DIY Ableton Control Surface Help please!

[bill.bailey77]

After a while of searching for cheap control surfaces for ableton i ran across this thread.

http://www.squidoo.com/cheap-ableton-control-surface-diy

Their idea was pretty cool. just wondering if anyone has made any control surfaces for ableton, or any other DAW. I wanted to gather some ideas before i jump in and build something! Any helps appreciated.

 

[Terra]

cool idea, but definitely the ugliest thing I've seen in my whole life. I'm saving up for the APC40, so many buttons.....so many colors.........

 

[bill.bailey77]

cant disagree with the apc40, that would be awesome to have! But the price tag is definitely a major deterrent for me personally.

 

[IndustrialOkie]

Holy shit- I think I had a gay nightmare about that thing once!!

 

[diggy_dude]

Get a cheap ass Behringer BCR-2000 or BCF-2000 and Bome's MIDI Translator. Don't bother trying to program the control surface or make it "learn" anything. Just find out what MIDI messages the presets send (it comes with a sheet containing that info), then use the Bome's wizard to create rules that translate those messages into the messages you want to send to Ableton. Use MIDI-OX to connect the control surface MIDI OUT to Bome's MIDI IN, and the Bome's MIDI OUT to Ableton MIDI IN.

The concept here is to view the controller as just a generic set of rotary encoders and/or sliders. Their internal programming is irrelevant because you'll be converting those messages to whatever messages you want.