Arturia Forums

Hardware Sequencers => BeatStep => General Discussion on BeatStep => Topic started by: Hazium on January 04, 2015, 06:40:00 pm

Title: I want to love this thing.... I really do
Post by: Hazium on January 04, 2015, 06:40:00 pm
I bought a beatstep on impulse last week to accompany my new barebones midi keyboard. The construction was solid, the dials were nice and clicky the way I like them, the pads felt nicer than my maschine, I was sold.  After a week with this product I see some huge problems.....

1. Transposing the pads +- 24 half steps is kinda useless for my purposes. All said and done this give me control of about 3 to 4 octaves in CNTRL mode. Why not the whole key range?
1a. Why not set transpose to move +- 16 half steps? This way people using drum rack or any modern drum machine can quickly have access to their next set of pads instead of having the turn the knob 16 steps to get to the new set.
2. Knob acceleration needs more user control. I noticed a huge difference between out of the box and the recent firmware update, but it still isn't where it needs to be. I want to be able to sweep through the range with about half a wrist twist and I'm sure all my DJ buddies out there agree with me on this.

I'm on the verge of returning this for a novation product.....
Title: Re: I want to love this thing.... I really do
Post by: tracelistener on January 07, 2015, 08:59:37 pm
I want to love the beatstep too.  Aesthetically pleasing yet useless for what I want.  I can only get a 4 octave CV range at max (ie 0V to 4V or 1V to 5V).  This limits my intended use for CV since a lot of expression inputs are designed for 0V to 5V.  Also, I want to be able to sequence midi program changes not just midi notes.  I understand the beatstep is only $100 but some simple firmware updates could unlock more of its potential. 
Title: Re: I want to love this thing.... I really do
Post by: dmitriyK on January 10, 2015, 11:46:16 pm
A few small glitches that can be easily fixed, I'm sure.

Firmware 1.1: Pads retriggering here and there in CTRL mode when hit (resulting in double notes playing);

Plus, encoders should have some lower resolution option, so only a few encoder «clicks» would result in a controller send. I've bought Beatstep to have precise control over ableton drumrack and I need an ability to go to the next controller value (+1) with something more that a slight rotation, since «no acceleration» mode works good but not good enoudgh, sometimes skips one value or gets to next and immediately back. This is due to physical nature of the encoder with detents, so a software fix would be fine.

Until then… will try to love it :)
Title: Re: I want to love this thing.... I really do
Post by: DSRobin on January 13, 2015, 09:09:09 am
I completely agree.

I bought this product last weekend and after figuring out the device I struggle with a few disappointments.

The idea is to have this product working with ableton. But, when I use this with a drumrack in ableton, the rotary encoders in sequence mode are not very useful as it is hard to turn the knob with the note in the drumrack you want, the accularation is way to fast. This could help me in order to have a more flexible step sequencer with multiple midi notes.

As that is not an option I wanted to disable the knobs from transposing the drumrack, but I can't figuring out how to NOT send any midi note changes.

So, here I'm again struggling to get my idea worked out.
Title: Re: I want to love this thing.... I really do
Post by: WattSekunde on January 30, 2015, 10:15:52 pm
Have it some days and I am not very amused, too!  >:(  I think if Arturia don't update some of the biggest wanted features from this forum someone should hack this thing and build a custom open source firmware. Maybe Arturia should give the firmware to the open source scene if they don't want to update it in the future. With a user driven development this little hardware could be a real burner. ???