Hi! Chiming in to say that I’d also be extremely interested in the ability to have screens to see what parameters I have access to at any given moment. I feel like screens are a great bang for buck because they can be so dynamic and helpful in taking my eyes off of the computer screen. It’s the only thing preventing me from pulling the trigger on one of these controllers. As of now my top choice is still the Behringer X-Touch which has these dynamic scribble strips – unfortunately that thing is massive, and it has a lot of other features I don’t really need.
I’d also throw in my vote for:
-Several smaller screens as opposed to 1 larger one so that the text on the screen is as close to the knob/fader/button as possible, and so that you can see at a glance what each of the controls do, rather than a single screen. Basically what maxence.ducher showed in their (very cool) mockup, although I’m fine if it’s not possible for a screen to “share” a grid unit with another control. At least for my use case, I’d simply want a row of 8 grid units, each with 2 screens stacked vertically in them, and then a row of 8 encoders above and below the screens.
The problem with a single screen is that either you can only see a few parameters at a time, and you have to wait until a control is touched or moved (impossible in the case of buttons) in order to see what you’re controlling, or, if they display all the available parameters, the screen would have to be quite large and it can still be easy to adjust the wrong control because it’s not next to the label.
One exception would be if the screen was a large long strip that could span 8 grid units, allowing text labels to still be adjacent to their corresponding controls, similar to on the Ableton Push. Advantages to this would be that its (presumably) easier to manufacture and could possibly be upgraded down the line to display more complex information such as EQ curves in conjunction with some type of software. But the downside would be that it wouldn’t be applicable to layouts that don’t have 8 consecutive controls. Another downside would be that in case of defects, it’s presumably more expensive to replace a larger screen than a smaller one. So to me, multiple small screens still offers the most flexibility and clarity in terms of function.
I’d also prefer color screens over monochrome to take advantage of the track color coding abilities of Ableton / other DAWs for the (i’m assuming fairly common) situation where a controller has a row of controls representing some parameter across several tracks, such as a typical mixer setup.
My ideal controller would have 2 rows of 8 endless encoders with LED rings, with each encoder having a screen indicating the parameter its controlling and the value, and then some buttons to switch between the 8 modes. Essentially a MIDI Fighter Twister but with dynamic screens per knob. The platform ya’ll have created seems to be the closest thing I’ve seen to something that could do this.