Endless encoders

Lab KeyLab Essential
#1

Hello all. I have recently bought KL Mk 3 61 keyboard and I am pretty satisfied with it. Everything works great with Ableton Live 12 and it is very convenient except the endless encoders. When the keyboard is in “DAW program” and I select effect (or change track) in Ableton, I would expect that Ableton send current values of knobs of selected effect to keyboard, so it prevents any values from jumping and all values of encoders would correspond to values on effect. However instead of that when I reach the encoder the value in Ableton jumps.

All my drivers and softare are up to date. I have already tried to switch “Takeover mode” to “Value Scaling” or “Pickup” but that is definetly not the best way. Maybe I am wrong but rotary encoders can hadle this much better, so I thought maybe I’ve done something wrong.

I also tried to create user program and change the mode of encoders to relative but then I can’t see any information on display. The encoders works correctly only in Analog lab.

Please, does anymone have similar issue? I have gone through some forums and I found similar issue here, however different keyboard:

Minilab MK3 relative mode - Ableton - still not working - Lab / MiniLab - The Sound Explorers Community (arturia.com)

So it is maybe something with relative/absolute setup and the midi remote script in Ableton but I am quite new to midi keyboards and I am not capable of applying this fix to mk3 61.

2 Likes
#2

Same problem here. I am expecting developers to support relative controlling in DAW mode. Otherwise, endless encoders are even worse than normal encoders.

1 Like
#3

Coming back on this topic… Any update on this issue : indeed it’s even worse as soon as you touch a rotary it’s jumping far away when the previous patch was with a strong different value. Also tried to find the parameters in “user mode” but nothing

#4

Welcome to the community @letCOSTE and @phbardyn.

Hi all.

Keep in mind that both the sending and the receiving parts need to be set to use relative mode to work as such. Pickup settings are normally used for absolute controls.

Be sure your controller is set up correct.

I suggest you ask questions about using relative controls in your DAW in forums for your DAW and contact Support for your DAW.

You can always contact Arturia support through your account.

#5

It’s kind of funny, i had the same issue with an AKAI MPK mini controller: the device comes with endless encoders, but to make them work as expected you have to mess around with Ableton user scripts and what not.

With a device like the KLE this issue is even more irritating as you have to sacrifice all the nice parts of the DAW-integration (esp. track & parameter names on the display) if you opt for a “user program” just to get encoders sending relative values.

Please correct me if i’m wrong on that – i am really thankful for any good solution. I really just want to use my endless encoders as they are meant to be used: picking up values wherever they are, not worrying in cases where they are being automated in the DAW, etc.

@LBH, may i ask why it is such a big deal to have endless encoders work as you expect them to work in Ableton? Why isn’t that functionality provided by default in 2024/25, neither by AKAI nor by Arturia? I am seriously interested in the explanation, as I am inclined to think there must be one.

And most importantly: will there be a firmware update that tackles these issues?

All the best from Austria!

#6

I’m not an Arturia employee. I’m a user like you. I’m just also an external moderator.

As far as i know, then the endless encoders in Keylab Essentiel are working. They can be set to work in 3 differnt Relative modes and in Absolute mode.
I’m just saying that the receiving part also have to be set to or detect a matching mode to work.

I have no idea, if there may excist issues.
I know nothing about how Ableton Live work with Relative controls. I don’t use Live. That’s why i suggested to contact someone who may know about it.

Cheers

#7

First reply or activity in the forum, in fact, I joined just to make this reply, in case you haven’t found an answer yet. What I would suggest is first eliminating Ableton’s own midi-remote scripts for your controller(s) as the culprit, or confirming that they are, indeed, one of the problems. You can do this by checking the “uncompiled” byte code for your particular controller, and see how they called the encoder method. If they called it with absolute as an argument, then you have a smoking gun. follow the following steps and resources to see about fixing the issue.

The first link is older, but gives you what you need to know about to get a handle on things but also a nice overview, and specifics, tho it’s Mac only.

The 2nd link is the indirect evolution of the 1st - and then some!!! These guys are an amazing resource to have access to.

Building on that, if you need any API object/method/property reference, they also give you documentation.
That particular link is already drilled down to the Framework object and all of its methods, including the Encoder method, its arguments, etc.

You can go “up” to the base level, though and see Live 11’s (also currently Live 12’s) unofficial API documentation.

The nice thing, is that the guy in the first link pretty much sums up what needs to be done, so you would have to just use the “configuration.txt” file you will read about, and make sure it’s in your user library as they describe, so that future versions of Live won’t overwrite your custom midi-remote-script with the Absolute turned off in the byte-code that Live uses for your controller.

I have an MPK49 - the original one way back, which started me on this search in the first place. Good luck, and if you have success, come back and share it with us.
Cheers!
-dt