Kron Manual What?

[ejanuska]

I'm having trouble figuring out what knobs do what by RTFM for Kron?
Namely for the section at the bottom of the LFOs.
I started a breakout diagram to help, see below.
The manual should have something like that in it. Could have saved about four pages of reading and trying to follow along with the next-to-purple-above-that descriptions. It's a real task figuring it all out mostly because the documentation is lacking.

klfos.png (417.62 KiB) Viewed 2497 times

[Re8et]

I wrote Alien Seed about it, hopefully he will integrate a layout in the manual soon enough.

[ejanuska]

I wrote Alien Seed about it, hopefully he will integrate a layout in the manual soon enough.

Any chance anyone can fill in the blanks.

[Catblack]

I wrote Alien Seed about it, hopefully he will integrate a layout in the manual soon enough.

Any chance anyone can fill in the blanks.

I'd read this review, which goes through it section by section.

https://benedictroffmarsh.com/2017/10/1 ... s-matters/

[RandyEspoda]

I think I got them all, but I hope I got everything right.
I'll see if I can manage the time to do them all in this fashion.

I must say, the manual is a bit complex. Probably because this device's interface is just sheer massive, and the million features require a lot of explaining.
Still, the interface is way too confusing, certainly with this huge amount of features and controls, and takes more space than actually needed.
The LFO sections f.e. could all occupy the same space, and have all LFO sections just switch place via one simple toggle.
Other sections would be suitable for this as well...

The manual is not so bad actually, just a bit confusing because the sheer amount of knobs really need diagrams like this one here, to complement the 'this knob here and that knob there' information.

If any errors, feel free to correct, if I have time I'll do them all...

diagram kron.png (797.01 KiB) Viewed 2349 times

[starship]

Well, I'll put it on my todo list. Honestly, I figured since I put labels on the device, why do I need to label them in pictures? IMO the device would have looked better without those labels and I could have used the extra space. Can't please everyone!! Not even myself! ha

In the manual, if I had left out all of the references to what knobs looked like and such, wouldn't it have been even more confusing? It sure felt like it to me.

Working on a bugfix update btw... It's taking longer than I expected.

Re: taking up too much space.... Yeah, I'm not going to switch out anything on here. The point really is to be able to see all of the LFOs at once. If you have to switch out each LFO, how are you going to grok them all when they're modding each other? Ditto with the quants, etc.

It's a beast of a GUI, yup! But the idea behind it is to be able to see at a glance what's going on, once you get used to it. To be able to block out visually anything that's not in play, mainly because it's not lit up and somewhat blends with the background. To be able to watch each LFO doing its own thing, interacting with each other via mods, interacting with the quants, the grid, etc. all at once, so one can truly grok what's going on.

Hiding 3 LFOs and a quant at all times would totally ruin the user's ability to grok it all. I'll never do it because it'll ruin my ability to grok it. And similarly, if I had made all of the knobs the same color, made them all bigger and in nice rows, they would have each needed a label, I wouldn't have had the room (without doing paging, which is going to make it worse IMO), I personally would get confused about what's doing what all the time, etc.

Not that I think anyone's complaining about the different colors of knobs and whatnot yet. I have had complaints about the size of knobs and the desire for paging this stuff out in order to make everything bigger. Seriously, it would perhaps make it easier for new users to mess with a single LFO or quant or whatnot, but it would make it much harder to really use the KRON the way it's meant to be used: creating wicked crazy CV with multiple components doing various things to each other.

So I can appreciate that everyone's confused about what does what. Seriously, that's why I put the labels on the device. Guess I was overestimating how helpful that would be. I did realize that it was going to be less than completely helpful b/c of the setup...

Are the help popups not helpful? Are you all going to the manual first and ignoring those? Or finding them too confusing and just wanting a stupid picture that labels the controls? hehe

It's on my todo list!

Cheers!

[starship]

Also apologies b/c I'm way too verbose. Now we see why the manual is the way it is.

[starship]

Also #2:
Maybe what some of you are saying is that you'd like a smaller device that does this stuff, like a single LFO, presented better. That's a definite possibility. Even more options, changing a few things that I had to leave on the KRON, even though I knew it made it more difficult, b/c of the whole backwards-compatibility thing. I say even more options because there are a few more things I'd like to do to LFOs but ran out of room and properties to do it with here.

