nem0nic

Since I work for the company, I’ll leave any talk of quality to more unbiased forum members. But if you have any technical questions, I can answer any you may have.

If you have good software integration with your controller non of the highend softwares (Traktor, VDJ, Serato) actually use MIDI for their platters.

Actually yes, they do. The NS7 is a great example.

They use full resolution (whatever that word means) HID protocol to get around the lack of position data in MIDI.

There is no such thing as “full resolution HID”. HID is a protocol all it’s own, and the beauty of HID is (among other things) that instead of being forced into either a 7 bit or 14 bit message, HID allows you to define things like message resolution to specifically match your controls.

And no, the reason they use HID IS NOT to get around the lack of position data in MIDI. Because again, an absolute CC message gives position data. Hardware developers use HID because it allows them much more flexibility in the data output. Being able to (for instance) drive RGB LEDs is tricky with MIDI. You could use a SYSEX message, but not all DJ software uses SYSEX. You could use 3 messages (one for each color) to drive each led, but that would be 3 different messages taking up 9 bytes. With HID, you could send button state and RGB color with 4 bytes. I’ll add a caveat here and say that it isn’t quite as cut and dried as this, and there are often times that MIDI is actually less bandwidth intensive than HID. But the gist of it is that HID is very flexible.

This is also why they insist to use their timecode with their certified gear to work as the whole timecode – soundcard – software thing has most of the time nothing to do with MIDI.

Manufacturers insist on use of their own interfaces because it allows them to optimize performance by limiting the hardware they work with. It is also an effective way to deal with software theft.

So to translate the quite complex timecode into MIDI is not an easy task.

Timecode is no mystery. It’s been used for years, and there are MANY people who have managed to write software to interpret it for use with other things. That includes translating it into MIDI.

However there may be some old timecode solutions around that might do the trick and as far as I can tell VDJ’s solution seems to be the most simple up to date solution.

VDJ’s solution has absolutely NOTHING to do with the OP’s desire to convert timecode into MIDI. So I’m not sure why you’re even bringing it up. This isn’t a thread about “what’s your favorite DVS” – it’s asking how someone could translate timecode data into MIDI data.

Let’s pump the brakes on the misinformation and get some facts straight here.

Pretty much you are asking if there is a way to translate the AUDIO timecode and turn it into a midi CONTROL LANGUAGE-stream?…..I don’t think midi has a way to determine position (other that the normal fader/knob/touchstrip/whatever value between 0 and 256, which would be way to low a resolution for a timecode record).

The OP wants to change timecode into MIDI – full stop. There’s no such thing as a special “control language” or “MIDI code”. And MIDI is just a protocol – a language. It isn’t sentient, and it doesn’t “understand” anything.

Now let’s talk theory for a sec. MIDI does actually have a way to “determine position”. That would be an absolute CC message. A 7 bit absolute CC message has 128 steps (0-127, not 256). And yes, this would be a low resolution message to pair with a DJ platter. In contrast, a 7 bit relative CC message can have extremely high resolution, because it sends a message “per tick” of your control. So if you designed your platter to have 3000 ticks per single rotation, it will send 3000 relative messages per rotation. This is why most dj products use a relative MIDI message for their platters. So if you wanted to have a very high resolution platter that also tracked absolute position, you could have it send both a relative message and an absolute message (this is also how DVS timecode works BTW). You could also use a 14 bit absolute CC message. Or just count ticks from the platter (since the resolution is known). There are other ways as well.

The entire trick here being that midi is a control language….Even if it did, you’d have to have a digital audio stream to midi conversion program which, to the best of my knowledge, doesn’t exist.

There is indeed an A/D conversion. From there the software’s timecode processing code calculates things like play position, velocity, direction, etc. But this takes time and uses resources. The great thing about the potential of controllers is that they can eliminate that part of the processing. They already transmit that data in a digital format.

So, why is this “theory”? Because (A) the OP wants to use it to control Logic and doesn’t need a high resolution message or absolute position tracking, and (B) because I don’t know of any DJ software that actually makes use of MIDI platter data more sophisticated than a basic relative CC message.

So what we’re looking for is something that can convert timecode into a MIDI CC message that can be used in other software. I don’t know of any “off the shelf” solutions, but I know it can be done. If I were the OP, I would look at the MAX/MSP community. I’m sure many people have figured out how to do what you want, and I’ll bet some of them even have off the shelf code ready to use. Another programming environment you might want to look at is Reaktor. Those guys can be very clever as well.

And with these solutions, you won’t need to buy a certified audio interface.

It’s interesting that having RGB doesn’t really play into the remix deck mapping, since you can’t map clip color to a MIDI controller – so when you’re looking for a controller to map towards the remix decks you need to be looking more at functionality.

But the DC-1 has a remix deck TSI on the Behringer website, and I just got finished with an LC-1 mapping as well that will probably go up on Thursday.

I’ve been DJing for a long time, and work in the DJ products industry currently. I actually went to a GC to just get my hands on one to see what Pioneer were up to. I never had any intention of buying anything – especially since the WeGo is firmly out of what I would consider my level of DJing.

I was wrong.

The WeGo is not only a well built controller, but it’s also a BLAST to play with. It pains me to admit this, because Pioneer is a direct competitor to me, but credit where credit is due. After playing with that WeGo, I plopped down my credit card and bought it. And even though I have a pretty amazing setup, I still play with it regularly.

So I highly recommend the WeGo to anyone looking for a GOOD, low cost “all-in-one” style controller. It’s great kit.

The Behringer CMD controllers will start showing up in stores in March, and are in production now.