I bought the Nocturn today also

Anubis · Post by **Anubis** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 6:48 am

It's really a well built unit considering the price and... all that's already been said. I'm a bit disappointed with Automap though. Save but a few Vst's that it has custom mappings for(e.g.- Massive) it just numerically assigns parameters one after the other page after page. At least that's the way it treated Reaktor's Limelite. I thought it was capable of intelligently distinguishing between rotaries and buttons.

In the end I had to spend a couple hours doing it manually. Even the mapping for Massive is disappointing cause it doesn't assign anything to the macro rotaries. WTF? Even more puzzling is the fact that it doesn't have a template for Live

yet the instructional videos use Live? Yet there are mappings for other sequencers namely, Cubase, Sonar and Tracktion. Again WTF?

Is there a resource for getting Nocturn templates? What am I missing?

Landser · Post by **Landser** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 8:39 am

Isn't the macro definition Massive's internal thing?
Why do you want to download mappings? Only you know, on which knobs you want and need the parameters for your EQs or other plugins.
Nocturn is not about controlling everything from every plugin, but to control the favourite plugins and the most important parameters.
Changing special and not often used parameters is done faster with the mouse anyway.

djsynchro · Post by **djsynchro** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 1:13 pm

Landser wrote: Nocturn is not about controlling everything from every plugin, but to control the favourite plugins and the most important parameters.
Changing special and not often used parameters is done faster with the mouse anyway.

Aah I don't agree I say bite the bullet and assign every last parameter!
I am almost done with the V-Station, it's 8 pages now will be 9 or 10.
I have the filter next to the filter envelope, and later on another page next to the LFO.

Because the Nocturn has page buttons it's really fast to flip through the pages. The majority of the time you'll be on pages 1-3.

Also the browser function is incredible! You need to name you plugin instances in the box top if you use 3 V-Stations you could do "V-1" "V-2" "VBass"

After that it's press INST button, touch the encoder you want, ready to edit.
Once you get used to it it's way faster than using the mouse.

djsynchro · Post by **djsynchro** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 1:19 pm

Oh and I agree "Automap" is misleading, the parameters get mapped the way they come out of the plug = hopeless mess!

Some factory mappings are included, I thought V-Station would be really good (it's a Novation product) but they mapped less than half the parameters booh.

Anubis · Post by **Anubis** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 6:18 pm

Landser wrote:Isn't the macro definition Massive's internal thing?
Why do you want to download mappings? Only you know, on which knobs you want and need the parameters for your EQs or other plugins.
Nocturn is not about controlling everything from every plugin, but to control the favourite plugins and the most important parameters.
Changing special and not often used parameters is done faster with the mouse anyway.

Although the specific parameters assigned to each macro in Massive varies with each preset there's still always eight of them that exactly coincide with the eight rotaries available in Nocturn. They could have easily been assigned to the first page of the custom map. After all they are deemed by the designers as the most important parameters to tweak. To ignore this functionality in a custom mapping made specifically for this instrument is completely assinine.

The whole idea of the Nocturn is not to have to touch a mouse again, ever! That's what they advertise. Have you ever seen Limelite? It's GUI has about 160 little tiny knobs that all do very cool stuff but impossible to control with a mouse.

Hey synchro I had to custom map 17 pages just for Limelite alone. Now I can finally tame this crazy beast.

If anybody wants my Limelite custom map here it is.
And here's one for Reaktor's Massive too.
I hope I did it right.

Landser · Post by **Landser** » Sun Jun 22, 2008 8:25 am

Anubis wrote:The whole idea of the Nocturn is not to have to touch a mouse again, ever! That's what they advertise.

Do not believe everything that is advertised.

feyshay · Post by **feyshay** » Sun Jun 22, 2008 1:55 pm

Once you go through the hours long task of mapping your VST's and assign that preset as your default, they automatically map when you start the VST.

