Thoughts on multi-touch screens technology as a controller

eddu · Post by **eddu** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 5:46 pm

Hello,

I worked a while with an Hp Smartouch not so long ago and it feels great. Makes me wonder if this is the most appropiate kind of controller (for studio use only) i can think of now.

Anybody has some experiences controlling Live or any other music soft? Can you point out which are the cons of using touch screens as a control surface?

Thanks

arkoenig · Post by **arkoenig** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 6:02 pm

Check out the various comments here and elsewhere about the Jazzmutant Lemur, which is exactly what you're talking about.

eddu · Post by **eddu** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 6:12 pm

Yeah, my point is that a Lemur costs the same as a HP core 2 duo touch screen. Also, with the touch screens you click on the Live interface directly, not in the alien graphics of the Lemur.

axou · Post by **axou** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 6:48 pm

eddu wrote:Yeah, my point is that a Lemur costs the same as a HP core 2 duo touch screen. Also, with the touch screens you click on the Live interface directly, not in the alien graphics of the Lemur.

Live is not multitouch capable, so you'll be able to control one thing at a time only by using the HP touchscreen.
Also controlling a 20pixel wide fader is a PITA. Interfaces designed for mouse use don't adapt so well to finger manipulation, which is where the Lemur's "alien graphics" come in handy.

Clearscreen · Post by **Clearscreen** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 11:25 pm

i've been experimenting with a touchscreen and an interface i've built in usine and it's works really well. all still single touch but being able to reprogram sequences on the fly has been a lot of fun!! you can run usine as a vst inside live and use that to build a custom interface sending midi etc to live if you want. usine also is fully OSC compatible so the API stuff that'll be in live 8 should be able to work with it without needing Max4Live (and saving you a lot of money...)

eddu · Post by **eddu** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 10:20 am

axou wrote:
eddu wrote:Yeah, my point is that a Lemur costs the same as a HP core 2 duo touch screen. Also, with the touch screens you click on the Live interface directly, not in the alien graphics of the Lemur.
Live is not multitouch capable, so you'll be able to control one thing at a time only by using the HP touchscreen.
Also controlling a 20pixel wide fader is a PITA. Interfaces designed for mouse use don't adapt so well to finger manipulation, which is where the Lemur's "alien graphics" come in handy.

Wouldnt the new Live 8 zoom interface option help to control things smoothly with a touch screen? You´d have a lot more pixels to move your finger thru once the controls are zoomed.

Yes, not 2 things at the same time, but 1 is still pretty good if you pay 1200euros for a decent computer+touch interface. Anybody knows somthing about performance on this kind of computers when working with audio production?

Lo-Fi Massahkah · Post by **Lo-Fi Massahkah** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 10:54 am

Clearscreen wrote:usine also is fully OSC compatible so the API stuff that'll be in live 8 should be able to work with it without needing Max4Live (and saving you a lot of money...)

Drifting off topic, but...

Live itself, or the API, won't (as far as I know) support OSC. Max for Live will, though. So by using MfL in conjuction with the new live.api objects you'll be able to control Live via OSC.

.m

nbinder · Post by **nbinder** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 12:03 pm

Lo-Fi Massahkah wrote:
Clearscreen wrote:usine also is fully OSC compatible so the API stuff that'll be in live 8 should be able to work with it without needing Max4Live (and saving you a lot of money...)
Drifting off topic, but...

Live itself, or the API, won't (as far as I know) support OSC. Max for Live will, though. So by using MfL in conjuction with the new live.api objects you'll be able to control Live via OSC.

.m

Then you could also build interfaces in Max, don't know about the UI objects in max and whether they are suitable for touch interaction plus I don't know if max can handle multitouch events, but that would be a very easy and elegant way (the m4l patches are saved with the live project, right?).

However I still don't think that building your own touchscreen controller is on a comparable level to the Lemur, especially with the new firmware. Some further things (different UI, more objects) are possible, but in most cases you will need much more effort to do the simple things.

doremifa · Post by **doremifa** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 12:43 pm

I am really looking forward for a new wave of notebooks and monitors with multitouch and hope win7 will have it too as promised earlier. I just hope it has a pressure sensitive surface. That would rock for music, just imagine the possibilites. Microsoft UnMouse Pad was very cool prototype. I hope they put it in production soon, right before win7 will come out, plus add that to computer screens and all will be cheap.

Than I would gladly sell my MacBook Pro and find a nice looking alumnium mutli-touch pc with windows 7

nbinder · Post by **nbinder** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 2:42 pm

doremifa wrote:Than I would gladly sell my MacBook Pro and find a nice looking alumnium mutli-touch pc with windows 7

Maybe the hardware will be nice looking, but the OS?