[RandyEspoda]

No, I meant that it shouldn't be necessary to have an lfo section that takes up 4 times the exact same space per lfo...all four could occupy 1/4th of the space it occupies now. More efficient use of space, and less confusing cause the amount of knobs would be a lot less...it's just a very confusing device...

[RandyEspoda]

No response from the requester ? then why am I even bothering...

[Loque]

No response from the requester ? then why am I even bothering...

Who cares about the OP. Your picture will surely help a few ppl to understand Kron faster.

From my POV i thought the same while reading the manual, but i understand the most stuff and could figure out how the most stuff worked. Still struggling a bit with the gate, quants, grid and all those relations to switches on the back. Also the math, to get a special curve is somewhat over my head.

[starship]

No, I meant that it shouldn't be necessary to have an lfo section that takes up 4 times the exact same space per lfo...all four could occupy 1/4th of the space it occupies now. More efficient use of space, and less confusing cause the amount of knobs would be a lot less...it's just a very confusing device...

Well, the problems that I mentioned would still exist and people would still complain about how small everything was.

If all you want to do with an LFO is something kinda simple and not mod it with other LFOs, etc., then what you're saying might make sense. But even on the Europa, I'm honestly irritated by having to page out the LFOs when there's so little control per LFO. I'd rather have them all side by side. On the KRON, these LFOs can do ridiculous things to each other, and if you can't see them all at once, how can you understand what's going on?

I mean isn't it useful to watch all LFOs when say 3 & 4 are modding each other and modding 1 & 2? If you're just using basic sine waves and the frequency and level... sure, the KRON is too complicated. But honestly, I think that if you used it to its full potential, you'd be thanking me for not paging the LFOs. The idea is direct visual feedback x2 (plus) of what each LFO is doing so that you can fine-tune and grok exactly what they do to each other when things get really complex.

[starship]

Actually, even if you are doing something really simple with the LFOs, which I do a lot, even though the KRON is too big for it sorta at that point, just a few sine waves, it's still extremely useful to see them *and* hear them at the same time.

Especially if you do something like wire up each LFO to some subtle mod input on a synth or something... not all of those will be easily audible--you can tell there's something going on but it's not immediately as obvious as say hearing an LFO on a filter freq. In those cases, it helps to see what the range of the LFO is, where it's moving when you're hearing stuff, etc.

And then when you start modding the crap out of these LFOs, feedbacking, etc... seriously, doing that without the visual feedback and with too many devices chained together, etc. is why I made the KRON.

I know it has its drawbacks, GUI-wise. There are conceivably ways I could use paging to hide certain things that don't need to be used most of the time (like the editor controls or something)... But the main components.. no way.

[starship]

No response from the requester ? then why am I even bothering...

Who cares about the OP. Your picture will surely help a few ppl to understand Kron faster.

From my POV i thought the same while reading the manual, but i understand the most stuff and could figure out how the most stuff worked. Still struggling a bit with the gate, quants, grid and all those relations to switches on the back. Also the math, to get a special curve is somewhat over my head.

Yeah, seriously folks. I should apologize about the manual and videos and such. Honestly, personally, I usually don't read manuals or watch videos. I just figure it out eventually. I had also meant to have done more tutorial videos by now but really got stuck into this bug fixing...

re: the quants... I'm finishing up a major bug fix for that section. my bad.

re: the math and a special curve... try using a saw wave and curving that. That'll give you a direct representation of what the curve section is doing. Basically picture that as the phase for any other waveform. Normally it's a line, a saw wave. That might help.

[RandyEspoda]

No need to apologize mate, the sheer amount of 'stuff' that's on this device makes it a mammoth task to get done, both code and manual.
Just thought I'd give an incentive, and if it helps some ppl I'm happy too.

Actually the second part of the manual where every section is broken down is not that bad at all, just takes one to read carefully enough, and patiently enough

You were right to focus on the bugs first too, so nothing wrong there.
What's the use of a manual when the device doesn't hold up to the words written down :p

[starship]

No need to apologize mate, the sheer amount of 'stuff' that's on this device makes it a mammoth task to get done, both code and manual.
Just thought I'd give an incentive, and if it helps some ppl I'm happy too.

