My wishlist

djversus01

This is by no means a criticism of Julians and others' work. Just my vision of what would improve the user experience. This thing is so close to being on par of something like the elektron machinedrum or tempest in terms of consideration of the design (it already is in some ways ; ) ) that its hard not to think about where that extra 10-15% of refinement would bring it, especially for a diy project, it’s really quite remarkable!

1. Significant volume drop when turning the filter on, even if fully open.

2. I set up drum2 and drum3 to have all the same settings but they still sounded different. (I need to double check this to make sure it wasn't an audio routing or lfo assignment from another voice).

3. Being able to INIT a drum voice or kit would be nice.

4. The sweet spot for "useable" (in a traditional drum sound sense) settings for the envelopes (more the amp then the MOD one) is very small and heavily weighted towards the bottom of both the decay and slope parameters. The interaction between the slope and decay parameters is a little weird, doesn't feel intuitive or to produce intended result (sonically speaking).

5. The whole global midi channel, per voice channel / note assignment / chromatic playing of sounds, etc. is all very confusing and feels a bit unresolved. I mean I think its great that you can do all this but managing the settings for the various setups one might have is not quite there yet, this is probably also an issue because the user manual entry for this is still in progress.

6. I think the naming scheme of the shortened parameter names could use some work, some are needlessly obfuscated [THIS IS MORE FOR MY OWN BRANCH, I can see how changing the parameter short names for the master branch could be problematic at this point].

7. The transient modes are a bit confusing, and the tweaking if the parameters for the non sample based ones are don’t quite connect with the audio result. Also having to share the volume and freq names when they mean something else is not ideal, I mean I understand the limitation, but there could be ways to address, it could be the labeling of the parameters to work more generally, or they may need to be moved. need to think about this more. Also there was the whole env conditional check that is (was?) commented out.

8. I find the “noi” parameter of the snare voice not really useful for some reason (when mixed in obviously, I’m not that dumb ; ) ), also the noise and tone feel very separate from an amp env standpoint and overall, they don’t quite mesh right. [ok this is vague I know.]

9. The whole one-shot lfo mode (especially if assignable to filter freq) would be killer! 

10. Should "coarse" param be a note name?

more to come...

djversus01

bumping cuz I was wondering if anyone else had similar thoughts or experiences with any of the above items.

brendanclarke

These are all potentially sensible, but are largely either a matter of personal taste or purely aesthetic, so it's difficult to implement these in a way that most could agree on or wouldn't change fundamental operation. Except for one-shot lfo's, I may implement that in my firmware soon, it should be fairly straightforward to add an additional 8 entries in the lfo wave form menu ("1si", "1tr", "1su", etc...)

djversus01

yea thats sort of what I was trying to say in my intro, when I said "my" vision of an improved ux, being a ux designer myself. So I agree with what your saying, was sort of just putting it out there to see what others thought, I wasn't really at a point to be able to develoo my own fork of the firmware, although I am getting closer to being able to now.

Here are the ones that I think are not just "personal preferance or purely aesthetic" (although, aesthetics are important, imho):

1. Significant volume drop when turning the filter on, even if fully open.

5. The whole global midi channel, per voice channel / note assignment / chromatic playing of sounds, etc. is all very confusing and feels a bit unresolved. I mean I think its great that you can do all this but managing the settings for the various setups one might have is not quite there yet, this is probably also an issue because the user manual entry for this is still in progress.

these are more "nice to have's" addressable by making my own version of the os:

9. The whole one-shot lfo mode (especially if assignable to filter freq) would be killer! 

3. Being able to INIT a drum voice or kit would be nice.

10. Should "coarse" param be a note name?

These are all potentially sensible, but are largely either a matter of personal taste or purely aesthetic, so it's difficult to implement these in a way that most could agree on or wouldn't change fundamental operation. Except for one-shot lfo's, I may implement that in my firmware soon, it should be fairly straightforward to add an additional 8 entries in the lfo wave form menu ("1si", "1tr", "1su", etc...)

brendanclarke

one shot lfo's are available on my firmware now, if you want to try it out!

mr_chielos

Regarding the init drumkit, I just made one myself and saved it in the first slot. Problem solved

nagual

has anybody tweaked the synthesis methods or changed transients for LXR?

