MATRIXSYNTH: Monodeck II MIDI Controller


Thursday, August 10, 2006

Monodeck II MIDI Controller

Ableton co-founder and software architect, Robert Henke's new custom MIDI contoller.

"All 96 LEDs are full RGB and can display several colors, allowing to assign multiple functions to the buttons. I plan to put up more in detail informations about its structure and the implementation or a video clip of it once it is fully functionable. The first concerts with it are planned for fall 2006."

Damn. via Analog Industries.

10 comments:

  1. Your "software architect Robert Henke" actually wasn't even able(ton ha!) to modify the Midibox-Firmware to address multicolour-leds:
    Quote: "For addressing Monodeck II`s over 100 RGB LEDs Ralf Suckow designed a special hardware / firmware modification for the DOUT / core modules"

    Don't believe the hype.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I don't know mcu about Robert Henke but...

    Be careful. Architects don't build houses, they make the plans for the houses.

    Maybe this guy is very good at other software things.

    Maybe he was too busy with other things and preferred to pay someone to do the work.

    Maybe you're right.

    Maybe it's something else.

    Maybe.

    ReplyDelete
  3. dude needs to mass produce these things

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yep, from my experience Software Architects are usually very high level, but usually are very technically deep. They make the calls on how to approach the design and layout of sofware - they figure out how to put the pieces together in the most efficient manner. The Atlantic Waves project is exactly where this is needed in order to get it right.

    It's also worth noting the software spectrum is HUGE. Experts in one area can be clueless in others. There's more than one programming language out there folks.

    And for the record, he's not "our software architect" unless of course you work for Ableton.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I still don't buy it:

    First you can't "figure out how to put the pieces together", if you just don't know about the pieces to begin with, i.e. you can't tell a programmer how to write his program, if you don't know about the (bigger) structures / "modules" of his programming language.
    That being said programming (and even more so software architecture) is actually _not_ about knowing one specific programming language or some or many (maybe even any) thereof: http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html
    Quote from the preface to the first edition:
    "Our design of this introductory computer-science subject reflects two major concerns. First, we want to establish the idea that a computer language is not just a way of getting a computer to perform operations but rather that it is a novel formal medium for expressing ideas about methodology. Thus, programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute. Second, we believe that the essential material to be addressed by a subject at this level is not the syntax of particular programming-language constructs, nor clever algorithms for computing particular functions efficiently, nor even the mathematical analysis of algorithms and the foundations of computing, but rather the techniques used to control the intellectual complexity of large software systems."
    (There's even webcasts of the course about this subject available online: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/courses/
    Highly recommended to anybody interested in that topic!)

    So I very _very_ much doubt that here "Experts in one area can be clueless in others". They won't know anything about the very fundamentals if they are; not much of an expert then, are they?

    And last not least: As _you_ referred to him as such (he himself didn't), Robert Henke is very much "your" software architect.
    =_0
    (No hard feelings though, nice blog :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. All I'm saying is:
    Others have built midiboxes (sometimes more impressive) too (See the "MIDIbox of the Week"-thread in this forum: http://forum.midibox.org/ ), but none of them stands as if they invented the goddam thing (though a great deal of them actually were able(ton haha!) to modify the firmware to their needs themselves!)
    Though admittedly in this case it's a subtle one, I just don't like pretention.

    ReplyDelete
  7. re: anonymous
    RGB led drivers for 100+ LEDs requires specialized hardware to do the color mixing. The midibox does not have the bandwidth as designed. Period.

    Rob is quite the accomplished hardware & software engineer, as well as being an amazing musician.

    ReplyDelete
  8. ilblbbisWether Mr. Henke can solder, has a widerspread expertise in all keyareas of coding, building software, hardware,bla whatever... - who really gives give a fuck?
    sure is with Abvleton Live he designed one of the most innovative and flexible audioapplication imho , founded a company out of his vision and makes great music too. So he is at least my man
    and the architect of my chosen hostapplication, that brought the fun back into my humble efforts
    of creating electronic music.
    Has reduced my "editing downtime" by factor 100 and encourages you actually to make music rather than
    burning your crerative flow in the various edito windows of the more conventional sequencers.

    So, i can't thx this dude enough
    for creating a software that prevented me from selling all my stuff after 10 years of fruitsless
    noodleling with my machines.

    Big shouts to Robert and i would
    defintely consider buying a controller build by Mr. Live himself.

    For the time being i'm using the
    not so known Hades VMC-207 (spanish manufacturer)as a Live Controller, which works pretty nice.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Sad to see someone feels the need to dis Robert Henke. He's the don. AFAIK he wrote all the internal effects in Live. He referred to them as his "babies" during a lecture I heard him give a few months back. :)I saw him play out with what I think was the Monodeck I and he totally rocked it.

    Anyone involved in producing such an innovative piece of software as Live is pretty much above criticism in my book.

    ReplyDelete
  10. re anonymous:
    that was quite a load of crap you wrote. Nice try in attempting to appear as a thinking person. (and speaking as both a sw architecht and a developer, your long quote from the irrelevant book, was utter bs.)

    ReplyDelete

To reduce spam, comments for posts older than one week are not displayed until approved, usually same day. Do not insult people. For items for sale, do not ask if it is still available. Check the auction link and search for the item. Auctions are from various sellers and expire over time. Posts remain for the pics and historical purposes. This site is meant to be a daily snapshot of some of what was out there in the world of synths.

PREVIOUS PAGE NEXT PAGE HOME


Patch n Tweak
Switched On Make Synthesizer Evolution Vintage Synthesizers Creating Sound Fundlementals of Synthesizer Programming Kraftwerk

© Matrixsynth - All posts are presented here for informative, historical and educative purposes as applicable within fair use.
MATRIXSYNTH is supported by affiliate links that use cookies to track clickthroughs and sales. See the privacy policy for details.
MATRIXSYNTH - EVERYTHING SYNTH