Gordius

steadystate

steadystate

Fractal Fanatic
I've skimmed the manual for the Gordius Little Giant and I'm puzzled.

The unit allows 250 banks, each with 10 switches (32 switches with an expander). So that's 2,500 potential switches to trigger patches.

And yet, each of these 2,500 switches must choose from a common pool of only 128 patches (each of which can contain a string of commands up to 256 bytes)? Am I reading this correctly???

Forget about stompbox and momentary patches. I want to know if the Little Giant limits you to 128 regular patches shared among a 2,500 switches. This can't be right.
 
IIRC, there's a limit of 128 patches. But you don't attach patches to switches, you attach presets (that can contain a patch, or a stompbox, or a momentary controller) to switches.
And I think you can have more than 128 presets.

BUT this is only true for the first generation of Little Giant devices.
The second gen. that's being sold already has a lot more memory that gets used dynamically. Xavier said, you could have a number of 1000 of each patches, banks, setlists...
Little drawback atm is, the LG 2 still uses the first gen. setup structure with the given limits.
Xavier is working on the new firmware, which will remedy these limits, "unlocking" the additional memory and it will also make everything simpler (i.e. there won't be patches AND presets but only one type; people got confused).
 
Thanks for the info. I read about the difference between presets and patches, and that you assign presets to switches. But if there is a 128 patch limit, a huge number of presets is of limited value. I want all presets to be unique, not just various combinations of the same 128 patches.

I'll keep my eye out for updates. Xavier has thought of almost everything anyone could want in a foot controller.

Edit: I just read the section on the next generation. This sounds promising. I only wish I knew their timetable. My current foot controller allows what is the equivalent of 640 "patches" in the Gordius (arranged in 128 banks of 5 "patches" each). Believe it or not, I've filled up a large percentage of this unit. Having 1000 patches for me is future proof.
 
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*** if there is a 128 patch limit ***

I think you have not understood what is the limit. You can access all 300+ patches of the axefx or any device. Send a bank 0,1,2,3... comand and a PC, all within a single LG patch. I think you should understand what a patch; share your needs...
 
Smilzo said:
*** if there is a 128 patch limit ***

I think you have not understood what is the limit. You can access all 300+ patches of the axefx or any device. Send a bank 0,1,2,3... comand and a PC, all within a single LG patch. I think you should understand what a patch; share your needs...
Click to expand...
No, this has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. Please read my original post more carefully. I'm not talking about accessing Axe-FX presets above 128. From what I infer from the manual, the Gordius setup structure currently lets you define 128 unique midi command strings they call "patches". Each Gordius patch can contain any number of midi program change messages, cc messages, etc. A Gordius patch could access any of the Axe presets easily. The problem (from my point of view) is that the Gordius currently limits you to only 128 of these "patches" (command strings), even though they can be shared among a greater number of Gordius "presets". This restriction will be lifted, but when is not clear. My current controller allows 640 command strings.

If this isn't correct and a knowledgeable Gordius owner can set me straight, please post.
 
I think you're right. But it's limiting only when there are more than 128 unique Axe-Fx presets that you really need to address, using "patches".

Patches can be best seen as pointers to Axe-Fx presets, using Program Changes. You can have far more "presets" than "patches".

Say there's a Plexi preset on the Axe-Fx, no. 56. First you create one "patch" that points to 56, let's call it Plexi.
Now you can create various presets, using patch Plexi, and assign these presets to switches on the controller.
One preset may be a dry sound only, another with chorus and delay (if present in the Plexi preset in the Axe-Fx), one with tremolo and a boost etc. ect.
So the patch is the fundation you build presets upon.
 
Thanks Yek. I really like the Gordius. Almost every aspect of it is perfect for me, except this limitation. As soon as the new firmware is released, I'll be all over it.

One thing that seems a bit cumbersome is the fact that all patches are kept in a single list (along with the two others for stompbox and momentary). If you can define 1000 patches with the new firmware, that list is going to be a bitch to manage. I'd like to see each bank have its own list of patches.
 
steadystate said:
Thanks for the info. I read about the difference between presets and patches, and that you assign presets to switches. But if there is a 128 patch limit, a huge number of presets is of limited value. I want all presets to be unique, not just various combinations of the same 128 patches.

I'll keep my eye out for updates. Xavier has thought of almost everything anyone could want in a foot controller.

Edit: I just read the section on the next generation. This sounds promising. I only wish I knew their timetable. My current foot controller allows what is the equivalent of 640 "patches" in the Gordius (arranged in 128 banks of 5 "patches" each). Believe it or not, I've filled up a large percentage of this unit. Having 1000 patches for me is future proof.
Click to expand...

Hi,
yesterday I posted an update on the status of this new development here :
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/GORDIUS/message/1770
You're correct, the current firmware has a limited number of presets (190 presets + 32 I.A.s + 32 momentary effects) The version I'm testing right now supports 1000 presets + 1000 IA's + 1000 momentary effects (and 1000 banks + 1000 songs)
No published timeframe for the release, still a lot of testing to do to ensure that both the firmware and the new Mac+Windows editor are stable.
 
Your link states that you created a huge setup including 1000 presets, each containing one program change. Is it still possible to send several program change messages with a single preset (patch), or are you now limited to one? That's probably a dumb question, but I have to ask.

The amount of memory now is insane. Once you have this stable and released, I'll be there!
 
steadystate said:
Your link states that you created a huge setup including 1000 presets, each containing one program change. Is it still possible to send several program change messages with a single preset (patch), or are you now limited to one? That's probably a dumb question, but I have to ask.

The amount of memory now is insane. Once you have this stable and released, I'll be there!
Click to expand...

Sure, it's still possible to send many messages with a single preset. A big strength (in my eyes) of the LittleGiant is that it has a fully "dynamic" memory structure. This means that you can choose between many presets containing a few messages, or less presets containing a larger number of messages. I further extended this dynamic structure with the latest redesign, so that all setup "elements" (presets, banks, songs, setlists, ... ) share the same memory. The only limit is the overall memory size of the complete setup. This means for instance that I will be able to add memory consuming features in the (near) future, like displaying song texts, or playing MIDI sequences.

This is also the reason why I needed to create a test setup to find out what the practical limits of the current memory footprint are. I extended my test setup to occupy almost full memory. I ended up with a setup of 1000 presets, each sending 16 PC messages (one on each available MIDI channel...) and 1000 "stompboxes" sending 16 different CC messages for "on", and another 16 for "off". That's a total of 48000 MIDI messages.
 
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