A nice improvement would be to set up a default template for the mixer output routing. It gets annoying to have to change that every time I open a new kit.
Something that spark should have is a way to control other arturia instruments directly from the spark controller. Better yet vst control like maschine, but I'd settle for being able to use something like arturia sem v straight from the Spark's knobs without ever leaving the controller or looking at the screen.
I've made a Default project that include all the routings, call il whenever you start a new project and load a kit, it won't overwrite your Outputs settings!
I think that Arturia should made a Midi Template in all their synths for spark, rather than a spark template!
Yeah that works! The only annoying thing is that when you change a kit it will reset those to whatever output mappings the kits were originally set up with (main and nothing else).
I also agree on a revamp of the browser. I don't like it as it is now, but dragging from the file system works good enough I guess. Preferably it would be like Maschine's browser where you could set up a default directory and then be able to browse samples straight from the hardware. Something like a browse mode...select and step button 14? Then one click on the wheel could browse the sample home location folders. Click once to enter a folder to browse samples. Arrow buttons could be used to navigate up and down folders in the file browser, and the big knob could select samples. Volume (next to panning) could change preview volume and the other knobs on that row (cutoff, resonance, aux 1, aux 2, panning) could affect the preview too. A click with the kit knob on a sample could load it into the selected slot. Would be awesome!
This brings me to something else. Changing kits and instruments with that big knob is not exactly efficient. It works, but it is slow.
I would really like to see a more full fledged synthesizer integrated with spark or a way to load vst instruments and auto map all the vst knobs to the spark knobs via some form of midi mode that can be activated without taking Spark out of host mode and changing into the current midi control mode.
I really like the Synths included, but often I want to adjust them just a little further than the available parameters allow. Still I can get some pretty awesome things going as it is now.
I'd also like to see some form of step editing so I could change note values on each note individually. I may be missing an easy way to do this. The tune mode is great, and I think this should be expanded on. I think you should be able to do tune mode using the pads and then change individual pitch for steps by selecting a pad then selecting its value using the pads in tune mode.
I also would like to see some sort of individual note gate control from the hardware like the AN200 sequencer has for more evolved rhythms.
Finally I would like to see the ability to send and receive midi cc and note values from external gear so I can sequence straight from Spark without using a DAW. I find Spark stand alone mode to be the funnest way to use Spark.
Anyways, this is all wishful thinking, but I hope that Spark eventually gets a v2 with hardware update and I'll pick it up if it has some of these features for sure. I also own Maschine which has a few of these options but they are implemented poorly imo and I have a lot more fun using Spark than I do using the Maschine. I may just sell it as I rarely use it. The only reason I keep it is for the excellent sample editing. The sequencer is junk.