quneo, quneo, wherefor art thou quneo?

[jkmaxwell]

I look forward to seeing what other users come up with for presets though, hopefully there'l be a nice repository and lots of sharing goins on.

me too. which is kind of a problem, since they have no userforum or community site outside of facebook, which is not really suitable.

one thing. if you haven't ordered yours yet, and are on the fence, i would wait.

i am not 100% thrilled with the quality control. for a kickstarter project, it's amazing. for a controller you'd rely on professionally, the irregularity of the slider pad depth* and the jittery slider tracking could be better. i've emailed them about this and am waiting for a response.

*owners: run your fingers up vertical sliders 1-4 and tell me if 1 is different than 2,3,4, and if 2,3,4 feel like they vary in height as you move along the channel. also, please see if this is the same for the horizontals, and on top of that, if you have a hard time reaching 100% value on sliders 2,3,4 without jamming your finger in there.

update: they do have a forum, it's just hard to find:

http://forum.keithmcmillen.com/

[simmerdown]

that was the impression i got watching promo vids, just a certain feeling of un-solidness overall, maybe a bit....cheap...i have only the korg nanos so far as midi control, but i dont mind the cheapness of them bc they are only thirty bux

def waiting for the reviews, maybe even longterm impressions, before committing

[Warrior Bob]

that was the impression i got watching promo vids, just a certain feeling of un-solidness overall, maybe a bit....cheap...i have only the korg nanos so far as midi control, but i dont mind the cheapness of them bc they are only thirty bux

The impression when using it is of generic rubber pads in a generic plastic housing. It does not scream stability, but it doesn't feel entirely like cheap crap either. It feels, honestly, like most cheaper MIDI controllers I've used. It definitely felt more solid than my Korg nanoKontrol, which I feel like I could twist in half with my hands if I were so inclined.

Those generic rubber pads started to feel pretty awesome though when I was playing with the pressure sensitivity. The build quality may be standard inexpensive MIDI controller fare, but the functionality was all there and that's what I was after.

[simmerdown]

cool, well when something works for you, you tend to forget about the price after a while

on the fence still, def gonna wait till they are filling orders within a day or two...

[Warrior Bob]

I got an email today saying I have one shipping to me. If you have any specific questions about I'd be happy to answer them as best I can.

[regretfullySaid]

I'd like to know if they remembered your t-shirt and slip sleeve. Also, how much of a pita it is to get 0 or 100% on the sliders as JMaxwell put earlier.

[trevox]

Got my email today saying it has been shipped too - hopefully not long to go now. I've built an interface in Max for the Quneo and Launchpad combined and made a custom preset fot the Quneo, so hopefully it will be plug and play exactly the way I want it from day one! I'll do some testing and post results when I get it too.

[Matt_Quinn]

Mine is sitting at the Post Office....tried to talk them into giving it to me last night, but no dice. Should be at home when I get out of work today though, can't wait to test drive it.

[trevox]

Mine is sitting at the Post Office....tried to talk them into giving it to me last night, but no dice. Should be at home when I get out of work today though, can't wait to test drive it.

Nice! I'd be interested to hear how mapping the rotaries works, as when setting my Max/Quneo patches up, most controls made sense to me apart from how this will work in practice - I am reckoning some really interesting things could be done with it. Also, when setting things up it really got me thinking into the possibilities even more than I had before - getting quite excited now!

[Matt_Quinn]

Picked it up last night & spent a LITTLE time with it, but not much, so not a ton to report. Pads feel nice for drumming, but terrible for clip launching or turning buttons on/off. You don't really slide your fingers along the sliders as much as sort of roll them with pressure. I do not forsee the sliders being useful as far as dialing in exact settings. They are pretty responsive, but I don't think they'd be reliably accurate in a live performance environment. Definitely going to take some getting used to. I had always planned on using this thing pretty much entirely as a drum controller, so I'm not that bummed about the somewhat weak peripheral controls, I'll probably just end up mapping them as on/off buttons as opposed to controlling parameters. Pads MIGHT be good for mapping to X/Y controllers in Live, will probably try that tonight.

Disclaimer - I didn't adjust any settings at all, just used it as is out of the box, so maybe mucking about with sensitivity controls etc will help, but I don't know that I care enough to put a lot of time into it. For $100 more than my MPD18, it's worth it for nicer feling pads & smaller desktop footprint.

[MattKMI]

Hi,

I'd like to answer a few questions and also ask a question.
First, I'll ask!

I'd like to know if they remembered your t-shirt and slip sleeve.

Did you not receive a shirt and sleeve or are you just concerned you won't? I don't think any box has gone out without them.

Now for the answers:

Also, I think people generally seem to understand our choices about preset management/the way presets have been built, but I wanted to make sure I addressed the questions I'm seeing in this thread...

We're trying to make QuNeo as usable as possible straight out of the box, but we're also a small team (we've got 10 people in office) and everyone has been working incredibly hard to get QuNeo right and shipping. Preset and initial software support decisions have been made through surveying customers, kickstarter backers, and our friends. We are, of course, open to suggestions for future preset development and are also hoping that users will make a bunch of fantastic presets that they can share on their own! We will also be updating and adding new software support as more and more ship...

You're argument makes sense to me Matt, I mean, why cater to Lite and demo users anyway? Wouldn't you want to get them to upgrade just as a friendly business boost?

We've worked very hard on our mappings, and of course can't satisfy everyone! We don't want to leave out any of our users. We've had lots of backers ask us to support entry level softwares like Live Lite and free software like Mixxx.