I was not surprised that this had to be done. There are too many plug-ins for the Novation folks to make presets for them.
The Live presets are pretty good IMO.

djsynchro · Post by **djsynchro** » Sun Jun 22, 2008 3:49 pm

I made instant mappings for editing Live's devices, works OK. You could still add the transport buttons if you wanted to.

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... highlight=

Anubis · Post by **Anubis** » Sun Jun 22, 2008 10:55 pm

I made a simple one page mapping for controlling Live's transport and the crucial controls(play, record, scene launch, etc.) but when I use the export function I got some wierd zip file that includes a file named Kore Player? What am I doing wrong? I did make a mapping for Kore Player too but I didn't export that one.

ewistrand · Post by **ewistrand** » Sun Jun 22, 2008 10:59 pm

Anubis wrote:
Although the specific parameters assigned to each macro in Massive varies with each preset there's still always eight of them that exactly coincide with the eight rotaries available in Nocturn. They could have easily been assigned to the first page of the custom map. After all they are deemed by the designers as the most important parameters to tweak. To ignore this functionality in a custom mapping made specifically for this instrument is completely assinine.

Massive defaults to host automation as a plugin; not MIDI automation. Load your default controller setup from Massive's options/MIDI page and see if they work then...

ew

Anubis · Post by **Anubis** » Sun Jun 22, 2008 11:16 pm

I just added a page to the included one for Massive with the eight macros mapped to the eight rotaries, I just don't see how Novation could have ignored this.

btw- I know it's almost blasphemous to us NI loyalists but I made a map for Kore Player as well. It's real nice being able to tweak the Morph section with endless rotaries, just like with Kore 2 only you also get integrated transport control in the same device.

baseinstinct · Post by **baseinstinct** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 1:16 am

A very informative thread. I want to give Nocturn a try regardless of its surprising limitations. Some things are still unclear. Should anyone care to answer the following I'd be grateful.

1. When VSTs are wrapped, can they at the same time be racked? No limitations in rack or automap functionality? Just asking.

2. As Live is not a VST and is not supported by Nocturn, Live's mixer and instruments can't be Automapped (correct me if I'm wrong), so they have to be midi mapped. Can such MIDI mapping and also instruments' midi mapping coexist with Automapping in one Live Project?

3. How heavy is Automap on the DAW? Does opening the GUI happen to make the playback stammer?

Geezus · Post by **Geezus** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 2:35 am

baseinstinct wrote:A very informative thread. I want to give Nocturn a try regardless of its surprising limitations. Some things are still unclear. Should anyone care to answer the following I'd be grateful.

1. When VSTs are wrapped, can they at the same time be racked? No limitations in rack or automap functionality? Just asking.

2. As Live is not a VST and is not supported by Nocturn, Live's mixer and instruments can't be Automapped (correct me if I'm wrong), so they have to be midi mapped. Can such MIDI mapping and also instruments' midi mapping coexist with Automapping in one Live Project?

3. How heavy is Automap on the DAW? Does opening the GUI happen to make the playback stammer?

1. No limitations on automap and racks. Automapping is its own thing

2. Yes. The MIDI mapping is done by creating an "automap" template of MIDI CC data for each of the 16 channels available on the device. These are treated kinda like automapped plugins as far as browsing goes and exist side by side with automap-wrapped plugins. You then assign the controls like you would any other midi device through Live's mid assign (or the plugin's midi assign). you can also customize each midi channel's controls the same way you would automap controls.

3. I haven't noticed anything, but that doesn't mean there wont be hiccups. Best bet for live shows is to assign stuff using the MIDI CC templates instead of individual plugin automaps as the MIDI CC doesn't seem to ever stall Live.

Bandini · Post by **Bandini** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 3:31 pm

Hello,

Is Dump function available with the Nocturn in Live ?

Geezus · Post by **Geezus** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 6:35 pm

Bandini wrote:Hello,

Is Dump function available with the Nocturn in Live ?

No, it doesnt automap ableton controllers (just vst plugin controllers). You use its midi CCs to customize how you want it work with Ableton Live and save the project as the default template.