I made a LED display... but ended up with a new instrument!

[nemesjs]

I made another trick in Reason 12 new Combinator, this time a single digit alphanumeric LED display! But in the process I came up with a new complete instrument, three language vocoder style!

Check out the new video:


Again, I had to resort to loopMidi in order to achieve the digital display effect with 25 mapped green led buttons plus the momentary buttons and animations. I also used Quadelectra's System 9 and Trigater rack extensions, among others, to store in its patterns each of the digits bits and to be able to trigger them on demand. I also used Pulsars for the looping functions and sampled the voices from text-to-speech online resources.

I'm sincerely hoping that we will have this and many other possibilities available soon in the forthcoming upgrades to the new Combinator without having to resort to loopMidi and difficult/complex CV routing solutions.

As soon as possible I'll leave here the links to the files and necessary REs list for anyone who's willing to venture experimenting with this.

[Edit]
List of necessary/essential REs:
Reason's Master Bus Compressor
Reason's microMix (6 ch line mixer)
Reason's NN-XT
Reason's Malstrom
Reason's BV512 Vocoder
Reason's The Echo
Reason's MIDI OUT Device
Reason's Pulsar
Aftermath Audio's CV8X4 CV Generator
SPEO Frame CV Generator
Quadelectra's System 9
Quadelectra's Trigater
blamsoft's Polymodular System CV Merger
Lectric Panda's Janitor CV Shaper
Robotic Bean's Sequences

Non essential/accessory:
Reason's beatmap player
Reason's PolyStep Sequencer player
Reason's Scales & Chords player
Reason Studios Umpf Club Drums
Reason Studios Monotone Bass Synthesizer
Reason Studios Algorythm FM Synthesizer
Static Cling's Autolatch
Rainwaves's Ivy Note CV Harmonizer
Pink Noise Studio's Maia v2

ATTENTION: loopMIDI is a windows app so this will work well in Windows 10. For Mac users, I don't have experience but here are the common instructions on how to make a MIDI loop:

"Setting up Midi ports (loopback) of a Mac.

The IAC bus allows you to create any number of virtual MIDI buses. This driver is built-in to OS X (since OS X 10.4) and can be activated in the Audio/MIDI Setup Utility.

To begin, launch Audio/MIDI Setup and select "Show MIDI Window" from the "Window" menu.

Now double-click the IAC Driver icon and check the option "Device is online" in order to activate it.

Add the ports you need from within this window."
[/Edit]

[Edit]
To the ones who might want to try it, here's the link to a zip file containing the 2 CMBs files and a Reason 12 file that have their buttons mapped out to loopMidi which hopefully makes it easier to run it (I recommend opening only the Reason 12 file and begin from there)

DIGIVOX.zip

Any questions or suggestions please feel free to ask!
[/Edit]

[Faastwalker]

That's a really cool trick to get the LED panel actually working like that. Excellent Combi2 patch as well. Strong Kraftwerk vibes there.

Also, how did you set-up the buttons on the RC Combi? Looks like they have a momentary behavior. I thought the buttons could only work as on/off switches?

[nemesjs]

That's a really cool trick to get the LED panel actually working like that. Excellent Combi2 patch as well. Strong Kraftwerk vibes there.

Also, how did you set-up the buttons on the RC Combi? Looks like they have a momentary behavior. I thought the buttons could only work as on/off switches?

Thanks! Well, the momentary buttons unfortunately also rely on a combination of loopback Midi and the rack extension Frame CV Generator https://www.reasonstudios.com/shop/rack ... generator/ and also some clever mapping. As soon as I can I'll leave here the files and you can check it yourself.
Basically when a button is clicked on, it triggers that rack extension to generate a slightly delayed CV signal with the off value that is looped back to the same button via a MIDI Out device so it turns itself off again.

[Despondo]

Wow! This is awesome! Great job on this!

[nemesjs]

Wow! This is awesome! Great job on this!

Thanks!!! It was quite hard to do but it's really fun to use!

[Faastwalker]

That's a really cool trick to get the LED panel actually working like that. Excellent Combi2 patch as well. Strong Kraftwerk vibes there.

Also, how did you set-up the buttons on the RC Combi? Looks like they have a momentary behavior. I thought the buttons could only work as on/off switches?

Thanks! Well, the momentary buttons unfortunately also rely on a combination of loopback Midi and the rack extension Frame CV Generator https://www.reasonstudios.com/shop/rack ... generator/ and also some clever mapping. As soon as I can I'll leave here the files and you can check it yourself.
Basically when a button is clicked on, it triggers that rack extension to generate a slightly delayed CV signal with the off value that is looped back to the same button via a MIDI Out device so it turns itself off again.

