Kenton Spin Doctor - Manual (Page 4)

What are the benefits of using Spin Doctor?
Many pieces of MIDI gear have no front panel controls of their own, whilst others
possess on-board controls which are frustrating and fiddly to operate. Spin
Doctor gives you the hands-on control you need to access the various
parameters on such pieces of equipment, instantly and in real time.
The ability to tweak volumes, filters, envelopes and other popular effects with
such ease can give a new lease of life to your existing MIDI equipment. Why pay
out for new synth modules when you can unlock the full potential of the ones you
already own?
Spin Doctor is an excellent time saving device. One of the most popular uses for
the unit is as a control surface for sequencers such as Cubase VST/SX, Emagic
Logic Audio and Cakewalk Pro-Audio/Sonar, where the ‘virtual’ faders on the
computer screen can be manipulated from Spin Doctor’s real world control
knobs. Another very popular use is for controlling software synths, such as the
excellent Native Instruments range. This removes the need for tedious
adjustments by mouse, and is a far more intuitive way of working.
What is the principle of operation of Spin Doctor?
Spin Doctor is a device to make editing and controlling everything from MIDI
hardware to software sequencers and software synths easier than ever before.
Unlike many other low cost controller units, Spin Doctor (when used in
conjunction with the editing software for PC and Macintosh) has the power to
support all possible MIDI messages, not just the limited controllers and NRPNs
found on other products in this price range.
In most MIDI strings used to control equipment, be they SysEx messages,
continuous controller messages (CCs) or NRPNs, there is usually one byte which
actually specifies the new value required.
With System Exclusive (SysEx) particularly, out of typically around 12 bytes,
often only one or two bytes need to change to give you the change in sound.
The rest are there to specify the manufacturer, the synth model, the type of
message and which parameter you want to change.
When setting up a knob to control something, most of the bytes have fixed
values. When it comes to the variable data bytes, these can be set up to take
their value from the knob. With Spin Doctor, editing from the front panel is
restricted to just controller data, and we recommend the use of the PC and
Macintosh editing packages to get the full benefit of the power of Spin Doctor.