Novation Nocturn or something similar?

[xXxEVILxXx]

I'm in the market for a small USB controller, that would preferably have a cross fader, and knobs for eq'ing and track volume.

Had an Evolution X-Session like this one:



And it died on me recently and I was thinking of replacing it, with the Nocturn:



But I was told you can ONLY automap it. Is that correct? Would I not be able to just pick something in Ableton and map the knobs? I know I would be losing a few knobs, but I have some other controllers that I could map to as well. And even so, I could still use the X-Session, but the crossfader is screwed up.

If anyone could fill me in with their experience on the Nocturn I would really appreciate it. Or maybe even suggest something else that could maybe fit the bill?

Thanks!

[scrondle]

You can map without using Automap. Pages upon pages of mapping.

Works well for me!

[salatspinatra]

No, you're correct. Sure you can map it to plenty of CC's which I think is what scrondle is getting at. But you are still obliged to go through the Automap MIDI port, which is a software port, pops automap up on the screen (which I suspect can cause some ableton crashes depending on what you want to do, because automap is like a shameless actor or photobomber trying to move to the foreground even of Live when it's loading up.) and therefore requires one of your precious 6 native mode controller slots.

But that's not the real reason you should avoid this devise. The encoders start to slip after awhile, even if you hardly touch them ever. I checked out for myself, thinking it must simply be some assignment conflict that I created, an absolute vs relative paramater change behavior, or the wrong choice in pick-up. Nope. Midi values were just sliding around all over the place unresponsive like. Trust me, I've enjoyed my noturn and was happy while it lasted; I've no grudge. The sensible decision however is to get something else.

[ned rush]

i have a nocturn and rarely use it, mainly because it seems non existent within live without automap, which is i think a great app with potential, but saving, loading and moving automap presets around between machines for me was a headache.

i have never tried using the nocturn in ableton without automap, but there are no official scripts for it, although there are open source ones that work great.

personally, even though i think its great controller for the money, i would avoid it.

the new behringer controller modules coming out this year look good.

[noland]

I have a nocturn since it hit the market and once in a while i take it out of the closet and give it a try and i am fascinated for one evening and sick of it after two days because automap sucks BIG times.

If you are in berlin you can have mine for small money.