On Fri, March 29, 2013 5:31 am, rosea.grammostola wrote: > On 03/22/2013 08:54 PM, Q wrote: >> Actually, it does have rotary knobs -- they are knobs and they rotate >> between fixed end points, which is what knobs do. >> >> What it doesn't have is rotary ENCODERS (i.e. the endless variety). > > When do you need rotary knobs and when rotary encoder knobs? For a remote control such as this you may have a rotary pot, a rotary encoder or a rotary pot with a motor. - A rotary pot will stay where you left it, it is totally manual. If turned to 100% it will stay there. - A rotary encoder can always increase or decrease beyond 100% or 0%... this doesn't sound useful, but in the case of using a preset it can be. if the knob is set to 100% and a preset is loaded that now sees that knob as 50%, that knob can still be increased, that is it still has full range. However, there can be no markings on it... that is you cannot look at it and know it is at 60%... unless there is some kind of indicator that uses LEDs or LCDs. - A rotary pot with a motor, has a small motor that moves a 0 to 100% pot to a preset level under program control. So if you have set the pot manually to 40% and then load a preset where that control is now 73%, the control will move (physically) on it's own to 73%. So any marks on the pot or around it will be accurate. This is the most expensive option (if you can find it) and I don't know if it is worth it in any case. I would question how road worthy it would be. It is used extensively for analogue mixer automation... in places that have someone to maintain things. an encoder would probably be the nicest thing to have if you want to load presets. however, if you are used to glancing at the knobs to see where they are set, you would also want some kind of light indicator to tell you where the knob is set... The only problem is that the program you are controlling has to provide feedback when started or using a preset. normal rotary pots will always be where you left them, but... when powered up the controller sends knob positions to the computer, now you load the program you are using it to control. That program does not know where the controls are so either the program has to ask, or send something that says set this to something so the controller can say, "ok, now change that to where I am set physically", or the controller has to send all it's setting at that time. I don't know how these boxes handle this. I suppose the controller could send all the settings at intervals. -- Len Ovens www.OvenWerks.net _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