Anyway, we're working on addressing any issue that our backers and customers may come across... Feel free to e-mail me directly at Matt@keithmcmillen.com if you have questions, problems, suggestions, etc... I just wanted everyone on this thread to know that we actively pay attention and are attempting to make the best controller we possibly can!

Also, I'd try tweaking sensitivity in the editor... I've found this helps if you find that you're having a hard time playing sliders and the like. I find sensitivity settings can drastically change the way the QuNeo feels...

Thanks,
Glad you are using it and I look forward to hearing your feedback!
Matt
Product Specialist @ KMI
matt@keithmcmillen.com

[simmerdown]

thats all great, congrats on getting it out mattkmi

its good you mention the size of the company, it can be hard to tell from the outside, or a website, that its not a big corporate thing...all the more impressive

looking forward to all the reviews, vids, and tracks to come in the next few months, im thinking xmas for mine

[jkmaxwell]

I'd like to know if they remembered your t-shirt and slip sleeve. Also, how much of a pita it is to get 0 or 100% on the sliders as JMaxwell put earlier.

mine came with a shirt and sleeve, yes

[jkmaxwell]

that was the impression i got watching promo vids, just a certain feeling of un-solidness overall, maybe a bit....cheap...i have only the korg nanos so far as midi control, but i dont mind the cheapness of them bc they are only thirty bux

The impression when using it is of generic rubber pads in a generic plastic housing. It does not scream stability, but it doesn't feel entirely like cheap crap either. It feels, honestly, like most cheaper MIDI controllers I've used. It definitely felt more solid than my Korg nanoKontrol, which I feel like I could twist in half with my hands if I were so inclined.

Those generic rubber pads started to feel pretty awesome though when I was playing with the pressure sensitivity. The build quality may be standard inexpensive MIDI controller fare, but the functionality was all there and that's what I was after.

I definitely think the build quality is good, on par with most majors and definitely better than budget stuff like bottom-of-the-line m-audio controllers. the materials chosen are great, there aren't any weird rattles or sloppy machining, the box and packing was well-done, etc. it's true, the sliders aren't exactly smooth, but i have an ipad as a controller for that. this definitely screams percussion and impact, with the added bonus of x/y/position

really, my only issue is the slider depth thing.

[trevox]

Got my quneo yesterday and I must say I really like it. I think the build quality is very good - no it's not hardened steel, but I don't get the impression that it would smash into pieces if it dropped or that any amount of pounding on the pads will damage it. So after being worried reading some feedback to the contrary, I am happy to say it does not feel like a toy that will break to me.

Next is the responsiveness and accuracy of all the pads.

For the faders, the reason it jumps is more due to the friction between pad and finger - nothing to do with the sensors themselves. What I found is that if you apply slightly more pressure with your fingernail, you can slide faders up/down extremely accurately as there is less friction. I am also finding that the more I use the pads, the better they work, so maybe the pads need a little bit of bedding down. Time will tell I guess. Note that all my faders go from 0-127 with ease.

I love the rotaries (using them in Traktor), though they will take a bit of practice to gain accuracy is speeding / slowing things down. Still have to figure out exactly how I want to use them with other applications.

Now to the main pads. The actual hits are incredible - velocity accuracy is great. Will need to adjust the sensitivity a bit I think, but even out of the box, it's very good. The pressure sensitivity is also great, though I am not sure if I will run into issues with what I was planning to do because if you hit the pad hard, the pressure is immediately very high and you have to lay off a lot to get the pressure down to zero, which runs the risk of letting the note off. Again, I think some playing around with sensitivity etc may be necessary, but even now, I am finding that I can be fairly accurate when applying pressure which is a good sign. The XY values are the most difficult thing to get. After some playing around, I began to get a little more control, but it is certainly not as easy to get an accurate XY value pair as it is on say an iPad. This is due to constantly having to apply a little pressure so a note off doesn't occur and again, friction between finger and pad. I am finding that you kinda have to roll your finger around which can leave your hand in some contorted positions which leads to not being able to do much with the rest of your fingers. I am wondering if maybe placing a metal / plastic cap on your fingers may help reduce friction and allow for better movement around the pad? Or maybe some form of lubricant that would further reduce friction (I'm sure there's more than one double entendre in there!)?

All in all, I am very pleased with the quneo and I think with some fine tuning and practice, it will be the extremely expressive controller it is designed to be. And I am sure further updates to the firmware will improve it even more over time.

@MattKMI
I am creating a Max patch to use as a kind of integration layer between my quneo / launchpad and Live. Basically I want to touch the computer as little as possible, but I do want visual information fed to me from that Max patch. I have successfully made a patch where I can label each pad/fader etc and see all cc values which is what I was after. However, I do want to use bank switching for both the horizontal and vertical faders and maybe the long fader. The issue here is that once I use bank switching, no note or cc data is sent out by the quneo so I cannot tell my max patch which bank I am in. Would it be possible in future to enable note out even when bank switching is turned on?

Another issue with bank switching is that the faders on the quneo do not seem to get updated when that bank is not selected. For instance, if I have 8 volume controls in Live mapped to 2 banks of the vertical faders in the quneo, if I have bank 1 selected and I change a volume fader (in Live) that is mapped to a fader in bank 2, when I change the quneo to bank 2, the value is not updated. And I believe when I load a new track, only the selected banks faders get updated in the quneo.

Because of the 2 issues above, I don't think I can use bank switching at the moment and need to recreate the same kind of set up in my Max patch using note values. No big deal, just thought it might be the type of feedback you're looking for!