Firmware 9.7.4: Steadier Encoders
Another update built from a user's email. If you drive arrow keys or a scroll wheel from an encoder, this one is for you.
The Report
A customer updated his 8ES and wrote in about the encoders. Turning one steadily in a single direction would sometimes produce movement in the other direction. It was worst when he turned quickly, still noticeable when he turned slowly, and it happened on all eight encoders.
The telling detail was that MIDI looked fine. Only the keystroke and scroll-wheel side misbehaved, which is exactly how it had slipped past us. Chasing it down turned up three more things worth fixing while we were in there.
Firmware 9.7.4
- Encoders no longer report the wrong direction. A change of direction now has to be a real one before it is sent. Turning steadily one way stays one way, however fast you go — and the fine steps you get at higher resolutions are untouched.
- The first turn after power-on behaves. Two smaller faults shared one cause. Depending on the setting, the first time you reversed direction after plugging in could cost an extra click, or every power-on would quietly nudge each encoder's value down by one. Both are gone.
- Fast turns keep up. Sending a keystroke used to hold the controller up far longer than it needed to. Spin an encoder quickly through half a turn on arrow keys and the input now arrives with your hand instead of trailing behind it. Volume and media keys got the same treatment.
- Modifiers work with mouse actions again. Ctrl + scroll to zoom, Shift + scroll to pan — the modifier checkboxes for MOUSE saved your choice but stopped applying it back in 8.0.0. They apply again.
If none of this ever bothered you, 9.7.4 will simply feel the same. Nothing was traded away for it.
How He Actually Uses It
Once the encoders were behaving, we asked the customer how he works. The answer was more interesting than the fix.
He writes music and sound design for video games on a laptop, in Ableton 12 and Bitwig 6. The laptop trackpad is small and awkward for small increments, and the keyboard sits right at the bottom of the machine — modifiers in the far corner, trackpad in the other.
So he puts the controller under his keyboard and treats it as an extension of it:
"My left pinky is anchored to modifiers, my hand moves from the keyboard to your device by swiveling around the pinky."
Index and thumb on a knob, pinky still on Shift. He uses two encoders, not eight. One sends left and right arrow keys; the other is the mouse scroll wheel. The modifiers he needs are already under the pinky that never left the keyboard.
He has since built the controller a place to sit — a piece of wood with felt on top, tucked under the laptop so nothing slides while he works. He calls it a "trap table," the name percussionists use for the felt-topped stand they keep their sticks and small instruments on.
Nothing gets mapped
This is the part worth stealing. He does not assign anything:
"I just click the parameter in Ableton and move a knob."
Click a parameter with the trackpad, then dial it in with the encoder. It works on every parameter, including the ones Ableton will not let you map to a macro — Sampler start and end points, for instance. And because there is no mapping, there is nothing to look up:
"I despise having to map and then look up and down from screen to device."
Eyes on the screen, left hand on the controller, and the mouse decides what the knob is controlling right now.
The same two knobs do more than parameters. Shift plus the arrow encoder selects clips in the arrangement; let go of Shift and the same knob moves the selection. He calls it "extremely fast workflow, perfect for chopping samples."
Bitwig, the other way round
In Bitwig he does the opposite, because Bitwig's automatic remote macro mapping does the tedious part for him. He leaves the controller on its default bank, sends CC, and lets the DAW map everything to the device on screen.
Two DAWs, two opposite approaches. In Ableton nothing is mapped and the mouse decides what the knob does; in Bitwig the DAW maps everything and the knob only has to send CC. The controller did not change between them — the way he uses it did.
How to Update
- Download the latest ParksTool Uploader from the releases page. (Firmware updates need the desktop app — config.parkstool.com edits settings but cannot flash firmware.)
- Run it, connect your device with USB, and press Auto Update — it detects your device and installs firmware 9.7.4 automatically.
Your settings carry over. 9.7.4 does not change how the device stores its configuration, so your assignments, banks and colours are exactly where you left them.
Have a feature request, or something that does not behave the way you expect? We build these from user feedback. Let us know.