I just bought a new toy for live performance: The Doepfer Drehbank MIDI controller. Sporting 64 rotary knobs, it should satisfy all my needs for live control of obscure parameters. In fact, I doubt I’ll ever come up with that many parameters, but having the option is nice.

Compared to the FaderFox LV-1 which I’ve been using so far, the tradeoff is control vs. portability. The Drehbank is fairly hefty, weighing at least 2 kg and measuring maybe 40 x 12 x 6 cm. If I already had a lot of performance gear that would probably be too much, but since I mostly only use one laptop and a controller it’s not too bad.

Plugging the controller into Processing was painless. The knobs are solid, with good resistance so that you can get a smooth turning motion. There’s even just enough room between the dials to allow a small white space for labelling. My only concern is about the power plug, which sticks out a bit far and would seem prone to coming unplugged if the unit is moved. But seeing as the unit is so heavy I won’t be moving it much anyway.

The Drehbank is going out of production, and Doepfer is selling off its remaining stock at the relatively low price of €299. Their site say that it’s sold out, but when I sent them an email to check they still had some left. There is also the smaller Pocket Control with 16 dials.