In a moment of pure “treat yo self" i ordered an EC4 today! $364 w/ free shipping from Perfect Circuit.
So now i am trying to strategize how to program it for use with VCV Rack Pro in Reaper. I can easily imagine my favorite modules getting mapped to the EC4 but what happens if I put 2 or 3 mapped modules in the same patch? They all respond to CC from EC4?
Whats the best way to organize the EC4 menus to get the most of VCV Rack?
I might make a YT video once i get my head around it, if anyones interested.
it’s basically a free plugin for reaper that let’s you control and manipulate any midi input in a quite free way. And within ONE plugin. So you don’t need to work within the menu of a midi controller (or midi controllers).
And you can also assign and control the feedback that gets send to the controller from reaper. In which way LEDs on your controller light up, which screen messages show on your controller, moving motorised faders …
But it needs a fair WARNING
it’s NOT intuitive and quite complex and the documentation is … mostly videos by the guy who programmed it plus a quite complex and wordy WIKI. But once you get your head around the workflow it makes certain things quite easy.
You can map any midi input to any button/fader/parameter within reaper including fx parameters with ReaLearn. And modules within VCV Rack show up as fx parameters within reaper. So ReaLearn can target those. NOT sure if you can easily get feedback to your controller for VCV Rack through ReaLearn though. I had some issues there when I wanted to build a midi controller setup for a life set. In the end I just wired everything within VCV Rack which was the easier solution for me.
But the core of ReaLearn works like that: Learn source (you turn a fader, button, dial on your controller) and Learn Target (you press a button, fader, dial within Reaper or within any fx within reaper) and then those two buttons/faders/etc are linked through ReaLearn. After that you can choose if and how the incoming midi data is altered or manipulated.
I used it to turn a 25 key midi keyboard into individual buttons for arming certain tracks within reaper during a life performance. Simple task but without ReaLearn a bit more complicated to achieve. Especially since I wanted some of the keys to fire momentary (track armed only when I hold down the key) and toggled (pressing the key turns the “arm” on/off).
aaaaanyhow … apologies for the long and windy answer but I’m a big fan of open source plugins.
Feel free to ask me further infos. I just went through a steep learning curve the last couple of weeks with that plugin and I’m happy to share.
Cheers and happy patching (in whichever way you do it in the end)
Thank you so much @cothiele for the generous response and offer. The unit arrives Tuesday, so I guess I’m watching ReLearn tutorials for the next 3 days!
Haha! Good luck and take your time with ReaLearn. I needed some days to wrap my head around some of the concepts and the user interface. Hit me up if you have issues. No promises that I know the answer but maybe I have an idea. Otherwise there is also a GitHub page about it, sometimes you can find some solutions or answers there.
The flexibility of the EC-4 comes at the price of a learning curve. My advice is to spend the time to learn how the program it directly in the hardware (it’s not hard, just a bit fiddly), then use the editor for bulk edits:
You’ll need to update the firmware if not already 2.0.
The Electra One is deeply programmable, from LUA all the way down to the open-source firmware. You can build custom UI widgets in it. I haven’t seen a controller box that’s as flexible. I have a friend who’s built some impressive applications (for EaganMatrix devices). I recommend the Mark II, if you can get it. They’ve been sold out until mid next year, and only the Mini is currently available and it’s a preorder (although scheduled for next month). I want one. Reverb doesn’t have any.
… apologies for the long and windy answer but I’m a big fan of open source plugins.