Altitude

I'll add a hardware one: Tighter footprints for the tacts..  They are SUPER loose and make it difficult to get them all to line up which makes for stuck caps down the road.

brendanclarke

@nagual - I haven't messed with the synthesis other than adding one-shots. I tried to get samples to loop, but it didn't work out. That would be fairly high on my list; to be able to load up single-cycle waveforms, but afaik some considerable work needs to go into optimizing memory access for that to happen.

I think egnouf has done some firmwares with different synthesis options (marimba, owl).

@Altitude: better switches in general. I keep kicking around the idea of redesigning a front PCB to take cherry mx but it's a serious time and financial commitment.

mr_chielos

Woohaa, cherry keys!!

Platform

I'll hijack this wishlist to add an extremely simple one -- for both the clock parameters for the expansion board to appear on the same menu screen so i don't have to flip back and forth.

I love the LXR!

nagual

I guess this is going to sound far-fetched and precocious, but is it within the realm of possibility for a tinkerer to tie in a card/processor of their own and fill it with samples?

djversus01

one shot lfo's are available on my firmware now, if you want to try it out!

nice! thanks

Regarding the init drumkit, I just made one myself and saved it in the first slot. Problem solved

very sensible way for a one time, default kit. However, was more thinking about making it easier to build up kits from existing kits with the init voice part. but yea.

better switches in general. I keep kicking around the idea of redesigning a front PCB to take cherry mx but it's a serious time and financial commitment.

I think I saw you say this before and it totally got me on a cherry mx fantasy. I had a vision to build the lxr into a sort of angled cabinet thingy, and add an additional control board (isn't there an open uart port for serial communication?) with more knobs. Could see making a smaller daughterboard for the mx switches and mounting it below, and soldering them to the points on the pcb after removing the old tacts. 

 Sort of like this:

brendanclarke

very sensible way for a one time, default kit. However, was more thinking about making it easier to build up kits from existing kits with the init voice part. but yea.

You can also import individual drum parts from other kits on my firmware - you can do this straight from the load menu or by sending MIDI bank change (CC0) on the voice channel. This doesn't change the existing kit until you re-save it. I find this pretty essential for quickly auditioning and building new kits.

That is an intense build! I need to be able to gig with my LXR though, so footprint becomes an issue. I'm pretty happy with the number of controls on there for live performance. The front PCB isn't particularly difficult, it just takes time to carefully re-route it with the bigger switches & design a new enclosure.

mr_chielos

Don't know much about midi, but can't you just use a bcr2000 or something similar? Maybe a hack? I mean combine them in a new case?

djversus01

very sensible way for a one time, default kit. However, was more thinking about making it easier to build up kits from existing kits with the init voice part. but yea.

You can also import individual drum parts from other kits on my firmware - you can do this straight from the load menu or by sending MIDI bank change (CC0) on the voice channel. This doesn't change the existing kit until you re-save it. I find this pretty essential for quickly auditioning and building new kits.

wow very cool!!

That is an intense build! I need to be able to gig with my LXR though, so footprint becomes an issue. I'm pretty happy with the number of controls on there for live performance. The front PCB isn't particularly difficult, it just takes time to carefully re-route it with the bigger switches & design a new enclosure.

Word.

djversus01

Don't know much about midi, but can't you just use a bcr2000 or something similar? Maybe a hack? I mean combine them in a new case?

I did look at using the bcr2000 boards, they're sort of in two pieces, and a bit larger / more than I need, although its a good suggestion. My pont above is that while I'm there (i.e. adding knobs via midibox ng, or bcr or whatever), might as well redo the step sequencer tact switches.

Also designing something holistic and custom is part of the fun for me. Case inpoint my almost complete super mutable instrument keyboard, just need to finish the graphics, and tact switches (wood)

brendanclarke

Awesome! Wish I still had access to a woodshop

I put in some MIDI assigns for mutes on the global channel. it should be:
DRUM1: CC113
DRUM2: CC114
DRUM3: CC115
SNARE: CC116
CYM: CC117
CL-HAT: CC118
OH-HAT: CC119
ALL: CC120