Arturia support wrote back with a suggestion to use a middleman between Beatstep and Ableton called Bome Midi.
Léo (Arturia Support)
Apr 9, 14:50 CEST
Hi Jason,
I'm sorry for the inconvenience,
In case the behavior observed is the same across all the encoders and if the actual behavior isn't reaching your expectations, you should be able to try the workaround suggested below by one of our users which may help improve things:
The main cause of the behaviors may be related to the acceleration mode defined, however when using the slow mode, it may require many turns to browse through the whole data range.
Applying a multiplier per step could help even if this would consequently not allow you browsing all the values (so may not apply to all the situations depending on your needs). If you'd like to give it a try, please follow the steps below:
- Install Bome’s Midi Translator Classic Edition (Shareware) 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 take into account 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 your DAW, you may have to use another utility called loopMIDI which receives the translated messages from Bome’s and can be selected in your DAW 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 check the MIDI Thru option and in your DAW, make sure to only accept input from the loopMIDI port, don't take input from the untranslated Beatstep and don’t output anything to the loopMIDI port.
This won't affect Beatstep’s sequencer mode, so the encoders still move the note one up or down per step (Main reason which explains why the Beatstep uses Stepped encoders which doesn't have any display as well).
Please let me know if this works on your end,
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Kind regards.
Léo - Arturia Support
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Here is some other information I think others might find useful:
here are my observations of the encoder behaviors when Beatstep is set to "slow"
Arturia Beatstep and Ableton Midi macro knob mapping conditions
Absolute: stuck in a small value range in the middle
Relative (signed bit): backwards.
Clockwise = slowly downwards
Counter-Clockwise = quickly upwards
Relative (bin offset): slow in both directions
Relative (2's Comp.): Backwards and velocity sensetive
Clockwise speed = slowly downwards
Counter-Clockwise = quickly upwards
Relative (Signed Bit 2): Slow up, quickly down
Absolute 14 bit (must be CC 95 or lower)*****
Relative (lin. Signed Bit): backwards.
Clockwise = slowly downwards
Counter-Clockwise = quickly upwards
Relative (lin. BinOffset): Slow in both directions. Seems to have some velocity built in.
Relative (lin. 2's Comp.): Backwards and quick in both directions. 5 total positions/values.
Relative (lin.Signed Bit 2): Slow up, quickly down
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The best M4L workarounds Ive found are
Multimapper32 which allows you to set curves on macro knobs
https://maxforlive.com/lib.../device/2348/multimapper32audioand the easiest version Ive found is Beatstep Speed dialer which allows for multiplication of the encoders movement
https://maxforlive.com/.../device/2243/beatstep-speeddialer