Disabling and Reusing the Gain Encoders

This morning I got an email from Ryan Roltek from Malta. He wrote:

"Since I use auto gain I wanted to use the gain knobs for other things so I came up with a simple solution to disable them so we could be able to remap them :)
If you are interested I can share this info on your website so I can help other people too."

He didn't tell me what his solution is. However, it made me think again about the remapping possibilities of the Gain encoder. I played a bit in the Controller Manager and here is my solution for disabling the Gain encoders in a user mapping.

Reusing the Gain Encoders

Variation 1

The trick is simply to create a user mapping, add the Gain command, learn it to the Gain encoder and then set as well the Rotary Sensitivity and the Rotary Acceleration to 0. This prevents that turning the Encoder changes the Gain setting.

Disabling the Gain Encoders

To reuse the Gain encoder for as many Traktor functions as possible I then added two Modifier commands for modifier #1: the first command sets the modifier value to 1 while the left Shift button is hold; the second one set the modifier value to 2 while the right Shift button is hold. Then I added two more Gain commands for deck A: the first with Modifier Condition M1=1 and the second with Modifier Condition M1=2.

When this user mapping is loaded you can map three different functions to the Gain encoders: one for the Gain encoder only, the second for Left Shift + Gain encoder and the third one for Right Shift + Gain Encoder. If you think that this is too much and if you wish that the Shift buttons behave identical open my mapping, find the Modifier command mapped to the right Shift button, select it and set the field Set to Value to 1 (instead of 2).

Variation 2

I got in touch with Ryan, he replied and explained his solution:

Disabling the Gain Encoders

He created a user mapping for the four Gain encoders with the same values as they are inside the default S4 mapping. Activating the Invert option for the four commands neutralises the action inside the default mapping. The advantage of this solution is that the position of the Gain encoder doesn't change when it is turned. That way you can use the AutoGain function of Traktor and you are still able to remap the Gain encoders.

Download

You can download both mappings here:
Pro S4: Disabling the Gain Encoders

Once one of the mappings is imported you can map to the Gain encoders whatever you want.

Note

Thanks to Ryan Roltek from Malta for his solution and for getting in touch.

Written by Rainer G. Haselier
Edited by Karl Yates a.k.a. Karlos Santos on the Native Instruments forum
Last update: November 11, 2010

14 Comments

Vanessa wrote on November 11, 2010 at 11:16 AM Thanks Ryan! your help is much appreciated!

Pablo Arango wrote on November 12, 2010 at 7:27 AM just wondering.. would you be able to apply the same principle to other knobs?... i dont have my S4 yet so i cant try it out but itd be helpful if someone can try it and share their results

Ryan Roltek wrote on November 12, 2010 at 12:14 PM Unfortunately no... this method only works on relative encoders and certain buttons only

Rexx wrote on December 5, 2010 at 11:53 AM Hi Ryan. Great tweak! I've imported it and trying top map the encoders to pitch but i cant seem to figure it out. I added another row to the imported table for Key, linked it to gain a and now seems to change both gain and pitch. I really want to map the gain knob to "Key" and have it in whole increments of 1.00 (for semitones), so 1.00 for 1 semitone, 2.00 for a whole tone etc, really good for pitching (keying) tracks and particularly acapellas. Any help appreciated! Rexx.

viceversa wrote on February 21, 2011 at 5:38 PM ^would also like to map similar adjustments for key. Can anyone give some more insight on how to accomplish this with using one of the above configurations?

viceversa wrote on February 22, 2011 at 6:49 PM nvm figured it out :)

DanYul wrote on March 10, 2011 at 1:47 AM This sound exactly like what I want to do, however... it's way over my head! Does anyone have a concrete / user friendlies solution to convert / augment the gain button to key variators?

Mikkael wrote on June 20, 2011 at 11:45 PM Hi, In the same idea, I would like to change the "push Browser" button simply to the function "add to preparation list". I have managed to create that function but I'm not able to disable the original mapping function which is "loading the preview for the selected track. I'm sure it's not really complicate for who knows, but I don't :-) I could use the gain encoder to do the same job as they are push buttons as well... Please do let me know if you can help me on that one

DJBERNARDO wrote on September 6, 2011 at 4:45 AM Hi, what if the gain encoder knobs becomes loose, anyway to fix this?

Ari wrote on September 18, 2011 at 8:14 AM @Rexx and @viceversa Can you post your findings? I'm trying to map that exact same thing as well: gain encoders to become key encoders with half-tone and whole-tone increments. It'd actually be really cool if you could use SHIFT + gain encoder push to turn on/off keylock. and use SHIFT + gain encoder turn to change the pitch. That way you can still use full functionality of your gain knobs. feel free to reach out to me on my facebook or here! facebook.com/arieverett thanks!

Will wrote on September 21, 2011 at 6:32 PM Hi All, Great post, but I need some more advice, after importing your mapping into traktor I'm now lost on how I actually get the gain buttons mapped to adjust the key function. I cant find key listed under any of the drop downs when I try to edit your mappings, am I missing somethign very obvious here ? I'd really appreciate some help advice on how to get this working. Thanks.

Clarinda wrote on January 29, 2012 at 4:10 AM God, I feel like I soluhd be takin notes! Great work

Jazlynn wrote on January 29, 2012 at 10:09 AM I can't hear anything over the sound of how awesome this atrilce is.

krylle wrote on February 14, 2012 at 2:01 PM kurze frage...kann es sein das weil der gain encoder bei traktor an ist mein gain am mixer nicht mehr 100% gibt? sollte ich ihn in vegindung mit clubmixer nicht generell ausschalten? gruss