Control Freak Live

Kenton Electronics

Review by: Sonikmatter Staff
September 22, 2001

Today's technology has rendered products with unforetold power and new abilities but has also brought with it the terms ‘Soft’ and ‘Virtual'. These technologies allow one to put the power of a backbreaking modular into a shiny little laptop that one can safely throw over its shoulder into a backpack. These technologies also leave behind years of tactile and intuitive interfaces where every button has a single purpose and every knob changes a single aspect of the aural experience.

This is not just a problem with software synthesizers and digital audio workstations where your main source of control is a mouse; Hardware synthesizers are just as bad. Users are expected to trudge through 32 layers of menu screens with maybe 4 or 5 soft buttons, a pitch wheel, and maybe a data controller. Nothing works the same from one menu to another and you would be lucky to remember what one knob does now from what it did a minute ago.

The Control Freak changes all of this. It isn't all that much to look at but it gives you the freedom to work the way you are used to. What does it do? It gives you all the knobs that your softsynth needs or the sliders for your virtual recording studio. Kenton provided Sonikmatter with the Control Freak Live unit, which contains 16 knobs, 8 programmable buttons and a few assorted buttons that are used for either MMC (Midi Machine Control) or for editing. To be honest, I didn't spend too much time in the Edit mode…Kenton provides dozens of templates for popular and not so popular instruments and where they don't, the free Virtual Control Freak by Dave Heard allows for easy programming under a Windows Environment. Software for the Mac? None, but most Mac users have a copy of Virtual PC and VPC now works with most USB interfaces – including MIDI -- allowing for access to this software even from this environment.

To be honest, there really isn't much to write about this product. I've always said that I prefer writing about poorly designed products because it gives me somewhere to go with the review. This product just works. As I've mentioned, there are dozens - if not hundreds - of profiles written for this application. As a test, I decided to see how well this would work with my Kurzweil K2000. A quick look around for an appropriate Kurzweil environment was futile, though this is not a very good test as EVERYTHING in this box is assignable. In a sense, your money would be wasted with a product as well thought out as this product. No need to set up templates for a machine that was designed with nothing hard-coded. As a side note, K2500 environments were available, but more suited to the rich effects associated with that box.

For the 2000, I tested out a few different setting. The first were the pan and fade type patches. I loaded up a 16-part demo sequence, and turned to the first patch in the Freak. The knob unit simply worked as indicated. Pans allowed for stereo placement with no trouble what so ever…the same with volume levels. Note, these also worked in several applications such as Logic Audio and a MIDI'd mixer that I generally use for my midi mixing as well as the physical mixing. I was actually surprised as I had forgotten to load up a sequencing environment and had everything patched through directly to the amp, and while twisting knobs, I noticed analogue signals were being panned – it was coming from the mixer – I had simply assumed the Midi In was for chains, NOT for actual control over the unit.

Anywho, back to the Kurzweil…anything and everything that was tried with this software worked as needed. One of the problems with the Kurzweil is that one never knows what is being modulated as 90% of the parameters can be assigned to look for CC data. This makes it easy to use any generic device…for a while I was even using a guitar amp simulator as its virtual front end as its midi was transmittable. But to be honest, I've not had more than 4 knobs to really throw at the box for such things as this, so this was the first time I've tried to program anything OTHER than just a second mod source.

This lead me to realize my otherwise perfect machine that I've used for 10 years and not complained wasn't quite so perfect. I created a few analogue patches as dictated by a few hardware synth programmers. Unfortunately, on the Kurzweil, the best analogue patches are not created because they are simply a lot of operators with control sources. The Kurzweil has no facility to save what would be called ‘Scenes’ within the Yamaha family of instruments. These are the control source information such as the appropriate CC start value…this makes it very easy to work with one-architecture machines. The Kurzweil more or less hard codes these values giving you a small range to play with from the control source.

The Freak allows for storage of these scenes, which makes putting this functionality back into the instrument. As noted, this is Yamaha's notation for the operation but even Yamaha has abandoned this technique on its latest synth and thus one needs a device like the Freak. So why would one want something like this you ask? On an older analogue synth, everyone had more or less the same playing field. Only the knob positions were different. Today's synths are too complex for this. Programming a few 'generic' patches and programming from the front panel allow for tweaking of tones within the same timbre. On other control boxes, you may get the perfect knob assignment but are either forced to record them into a sequencer or write down the parameters. With this, a quick store and you have a new patch.

Of note, one of the very nice things about this box is that you can save these patches so that they are pulled up upon loading a patch on the hardware box. Pull up your Generic Patch #151 that sounds crappy by its own and you can have the Freak pull up the CC data to go along with that program allowing for an instant gratification box.

Before I leave the Kurzweil applications, I just have to note one thing…this device has opened up a whole realm of wants and needs that I hadn't noticed before. Programming analogue patches would be far easier if the Kurzweil had real envelope programmability such that a controller could control the true amplitude of the envelope instead of using a 'preslugged' envelope with a controller telling it how much to use of it. Sometimes I wish I had never requested this box as it makes me realize what I'm missing in this synth as it is my only hardware synth left in the studio.

As for other hardware, I was able to hook this up to a friend’s Trinity and found a built-in template that worked well on most of its built-in patches. Everything was as tweakable as before but as I have little experience programming this device, I can't comment past 'Yeah, it worked'. All I want to see when using a new piece of equipment is that it works, so I was satisfied.

