Hey Beatsteppers. I’ve found a solution to the Beatstep’s encoder problems that works to my own satisfaction. I’ll describe it in general and if anyone wants more details I can provide a more thorough explanation upon request. It does not require Max for Live, only two free MIDI utilities for Windows. So we all know that with the encoders in Slow mode, it takes way too many turns to sweep through the range of any parameter in Ableton, but the acceleration modes are super jumpy and unpredictable, rendering them useless. So all I was looking for was a way to multiply the single increment per detent to something like 2 or 3. Yes, this means that not every single value from 0-127 can be dialed in via the encoder, but for my purposes, half or a third of that resolution is sufficient. To accomplish this, you need to install Bome’s Midi Translator Classic Edition (which is nagware until you sent the developer a postcard!!!) and get it to translate the CC message coming from the Beatstep. In Relative 1 mode, the encoders send a value of 63 for each decrease and 65 for each increase, so you have to translate those values to something like 58 and 70 respectively to make the adjusted parameter change by increments of ~3. This means for 8 encoders you have to set up 16 translations because you have to account for each direction of rotation. Since the free version of Bome’s does not provide a virtual MIDI port with which to route its output to Ableton, I also used another utility called loopMIDI which receives the translated messages from Bome’s and can be selected in Ableton as an input port. Ableton’s encoder mode has to be set to Relative(linBinOffset) to respond correctly. Also, in Bome’s you have to have MIDI Thru checked and in Ableton you only accept input from the loopMIDI port, don't take input from the untranslated Beatstep and don’t output anything to the loopMIDI port. What’s great about this, for my purposes anyway, is that I like to use the Beatstep with a UserConfiguration.txt script in Ableton for ‘blue hand’ automatic mapping and a few other things, and this all works in conjunction with the translated encoder messages for better encoder response in the whole Ableton environment. This doesn’t affect Beatstep’s sequencer mode, so the encoders still move the note one up or down per detent. If you’ve used virtual MIDI ports before and are familiar working with Ableton’s MIDI settings, then this description is probably enough, but if you want more details I can expand on things or provide screenshots. Happy encoder-ing!
