Arturia Minilab Mk2 warning - NO Endless Encoders in Reason

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DougalDarkly
Posts: 193
Joined: 31 Jul 2019

18 Aug 2020

Hi - Bought an Arturia Minilab Mk2 a couple of weeks ago - couldn't believe the value - 16 endless encoders on a MIDI controller costing £80!

However, the encoders only work in Reason in 'absolute' mode - in any of the other 'relative' modes, Reason responds wrongly - so I raised tickets with Arturia and RS.

Arturia replied with some regurgitated parts of the manual, explaining back to me what I had already told them - I don't think they read too well...

RS completely ignored me as you might expect.

TL;DR - Do not buy an Arturia Minilab Mk2 if you want endless encoders.

PS - I did an extensive search around the net to find what other people have done in this situation and came up pretty much empty-handed - I tried to cobble together a codec using similar parts of other codecs (as others have been forced to) but no luck, so I returned it :(

enossified
Posts: 115
Joined: 15 Aug 2016

18 Aug 2020

Original Minilab was the same. In order to work properly with Analog Lab, it's not the friendliest controller for anything else.

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TheDragonborg
Posts: 285
Joined: 10 Feb 2020

20 Aug 2020

Endless encoders are overrated. I prefer actual knobs.

rmtcvolte
Posts: 205
Joined: 15 Nov 2018

22 Aug 2020

DougalDarkly wrote:
18 Aug 2020

PS - I did an extensive search around the net to find what other people have done in this situation and came up pretty much empty-handed - I tried to cobble together a codec using similar parts of other codecs (as others have been forced to) but no luck, so I returned it :(
Hey, if you'd asked here bevor sending back there might be help. I know for sure delta encoders work (with BCR2000, teenage engineering op-1, Native Instrument M32). You have to adjust the formula for calculation the value in the codec, else you will have strange behavior like, normal when turning upward and jumps when downwards.

Hope you will find another controler and have fun making music.

DougalDarkly
Posts: 193
Joined: 31 Jul 2019

22 Aug 2020

rmtcvolte wrote:
22 Aug 2020
Hope you will find another controler and have fun making music.
Thanks - I did spend two weeks trying to adapt various codecs with different formulae - thought I was on to something with the formula from the OP-1 (as discovered by someone else on Arturia's forum I think) but I just could not get it to work.

This specific question has been asked and unanswered all over the net for several years now. The Mk2 has been around since about 2016?

I think the other replies make it clear why - people (especially Reason people) just don't care - there are a few reviews and even some tips on setting it up with Reason, but no-one actually uses it with Reason, they just fire up Analog Lab and f*ck around with that for the rest of the video!

It looks like I may have to save up for a MIDI Fighter Twister - but even then, there's very little info about compatibilty with Reason - I'm kinda dreading the thought that this might be the reason I finally have to switch DAW - f*cking shame, but RS just don't give a shit about stuff like this - to be fair, most other DAW makers don't do much better when it comes to stuff like this, but what they do have is an active, knowledgeable and enthusiastic user base - it seems more and more apparent that those people have all moved on from Reason.

djst
Posts: 28
Joined: 21 Feb 2021

21 Feb 2021

This is very disappointing to read. I just bought an Akai MPK Mini Mk3 for its endless knobs and its clear this is going to be an uphill battle. I've managed to map all knobs to the functions I want, but just like the OP in this thread, the knobs aren't endless rotaries at all but jumps around because Reason doesn't seem to send its current state of the rotaries to the controller.

Is the Reason community really that small that there is literally no one out there with this controller who has already solved the problem? The Akai MPK Mini Mk3 (and it's precursors) are widely known as one of the most popular USB midi controllers out there, yet there is literally zero support for it on Reason 10.4. I tried a search here and came up with one (1!) result of someone who just started the process of updating the configuration files.

Sorry about whining but this is getting a little annoying. I'm getting the feeling that Reason has too small market share so no one really gives a sh*t about it anymore. The Akai comes pre-configured for DAWs like Ableton, FL Studio, Logic Pro etc, but of course Reason is completely unsupported. And, being a bit of a "DAW for the nerds", rather than offering an intuitive UI for configuring these controllers manually in Reason, you're referred to configuring script files with zero documentation (the only thing I could find was a pdf with all the commands that Reason can automate, but nothing material like "how to configure the behavior of your endless knobs").

With all that ranting out of the way, is there anyone else with an Akai MPK Mini Mk3 that had been able to get this to work well in Reason?

rmtcvolte
Posts: 205
Joined: 15 Nov 2018

21 Feb 2021

Documentation Reason Remote is here:
https://developer.reasonstudios.com/dow ... r-products

People who found a solution using "absolute" values for the encoders:

viewtopic.php?t=7519128

Jac459
Posts: 677
Joined: 29 Mar 2022
Location: Singapore
Contact:

17 May 2022

For the Akai mk3 you can use the work of
https://github.com/philoSurfer/reason-mpk-mini-mk3
It works perfectly with reason 12.
I am by the way in the process of creating a huge remote map for reason and the Akai and its rack extension leveraging on the pads of the drum pad to change the group of controls. Basically that allows to control 64 knobs by device. For example for Europa, I use pad 1 for engine A, if you press pad 2 you control engine 2, 3 for engine 3, 4 the filters, 5 The LFOs, etc...

So far, I have basic controls (8 knobs) for all devices (I think), leveraging on the work of philosurfer and I added all the new devices like mimic or bvx vocoder.
Now I am switching the devices progressively to full control (64 knobs) but that takes a hell of time.
So far I did:
Europa, scenic, Antidote, the legend, expanse, algorithm, friktion, parsec2, and continuing....
Bitwig and RRP fanboy...

DJMaytag
Posts: 723
Joined: 17 Jun 2015
Location: Madison, WI
Contact:

05 Jun 2022

Wait a minute… why isn’t it working? I’ve assigned it to control some VST parameters and it’s working just fine. I think I have a MK2, the version with the touchpad bender and mod strips?

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