That is such a shame to hear all your frustration with this and is also quite disheartening as I had seen some of your concerns with all this on this forum back in September before the new 2.0 update in Jan. I was, perhaps naievly, hopeful that responses to my post would tell me that all these issues had been ironed out in the new firmware. TBH I don’t mind being limited to banks of 8 fader controls but there being no kind of 2 way communication to the controller is just a bit rubbish.
Midi control implementation and the stand alone mixing functionality are clearly important features in how Arturia is marketing this product (and like many here a big reason why I bought this device over the competition.) The control software clearly also highlights that Midi control (including over USB) is a key feature being offered.
@Tim.Arturia Surly this must be something Arturia is working to resolve? Is there a technical reason why this is complex? I am no programmer but it seems to me that an option to have current state cc’s for the bank being changed to sent to the controller when bank + or - command is received would solve a lot of issues? In addition a setting to also show on the screen of the 16rig itself the active midi bank being controlled would solve lots more.
Re-reading my previous message, I realize the tone is very negative. It’s a good device, but it’s just not usable currently as a live/standalone mixer. My irritation is caused by the fact that they’ve come so very close to having a GREAT product and it wouldn’t require much in terms of effort to make it great.
I don’t understand it to be honest. I own a bunch of Arturia devices (I pounced on the 16Rig because I loved and still love my other purchases from them). I’m starting to get suspicious that it’s deliberate on the part Arturia to hobble or limit decent 3rd party MIDI control - maybe to force use of their software. None of their devices come with MIDI implementation charts which even those toy $100 Volcas provide. They don’t mind selling zillions of keysteps to control other hardware but seemingly don’t want their devices to be controlled by non-Arturia stuff. Maybe I’m paranoid but I just cannot understand their behavior here.
I wouldn’t mind that approach if they had their own midi fader type controller in development that they wanted to ‘encourage’ us to use that due to the greater integration.
Better still for my usage would be an Arturia mackie style motorised DAW control surface that was also a mixer controller for the 16rig in standalone (ahhhh… pipe dreams…)
I understand that it is hard for them to be supportive of or work with other control surface manufacturers as most of these are a direct competitor in at least one market in which Arturia sells products but, in truth, they rely for a lot of their business on other companies not being gatekeepers in the way you describe to enable a lot of Arturia’s hardware controllers and software instruments to work properly.
Oh well… I will probably get a Novation Launch Control XL fader cand do the best I can with it.
This seems like a problem that could be fixed by a firmware update yes.
The 16Rig midi havn’t been implemented to work only with Arturia devices. Truth is, if I remember well, some developers used an Akai mpk mini while developing this feature.
I’m not aware of the decision that leads to this design but we usually try to fit a majority of our customer needs.
We are aware that 2-way communication (notably Mackie HUI) is still lacking in this product.
We try to do our best to release the features that are requested by our users, but deciding and priorizing everything is a hard challenge where concessions must be made.
Still, topic like this one and feature request made through our support channel are taken into account when making those decisions.
I encourage you to keep posting your frustration points and feature requests because it helps us.
I hope that this post answers at least partially some of your questions.
Thanks a lot for your precious feedbacks.
The very fact that you guys have looked at this and think that these features are possible with the current hardware through a firmware update is REALLY positive!
I totally understand that this is not your only product to support and that there are many different users wanting you to go in different directions with all your products.
I will have to make do for now but keep my fingers crossed that next update will enable me to upgrade to something like the Behringer X Touch Compact or even better a new Arturia Mackie HUI controller with flying faders, LED endless encoders and all the bells and whistles. (sorry if that is too UK slang)
If the MIDI mapping doesn’t work in a usable way then I might as well stick with my existing setup.
But I’m actually curious if I’m missing something (because I still haven’t gotten one) regarding the “toggle” mappings, is there some sort of indicator for which bank is selected/which track is muted or soloed?
Or you are supposed to just sort of guess and fumble around until you find the right bank?
Sound quality
I feel that sound quality nowadays is not a differentiator. Show me a modern audio interface that is from a reputable brand and has bad audio quality in a way that is humanly perceptible?
You can navigate menus on the small screen on the 16rig to find out the mute/solo state of a channel.
I don’t think you can see which bank is currently selected for MIDI or at least I couldn’t find a way - I used to wiggle a fader very slightly while scrolling through the channels on the little front screen to see which one moves.
Hey! Love the product. But as others have stated here and elsewhere frequently, it would be a absolute blast to up the “block size” of MIDI-configureable channels from 8 to 12 or 16.
There are a ton of controllers out there (Faderfox MX12 being a perfect example), which have more than 8 channel controls.
Even if you do not have a controller with more than 8 channels worth of controls, you might want some of those controls to map separately to other channels.
It seems like quite do-able software fix, which absolutely boost the effiency of controllers used with the 16Rig.
