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Soft-synths are the future of music. While nothing will ever match the sound of pure electrons twisting through layers of analog silicon goodness, software synthesis far outstrips any other meathod of sound production in flexiblity and affordability. The only problem with soft-synths is that you can't reach up and grab one of those little bitmaps on screen that are supposed to be knobs.
Most MIDI controllers are great for adding knobs to fixed hardware that has some parameters hiding under the hood. When it comes to software though, they all tend to pretty much suck. This is usually because there is little interaction between the knob box and the software. There is no way for the software to control the knob box, useful when you've just loaded another patch and all your old knob positions no longer match.
Enter rotary encoders.
Instead of using an ADC to convert the analog signal from a pot to a value from [0..127] for MIDI CC messages, one can use a rotary encoder to directly send the digital value. There are a few wonderful boxes that do this, but they all suffer from one serious limitation: they only cover the range [0..31] in one revolution. That means you have to twist the knob four times to get from full on to full off. MIDI has enough limitations already...
So I looked around for something that would do everything I wanted, but nobody came even close, which is how I came up with the idea for the Octapol. I wanted a midi controller that would let me control many parameters on screen in a realtime fashion, with full bank recall and labeling.
Almost a year and a half later, after learning all about digital electronics, microcontrollers, manufacturing, supply chains, breadboard rats-nests, single register assembly, bus capacitance, soldering, de-soldering, and the joy that is PCB layout, I finished my little knob box.
Yay.
--mikes