Recording - December 2013 - 63

for most conventional uses, only the first set
will be used. (Besides accepting the notes
you play to control your DAW, you can send
MIDI data over this set of ports to turn the
QuNexus's LEDs on and off.) The second set
is dedicated to communication with the KMI
MIDI Expander, and the third set sends and
receives data from the CV connections.
The QuNexus's controls can operate in
three separate Layers. The Keyboard
Layer gives you the conventional keyboard notes with Toggle, Velocity,
Pressure, and Tilt settings. The Controller
Layer is a separate Layer where individual keys can be set to send particular
MIDI data (Notes, Pressure, and/or Tilt)
that can be different for each key; you
can set each key to send data on either or
both Layers. The third Layer is where you
set up how CV and Gate data are converted to and from MIDI.

activated. You can scale, invert, and offset these curves to produce a variety of
control behaviors, set them to latch (stay
on) when you let go, and much more.
The Editor also allows you to build up a
library of presets for the QuNexus and
quickly swap them in and out of the keyboard's onboard memory (it can remember
four presets at a time), and is the mechanism
for updating the QuNexus firmware. Over
all, it's a very elegant way to work with the
QuNexus's many functions, and provides
repeatability and simplicity for what would
otherwise be a pretty intimidating process.

How do you set all this stuff up?
The QuNexus has two types of onboard
editing capability. One, Live Edit Mode, lets
you quickly turn various functions on and
off; the other, Controller Mapping Assistant
(CoMA), allows you to select MIDI data
types to transmit to DAWs that map controllers to functions by "learning" from a
control surface. Since each key can send
multiple data types, CoMA lets you specify
for the DAW which does what. Keyboard
transposition, base MIDI channel, polyphony, bend range, and more can be altered
in this way in a pinch, but I found it so fiddly and prone to mistakes ("I push this key

Practicalities
I had one of the first production
QuNexus units to ship, and spent a couple of months working with it. During that
time, I was in constant contact with the
folks at KMI (special shout out to Diane
Douglas, who worked hard to answer my
questions and make my needs clear to the
KMI team) and pointed out some functional quirks that they were quick to address.
For me, the big update was to the 1.1.1
software, which allowed me to play the
pads and send Note and Velocity data
without also sending Pressure messages
unless I wanted them. It's always been
possible to turn Pressure off entirely (the
first preset on the QuNexus has simple
note and velocity transmission), but the
update let me have Pressure work the way
I wanted it to, by creating a mapping with
a threshold so that light playing didn't
send Pressure data.

to choose the kind of data I am changing,
then I push these keys to enter a numerical
value... now, wait, the 10 key and 4 key
are both flashing-that means MIDI
Channel 14, right?") that I can't see many
people trying to work this way.
Fortunately, you never have to use
either of these modes if you don't want to!
The QuNexus comes with a free downloadable Editor for Mac OS X and
Windows that lets you control all of these
functions graphically, with clearly labeled
values for each parameter. The Editor
also allows you to select and assign
response curves, or draw your own user
maps for how controls send data when

Over and above the many MIDI/CV translation features and so on, there are all kinds
of cool tricks you can do with the Controller
Layer. For example, it's theoretically possible
to do things like set Tilt for each key to output
a different MIDI Control Change value and
remember the last value sent rather than
returning to 0 (or 63)... this turns the pads
into a bank of tilt-sensitive faders to control
channel levels and the like. In practice the
usefulness of such a thing depends on how
handy you are with Tilt, and I don't really see
it as a completely viable replacement for a
mixer control surface.
Over all, Tilt control was probably what
frustrated me most about the QuNexus. It's

an interesting idea, and certainly something no other controller can do, but there's
a bit of a learning curve involved; you
won't be instantly using Tilt with the same
ease as, say, a modulation wheel.
Speaking of which, this was the other
area in which I felt the QuNexus fell flat.
No sustain button/toggle onboard (and no
way to reprogram another button to offer
that function); no modulation button (pressure-sensitive or otherwise), and a Bend
pad that relies on the same sort of mechanism as key Tilt, making it very fiddly to
work with. I would have preferred two buttons side by side, using pressure for up or
down bends; this would allow the user to
set different up and down bend ranges, a
very handy trick that not enough synthesizers can do on their own. One wonders if a
future firmware/software upgrade would
allow the left-hand controls to be repurposed; I could see the Octave buttons
remade as Bend buttons, the Bend pad as
a modulation pad, and one of the preset
buttons as a Sustain toggle...
On the other hand, the QuNexus does
things no conventional controller can do,
and has a lot of flexibility for controlling
external MIDI and CV gear as well as
DAW software and soft synths. I combined
it with a standard USB keyboard controller
and found the expanded range of expressive possibilities truly exhilirating.
While I suppose you could get the
QuNexus to do everything a pad/fader/
knob/key controller does, you'd jump
through a lot of hoops to get there, and

the results would be less than intuitive. But
as an expressive controller and interface
device that marches to a different drummer, the QuNexus lets you take your studio gear in cool new directions, and gets
you in the MIDI/CV game and lets you
experience the wonders of polyphonic tactile control for a hitherto unheard-of price.
If you're of an experimental bent, you're
going to want to see what it can do for
your rig.
Price: $149 street
More from: Keith McMillen Instruments,
www.keithmcmillen.com
RECORDING December 2013

http://www.keithmcmillen.com

Recording - December 2013

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