Stanton SCS3.S custom 4 deck, 4 fx unit, browser/load controls, and more

[DJ Abide]

I think this has got to be one of the most slept on controllers after scouring about for mappings I resorted to making a couple of my own. Here is the latest set up I've got going in brief. It has been tricky and I've been very selective as the systems true potential is bottle necked at DaRouter and whomever wrote the Bome's script cut some corners instead of giving every button on the units their own logic. There are several that are combined to send the same midi message and I worked with what was there as Bome's costs a bit of money I'm not looking to spend just yet, and mapping in Traktor is kinda tricky as it is. Bome's looks to be rocket science.

It uses the Tpro dual setting in DaRouter

Here are some standout changes that have been made

Deck B Vinyl 2 (purple)

"Jog" auto browse mode and track selection
"Scratch" tree select
Master 3m is a modifier to load tracks w/ headphone cue (also closes browser mode) as well as tree expand/collapse w/ upper left button on deck b/d 3d, upper right closes browser mode w/o loading anything

Deck A Vinyl 2 (purple)

"Jog" FX unit 2 effect 1 on and wet/dry
"Scratch area" FX unit 2 amount
Lower right button FX unit 2 off

This was done to try and duplicate the DJTT VCI slider FX model. It's kinda nice have the wet/dry in a bigger area and can be used in combination w/ FX unit 2 control on deck B/D

3d FX (red)/3m deck A FX - FX unit 1 (advanced) control all three parameters, all three buttons, and effect on. wet/dry remains in "Gain" slider.

3d FX (purple)/3m deck b FX - FX unit 2 (chained) auto on/off with slider movement on effects 1 & 2, auto load chained effects groups from DJTT tutorials on 3 buttons around jog and under eq/fx on 3m. 4th button toggles effect 3 on/off

FX units 3 and 4 are controlled on 3m in deck c/d FX modes.


Play around with it if you've got a SCS3.S and let me know what you think. A shout out to Stanton for limiting this devices true potential.

[DJ Abide]

oh yeah I should mention that you'll need to set up the FX units as follows

FX unit 1 advanced
FX unit 2 chained
FX unit 3 chained
FX unit 4 advanced

[nem0nic]

It has been tricky and I've been very selective as the systems true potential is bottle necked at DaRouter and whomever wrote the Bome's script cut some corners instead of giving every button on the units their own logic.

Stanton used button combiners on the triggering modes because in practice, the button areas were too small on their own to trigger reliably. No "corners were cut", it was a deliberate decision made after extensive testing. To accommodate users that wanted access to all 9 buttons, Stanton has a 9 button preset available on their forums.

[DJ Abide]

nem0nic,

I'm sorry if you feel this was a poke at you. You are the most dedicated person I've ever ran across in terms of product support. So far 9/10 you're right too.

BUT

I do feel corners were cut on the .bmtp's

I'm not referring to the 9 button config as I do agree with you about the size of the triggers. I'm referring to other buttons that are combined to send the same midi message when they are different buttons. They should have there own message, if one wanted those messages to do the same thing then map them seperately, but some/most of us would like to customize our mappings to do what we want them to, unrestricted.

For Example...

The 4 buttons around the Jog are linked to buttons on the 3m (in several modes) as they send the same midi message.

The slider areas in FX modes are also linked to the 3M's FX sliders. This would've been so simple to control 4 FX units. And again with the 4 buttons being linked, I could've simply assigned the 4 buttons around the Jog for the effect on/off but I can't because they send an identical message as the 4 below the EQ/FX on the 3m.

I can't tell you how many times I learned that they were linked the hard way and had to go back and reassign them. Don't get me wrong the Tpro setting out of the box is a powerful tool. But there is SO much more potential with this controller.

Other gripes

No dual function for Trigger mode in Tpro? I've resorted to using a modifier on the 3m to get access to the remaining 3 Hotcues, pretty slick actually. But why not dual function the Trig mode and have it toggle between 5 triggers or all 8? Best of both worlds! With room to spare as center "Scratch" area could still be used.

9 button config, doesn't feature dual function modes as there is in the Tpro?

