Ground Control With Grandmeister

Q & A for building and interfacing your rack gear with Ground Control Pro and GCX-based systems.
blewmeaway
Posts: 20
Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2011 6:08 pm

Re: Ground Control With Grandmeister

Post by blewmeaway »

Is it actually proprietary though? It would appear as though the rocktron stuff and the behringer fbc1010 had the ability before the Grandmeister and FSM432 even came out.

Not trying to argue, just trying to dig a little deeper :D

JohnClark
Posts: 7494
Joined: Tue May 05, 2009 2:33 pm
Location: The Lab

Re: Ground Control With Grandmeister

Post by JohnClark »

It is certainly a departure from the norm.

Typically, Tap Tempo via MIDI is done with a Control Change message that is toggling between a data value of 0 and 127 where 0 = a tap, then 127 = another tap. The MIDI device reads the interval between the taps and acts upon it appropriately.

Expression control is done with a Control Change message that can send any data Value between 0 thru 127. This is typically used like a virtual knob.

What the Grandmeister head itself appears to have is an Expression control enabled for MIDI. The Tempo is set by dialing to a value of 0-127. To get Tap Tempo, the controller would need to take the tapped time interval between button presses and calculate it to be a value between 0-127, or a virtual knob placement.

It seems to just be the long way around to accomplish what is originating as a button push in the first place. Also it seems very unlikely to land at the correct tempo as tapped when doing this unless there were some way to calibrate it all.

Looking up about the FCB 1010, the most common mention of this feature appears to be when users are replacing the stock firmware with the UNO firmware where one of the changes is that it kills this functionality. I would bet the reason why is because almost nothing else in MIDI works that way ;)
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Bitmann
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Apr 04, 2018 2:52 am

Re: Ground Control With Grandmeister

Post by Bitmann »

Hi, I thought I may ask on this subject

I am using the FSM-32 MKIII , but find it limiting without adding switches, of which you can only add 2.

I would love to be able to advance through all the banks and select presets AND have IA's for boost , mod, rev , volume, etc.

I have a fractal MFC 101, may give that a whirl. Anyone using a ground control or similar ?

Thanks, Jon

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