Ah, I see. I wondered if it was another trick involving Loopback MIDI. I'd like to see this behavior available for the buttons in the Combinator. Their use is currently pretty limited only being able to work as on/off switches. If they could have multiple states and also behave like pads that would be awesome.

[Loque]

Lol great Combi

[avasopht]

That was pretty awesome

[nemesjs]

Thanks! Well, the momentary buttons unfortunately also rely on a combination of loopback Midi and the rack extension Frame CV Generator https://www.reasonstudios.com/shop/rack ... generator/ and also some clever mapping. As soon as I can I'll leave here the files and you can check it yourself.
Basically when a button is clicked on, it triggers that rack extension to generate a slightly delayed CV signal with the off value that is looped back to the same button via a MIDI Out device so it turns itself off again.

Ah, I see. I wondered if it was another trick involving Loopback MIDI. I'd like to see this behavior available for the buttons in the Combinator. Their use is currently pretty limited only being able to work as on/off switches. If they could have multiple states and also behave like pads that would be awesome.

Yes, the main purpose behind these tricks I've been doing with loopMIDI is to gather attention to this and hope it reaches Reason Devs so they are aware of this limitations and feel compelled to make changes to the new Combinator as soon as possible so we can have animated displays, gauges, momentary buttons, multiple states, pads and all sort of other interesting and useful props, along with other important user suggestions being made in the topic The Further Combinator Suggestions. The new Combinator alone has the potential to become an extremely powerful tool that can rival and win with any other competition. I feel that what we got in this first iteration is just a glimpse at the possibilities that will be available in the near future for the Combinator! Lets just hope it will be sooner than later!

[nemesjs]

Lol great Combi

Thanks!!!
It was a bit of a pain to get it to work and to come up with a fairly good design given the options and restrictions but it came up really fun to use! I may soon come up with more classic metallic skin with some wear and realistic appearance
BTW been loving your work/designs of your posted Combis!

[nemesjs]

That was pretty awesome

Thanks! It's a showcase of some of the features that I (and many others) want to see in the following upgrades to the new powerful Combinator, without having to resort to loopMIDI to animate the existing panel elements of knobs and buttons... Hopefully then, many other interesting gadgets and props could also be added to the now limited arsenal!

[aeox]

That was pretty awesome

Thanks! It's a showcase of some of the features that I (and many others) want to see in the following upgrades to the new powerful Combinator, without having to resort to loopMIDI to animate the existing panel elements of knobs and buttons... Hopefully then, many other interesting gadgets and props could also be added to the now limited arsenal!

Just the fact that you need loopmidi to do this makes me completely uninterested in it. I hope they allow us to do stuff like this natively. It was one of the first things I looked for when trying out cmb2 and there was a little disappointment, but I'm confident it will be improved over the years.

[nemesjs]

Thanks! It's a showcase of some of the features that I (and many others) want to see in the following upgrades to the new powerful Combinator, without having to resort to loopMIDI to animate the existing panel elements of knobs and buttons... Hopefully then, many other interesting gadgets and props could also be added to the now limited arsenal!

Just the fact that you need loopmidi to do this makes me completely uninterested in it. I hope they allow us to do stuff like this natively. It was one of the first things I looked for when trying out cmb2 and there was a little disappointment, but I'm confident it will be improved over the years.

I understand your feeling and believe me if there was another way I'd be glad to use it. Take this and other experiments like this as just demonstrations of future possibilities. I was on the beta team and completely share your disappointment when I noticed nothing was done on this aspect when I tried the new Combinator for the first time. But, as you said, I hope it will be improved. I'm just trying to make more awareness about this in the hopes that this is solved/implemented natively by Reason's Dev Team rather sooner then later in the forthcoming upgrades.

[aeox]

Just the fact that you need loopmidi to do this makes me completely uninterested in it. I hope they allow us to do stuff like this natively. It was one of the first things I looked for when trying out cmb2 and there was a little disappointment, but I'm confident it will be improved over the years.

I understand your feeling and believe me if there was another way I'd be glad to use it. Take this and other experiments like this as just demonstrations of future possibilities. I was on the beta team and completely share your disappointment when I noticed nothing was done on this aspect when I tried the new Combinator for the first time. But, as you said, I hope it will be improved. I'm just trying to make more awareness about this in the hopes that this is solved/implemented natively by Reason's Dev Team rather sooner then later in the forthcoming upgrades.

I do like the idea though and it's creative.

Didn't mean to sound rude, because when I read it back it sounded that way