Again nem0nic your devotion to this product (even after being employed by Stanton!) is above and beyond what I've ever seen or expect from any manufacturer of any electronic device. Period. I mean you go out of your way what appears to be everyday to check several forums to help customers with their problems and you don't even work for Stanton anymore!

But the SCS3.S true potential isn't as easily accessible as it should be. It's been said before and I'm sure will be said again. DaRouter should include a FREE controller configuration feature that is user friendly. I read about hundreds of (seems like most) people having a hard enough time with Traktor mapping, which would make Bomes next to impossible for the common user.

[nem0nic]

Not a poke at me at all, I'm just answering your question.

As far as cutting corners goes, I think if you had any idea about what was in the presets, you'd have a different opinion. When the presets were being developed for both of the SCS products, we had to not only think about what controls were being offered, but also things like how many global variables were available to us within the Bome's MT framework, what kind of MIDI traffic we were generating, and how complex we wanted to preset to be in general.

I'm not trying to make excuses - especially now. The SCS.3 controllers are super easy to use until you're not happy with the default presets - and at that point the learning curve for programming BMTP is pretty high (especially the level of programming used in the Stanton presets). I'm TOTALLY that user, and I see your point. But this wasn't what was intended.

When Stanton decided to use the BMTP/preset based approach, the intention was to give users the same tools as developers used. And to give developers a programming environment that could greatly expand the capabilities of the host software by including an external logic engine. The original Serato ScratchLive preset is a great example of this. Serato had JUST released the 1.8 version of their software (which was the first version with MIDI) when the SCS.3d was released. The kind of stuff we were able to do with that preset was unheard of at that time. And in Traktor, the whole idea of device aliasing hadn't been implemented yet, so any change or additional controller meant modifying your TSI and having to make hardware changes (changing the MIDI channel at least). Stanton solved this issue with DaRouter as well (along with a host of issues involving buffering MIDI data that a bunch of programs were having - totally unrelated to DaRouter).

You can see that Stanton learned what the customer wanted when you look at the differences between the SCS.3d and the SCS.3m. The way they handle MIDI is totally different. The SCS.3d assumes that DaRouter is being used to filter it's output, so it sends out all possible messaging out of every control (so, for instance, a slider sends an absolute CC, a relative CC, and note on/off data all at once). There is also no built in logic in the SCS.3d. The SCS.3m HAS built in logic, and by default it sends one type of message per control, making it much easier to manually map. The user has MANY options for changing the SCS.3m output, and the unit will maintain the logic and variable tracking even if not connected to DaRouter. The SCS.3m really is the best of both worlds.

Really, to get the full experience you need to dig into DaRouter and preset programming. It's difficult at first, but it also allows you to turn the SCS controllers into just about anything.

Thanks for the kind words. I'm a fan of the SCS controllers, and am an advocate even when I'm not being paid to be. It's about the product, not the paycheck. I sincerely hope Stanton continues to develop MIDI controllers to compliment what they already have on the market.

[ian3dge]

DaRouter is the scs's biggest problem. The amount of times that crashed per gig is unbelievable, having any other program running with my dj program = not a good idea

[faeruithir]

Hey man

cool tsi, but this part "auto on/off with slider movement on effects" doesn't seem to work for me...

I've had this problem before when trying to map the device myself where it sometimes just gets "stuck" and no amount of pressing will turn it back off.

Is this an issue with my scs3 system or the midi mapping?

EDIT: disregard that stuff, I figured out what you were trying to do. Thanks!

Thanks for the great effort though! I will definitely be playing around with this more!

Any chance of adding an echo freeze button?

[DJ Abide]

There is control over echo freeze as you can manipulate effects unit(s) 1 and/or 4 and utilize to both effect buttons. I could ad one to the new .tsi I'm working on that uses all 8 of the 3M's channels. I do have an area to add super buttons and faders. Do u have a specific super button you'd like mapped? effect(s)/amount(s)

[faeruithir]

Wow really looking forward to that mapping.
I haven't really gotten around to using any super buttons/faders yet so any that you put in would be cool.

I figured out how to do the echo freeze thing thanks!

[faeruithir]

Hey it seems like the dry wet advanced for FX unit 1 doesn't do LED feedback on the scs3Ds. Is this a hardware issue..? Cause I tried remapping i myself to no avail...