Feedback/questions on Sub Phatty documentation and MIDI CC

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breun
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Feedback/questions on Sub Phatty documentation and MIDI CC

Post by breun » Sun Jun 01, 2014 11:56 am

I'm writing this post about my experiences with the Sub Phatty documentation and the problems I've encountered. Hopefully this is useful for Moog to improve their documentation, and it might just be helpful for others.

INTRODUCTION

I'm setting up a hardware MIDI controller (Arturia BeatStep) to control some shift and under the hood settings on my Sub Phatty. I've taken the Sub Phatty Editor software interface as a starting point and planned on looking up the MIDI CC settings in the MIDI CC table. I actually started out with the MIDI CC table in the manual PDF (page 39-41), but it took me a while to realize that the manual PDF was not updated for the 2.0 firmware and that I actually should be looking at the file called SUB_PHATTY_MIDI_CC_2.0.pdf.

After discovering this I'm still left with the following issues:

GLIDE / LEGATO BUTTONS

Both the MIDI CC table in the manual PDF and SUB_PHATTY_MIDI_CC_2.0.pdf mention these two controls, but I don't see them described elsewhere in the manual, nor can I find them in the software editor:
  • GLIDE ON / OFF CC# 65 (0 = OFF, 64 = ON)
  • LEGATO CC# 68 (0 = OFF, 64 = ON)
The software editor does show buttons labeled LEGATO and GATED underneath the GLIDE RATE knob, but those seem to correspond to GLIDE LEGATO CC# 94 (0 = OFF, 64 = ON) and GATED GLIDE CC# 73 (0 = OFF, 64 = ON) as mentioned in the MIDI CC table. Am I correct in thinking that the GLIDE ON / OFF and LEGATO are different and not described in the manual or available in the software editor?

FAST DECAY BUTTONS

The FAST DECAY buttons on the FILTER and AMPLIFIER tabs of the software editor are not described in the manual, not are they in the MIDI CC table in the Sub Phatty manual. Later I found that they are mentioned in Sub_Phatty_Firmware_Changes_2.0.pdf: "Assigned MIDI CC# 117 = Filter EG Fast Decay; CC# 118 = Amp EG Fast Decay (0-63 = Off, 64-127 = On). Can also adjust these parameters in Shift Mode." That still doesn’t really tell me what these buttons do though. Also, according to the MIDI CC table in SUB_PHATTY_MIDI_CC_2.0.pdf both FILTER EG DECAY SPEED and AMPLIFIER EG DECAY SPEED use MIDI CC# 117, but I guess that's a copy-paste bug.

LOCAL CONTROL MIDI CC

Not that I really need it, but I can't find a MIDI CC for Local Control. Is that correct?

SCATTERED DOCUMENTATION

I found some more MIDI CC settings mentioned in Sub_Phatty_Firmware_Changes_2.0.pdf which are new for the 2.0 firmware and are not described in the manual. Is there any chance of the manual getting updated? I love that the firmware gets updates, but I hate navigating between all those different separate PDF files. There are at least six different PDF files you need right now to have all the information: the (outdated) manual, the firmware changes, the update instructions, the updated MIDI CC table, the updated hidden functions and the new tuning scales documentation.

INCONSISTENT NAMING

Also, it would be helpful if the extra settings in the manual used the same names in the MIDI CC table as what they are called in the manual where the feature is described. Most can be easily matched up, but still it would just be much easier to look things up. For instance, it took me some time to realize that the knob called VEL TO AMT in the FILTER tab of the software editor is probably the same as the FILTER EG VELOCITY TO AMPLITUDE parameter mentioned in the MIDI CC table, and that AMPLIFIER EG VELOCITY TO TIME in the MIDI CC table is the same as what's called VELOCITY TO AMPLIFIER ENVELOPE DECAY/RELEASE in the manual. There are some more examples of controls that I had a hard time matching up. The Sub Phatty being my first analog synthesizer probably didn't help there, but consistent naming would be good either way.

UNSEARCHABLE MIDI CC PDF

A final issue I have is that I can't use the find text option of my PDF viewer (Preview.app on OS X) with SUB_PHATTY_MIDI_CC_2.0.pdf, while this does work with the MIDI CC table in the original Sub Phatty manual PDF and in the other PDF documentation. Sadly the MIDI CC table in the manual PDF was not updated, so I need to find things in the (seemingly randomly ordered) MIDI CC table in SUB_PHATTY_MIDI_CC_2.0.pdf. It would be nice if a next release had a searchable MIDI CC table again.

CONCLUSION

Ok, this post got long, but I hope it was useful. And I still love my Sub Phatty. :)

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bichuelo
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Re: Feedback/questions on Sub Phatty documentation and MIDI

Post by bichuelo » Sat Feb 16, 2019 10:01 pm

Fast forward to firmware 2.2.0 all of this great explanation and research is mostly valid (Thank you Breun!)

The Fast Decay options do seem to make a difference to my ears, at least on the filter envelope when using high resonance values

There are three CC controls which I see on the documentation since the first version, but do nothing:

CC 7 Volume
CC 68 Legato
CC 88 Release On/Off

CC 65 Glide On/off does work, even though it's not documented and is not shown on the editor

All of the above controls except CC88 belong to the official MIDI specs, which makes me think that they were planned by Moog but they forgot they were going to develop them
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