SKnote Etna-C: MIDI/DAW controller with motorised faders and endless pots
by quintosardo   6 days ago

“Why firmware updates?”

This is a strange response. My SSL hardware and Apollo’s have had numerous firmware updates. Nothing is perfect out of gate and updates may become necessary for other reasons. Any questions about support should be treated seriously or the whole thing becomes a concern.

Sure! I meant that I see a serious shift. Things were supposed to be complete, before being sold. Now firmware uodates became a plus.
"When needed": yes, of course!
But as a measure of quality: the more updates, the worse the product was.

Then there are upgrades, I agree!

But sorry, a stupid philosophical thought. And yes, updates must be guaranteed.

The nice part of these units is that they don't rely on external software, so no "alignment" updates are needed (OSs, hosts, chipsets, etc.,).

Nothing is ever perfect out of the gate, regardless of the ideal philosophy. Software or firmware updates maybe required to adjust for real world use by a plethora of users.

Anyway back to topic and looking forward to more detailed product info.

The AES70 subject is also extremely interesting and this hardware is 100% compatible with it.

I'd be happy to gather some real world experience feedback if anybody using it is in this discussion.

@ quintosardo - what are the product dimensions?

It is 300W x 260D x 52H mm

Thanks

I really like the simple look of the unit!!

why are the knobs on a strange-looking bar? is it fuzzy stuff for friction and dustproofing?

Raising, to keep the unit slim, and insulation, for touch functions.

Does it try to connect to your servers in the background like your plugins?

It doesn't need a connection!

I'll add a list of the connections on the unit. They are all on the back panel:

• Audio stereo in (TRS 1/4" unbalanced)
• Audio stereo out (TRS 1/4" unbalanced)
• Headphones out (TRS 1/4")
• Expression/Switch in 1 (TRS 1/4")
• Expression/Switch in 2 (TRS 1/4")
• Expression/Switch in 3 (TRS 1/4")
• USB 1 (control)
• USB 2 (extension)
• Ethernet (RJ45)
• MIDI in (DIN 5)
• MIDI out (DIN 5)
• Power Supply in (12Vdc)

Impressive

Tell us more about the synthesis and audio side of things!!! Sounds like its waaaaay more than a midi controller

sknote is a company with high potential product with very poor marketing! needs business goals

True. If all this had been prepped, inc vids etc, I'd probably have ordered one already. What I'm hearing from him sounds promising, and its what it has quite a few functions that would add to my workflow and save me money and space, but there's very little to go on right now.

Why? We live perfectly happy and with great passion, with a steady and more than sufficient customers base.
Marketing is an horrible modern concept.

Talking about the audio connections.

Two of the most interesting uses of the inputs are:

- Voice-to-pitch-to-MIDI.
- Voice-to-level-to-MIDI (think brass, flute, strings, bowed instruments, pads).
- Both at the same time.

I really don’t think you need to promote these possibilities in text any longer. What we need to see are real world example videos of typical use cases for this unit and hopefully some outliers too. If you have some units you can send to known YouTubers for reviews and testing that’d be great, but I guess they’d also need a manual covering the basics and to see vids from yourself showing the functionality you promote here in use. I’m at the stage that once I’ve seen enough info, vids, reviews, manual etc of it working as intended, I’m likely to buy. I have high hopes.

Oh, you are right, generates confusion. I wrote it because I had lots of questions about it so I'm answering here, too.

You can see all the connections by zooming here, order not exactly as listed above.

Dude, tell us about the DSP side of it. Long time SKNote customer and super intrigued…… !!!!