7. Proprietary or universal?

Proprietary

Controllers for musical instruments and equipment, respectively, are constructed differently depending on the areas of their use. Custom-fit controllers for older synthesizer and effects devices, for example, facilitate the exact playback of the instrument to be controlled regarding parameterisation. Tis means that every parameter control of the target instrument is assigned one corresponding parameter control (often in the same design) on the controller. The advantage of this type of controller is the “perfect fusion“ between device and remote control. On the downside, these devices can only be used with the instrument they were designed for, and are of no use in any other way. Proprietary controllers, such as the Roland JX8P/10P with the corresping controller PG800, are only rarely available second-hand. Another way to control older instruments through an Atari, PC or Mac is using a library software program, such as Emagic's Sounddiver. But this program, too, has gone the way of all things and has not been available for a long time now. Thus, the only way open to you is manually adjusting the parameters with an up-to-date controller box – provided the device speaks MIDI.

Universal

Modern software synthesizers usually enable complete external control, i.e. you can remote control them completely. This requires a more or less complex controller interface with many controls and sophisticatred mapping. This term refers to a kind of “map“ containing instructions for the controller on how the various parameters of device made by specific manufacturers are to be assigned to the controller interface. The mapping for important tools should ideally be supplied by the controller's manufacturer, which saves users a great deal of time!