Actually the second part of the manual where every section is broken down is not that bad at all, just takes one to read carefully enough, and patiently enough

You were right to focus on the bugs first too, so nothing wrong there.
What's the use of a manual when the device doesn't hold up to the words written down :p

Exactly on that last part. And the first part. I really set myself up for some serious difficulties trying to maintain this code.

Hmm, OK, so the intro is hard... I almost just removed that section. Maybe I should simplify it? Or expand on it.. Definitely adding at least the LFO labels in a screenshot is on my todo list, I guess either there or in an appendix...

[starship]

Here, I just filled these in and changed a few... I'll do better in the manual.

quick and dirty LFO labels.png (436.25 KiB) Viewed 2176 times

Env sync: this may not be the best name for it. It unhooks the sync freqs from the play position, making them more like free freqs. It's not envelope sync. I honestly may have gotten the name backwards. Suggestions welcome. I could have sworn some old devices named this thing that, unless I really goofed.

[ejanuska]

No response from the requester ? then why am I even bothering...

Who cares about the OP. Your picture will surely help a few ppl to understand Kron faster.

From my POV i thought the same while reading the manual, but i understand the most stuff and could figure out how the most stuff worked. Still struggling a bit with the gate, quants, grid and all those relations to switches on the back. Also the math, to get a special curve is somewhat over my head.

I was out of pocket for a few days.

Thanks

[Re8et]

Any chance anyone can fill in the blanks.

I'd read this review, which goes through it section by section.

https://benedictroffmarsh.com/2017/10/1 ... s-matters/

Hell of a review by Benedict!

Someone might as well intervene in wikipedia!!! I'm still trying to figure out what lies behind a poly cv!!

[source wikipedia]
Some software synthesizers emulate control voltages to allow their virtual modules to be controlled as early analog synthesizers were. For example, Propellerheads Reason allows myriad connection possibilities with CV, and allows gate signals to have a "level" rather than a simple on-off (for example, to trigger not just a note, but the velocity of that note).

[Bumbum]

this starts to remind more and more this :

i probably have to wait till black friday before i get kron

[starship]

hehe that's kinda what I feel like now and then when I'm trying to fix a bug. wow, maybe this *is* too complicated. hehe.

It'll be on sale for ye olde black friday sale too.

[Jonathan10]

This device has amazing potentially, I think the problem is that triggering the lfos and envelopes is to complicated. Can a note trigger them?

[starship]

This device has amazing potentially, I think the problem is that triggering the lfos and envelopes is to complicated. Can a note trigger them?

Yes, a note can trigger them. The idea here is flexibility. So stuff can be triggered directly via the back panel, otherwise on the front they use the gate channels. The gate channels can use anything, like notes, gate inputs, the LFOs, the quants, the grid, etc. And then you can drive multiple components with that gate channel.

So to drive anything with notes, you send notes to it (like in the combinator, select "receive notes"... this isn't automatic though I wish it was). Choose notes in a gate channel source and turn it on (that small gate section on the left). Then any component that you want to drive with notes, just turn on its gate channel knob (on the LFOs and grid in the top row of controls), set to that channel. And on anything but the envelope, you can choose a gate type if you want it to e.g. only play while the gate is on or just do 1 phase. I use that a lot with random stuff, generating random LFO movements with every note hit for example.

Here's a pic of something I'm debugging at the moment. :) But I had it already set up to trigger LFOs with notes. I turned on the envelope for the pic. Each note hit will trigger the 4 LFOs and the envelope. 2 of the LFOs will go one phase (1-shot), the other 2 will keep going as long as the note is held and will complete their phase. The env will just trigger, etc. You can use the "note retrigger" menu (in the top general section, it says "notes" and currently has P, poly, selected) to change this behavior a bit. If it's set to legato, it will only generate a new gate hit when all notes are off and then a note is hit. Poly and retrig will do a new hit each time, and the difference between the 2 basically comes into play if you're using the note values, sending them to an instrument or something.

debug shot.png (584.11 KiB) Viewed 2013 times