Software Applications

As I've mentioned above, the Soft- and Virtual applications are where devices like this really shine. Again, I am using the Live version of the box. Kenton has 3 separate units: the Live, the Original with 8 sliders and the Studio Edition with 16 sliders and softbuttons. They are all essentially the same product with different hardware configurations. The Live unit is better suited for tweaking synth data than the slider oriented boxes, though they both can serve pretty much the same functions.

This is one place where I have found a few wants of the Freak – one would think that Kenton would take advantage of the Knob based faders and have used 'infinite twist' type hardware. Yeah yeah, this would mean you'd loose the nice visuals of knowing what position the knob is at, but it would allow for switching between scenes much easier…if you switch scenes and go to make a slight tweak, the knob starts where it is physically. I can accept this with a slider configuration – where else is the slider going to go? You can't very well expect it to just slide into infinity with no point of reference, but with a knob, it COULD keep twisting without end.

David Heard's Virtual Control Freak Software

Ok, one demerit for the Control Freak, and it was worthy of note but not too much of an impediment. So back to the usage within software... As mentioned, the Live unit seems more akin to devices used to tweak softsynths than to mix down tracks. Yeah, it IS much easier to do this than with a mouse, but it's not the same as with slider units. If you are working with mixes, the Original or Studio Edition might be a betted choice. With folks moving away from mixing boards and using only multiple input sound cards these days, having a midi mixer might be the way to go.

I can say, though, that the Live unit worked well with Logic Audio. As before, the first application one would try would be to use this for pans and volume. Logic is a little annoying in the fact that if you have a track selected, the Freak will be relegated to ONLY that track, but a quick hit to the AInput object and you are back into full pan or volume mode. It works as expeced. On the board itself are a series of templates useful for tweaking VST plug-in parameters which will definitely come in handy if you are like myself and hate reaching for the mouse every time you need to make a slight adjustment…especially if the mouse is perched above an object you are currently focusing on and want to get at the other stuff intuitively. I can safely say this too worked well and without complaint.

The one cool item with Logic is the MMC – Midi Machine Control. You can Start, Stop, Rewind, and Record with just the Control Freak. Located as a 'Shift' parameter from the edit menus, it’s an easy button press and much easier than mousing around the screen.

On to other software apps…one of my main compositional tools these days is Reason. It is a great dance/loop oriented sequencing environment. There are no less than nine downloadable templates for the major samplers, synths, etc. in addition to the standard volumes that everyone seems to understand. It's nice to know some standards are actually followed by most midi devices and applications. Everything is tweakable and pretty intuitive. One thing to remember is that if you decide to create a custom version of any of these patches for multiple uses, you need to remember to save the songs as a template as Reason doesn't remember these reassignments from the app, as these preferences are song level.

One of the things I have neglected talking about was the SoftButtons. Located above the knobs is a button that can act as a Momentary, Toggle or Assignment button. I'm not sure if these are the correct names as I've gotten use to the Virtual Freak programming environment and haven't read the manual too much other that to see what I'm missing. Momentary allows you to assign a CC Value for a moment and then going back to what the knob value says when you take your finger off the button – great for Flashing/Strobing sounds. Toggle sets between two different values…hit it once and it goes to the high value, again for the low value…and finally the assignment type where pressing the knob reinitializes CC data for a preset value. This is exceptionally good for undoing the damage you just did while tweaking sounds and getting back to the earlier value.

The application that this has shined the most for me was Native Instruments Reaktor. This application is the MOST tweakable application known to man. It is meant to emulate modular synths and effects boxes and a typical 'Ensemble' may have 100 knobs within different parts of the patch. Choose the most needed 16 of them and have a try at it. I was able to use almost all the functions of the Freak on this application and actually set up a few different patches for even a single ensemble to get to all the functions I needed. One for general 'live' usage, another few for detailed editing of singular parts of the sound. For instance, the live might have a general tweakage for the envelope and XY Parameters…ok not XY because Native Instruments STILL have not addressed the problems behind controlling XY controllers with anything but the mouse…additions for filters and all that. The Specific patches would be ALL the 16 just for tweaking the envelope for more granularity of use…not to mention using granular patched J.

To go further with what one can do with a modular softsynth like Reaktor would be useless…other than the XY assignment, there is very little you can't do. Both the Freak and Reaktor are so programmable that you simply decide if you want to program Reaktor around the Freak or the Freak around Reaktor. It all depends on the application at hand.

Conclusion?

This is as close to being a perfect controller as one could get. It does what it says it is supposed to do and does it with ease and then surpasses this. The Virtual Freak, which seems to be a user-contributed item makes the manual almost unnecessary. The manual is nice for explanation about such things as NRPN and SYSEX, and you probably WILL need the book if you are stuck in the stone ages with instruments that NEED SYSEX to be programmed. SYSEX is not that complicated once you get past the part about reading hex, but most synths that use this have their implementations well documented in their manuals and thus its easy to program the SYSEX back to the Freak.

The only complaint I had was with the knobs not being of the infinite type, but if it were ala the Clavia LED implementation, we'd need to see far more electronics in the box to give the same functionality of visually seeing where the knob is pointed. Everything else is to the point of simplicity and you’d be hard pressed to find any other box such as this with as much support.