and one that is not necessarily solved by moving faders... On many multi-function boards (including Kurzweil), the drawbar faders are also used for other purposes, which increases the odds that, if you switch from organ to some other sound and then want to switch back to organ, the sliders will be in some position that you don't want them to be in... e.g. switching to your "live" drawbars will not bring you right back to the organ sound you were previously using, because you moved the sliders for other reasons in the interim. This at least isn't a problem on the boards where the drawbar controls are independent of things like your zone volume controls, your synth controls, your effect controls... i.e. they are nothing but drawbar controls. (Obviously, on a real tonewheel organ, this isn't an issue, because the drawbars serve no other purpose that could result in your moving them out of position.)