Disabling and Reusing the Gain Encoders
This morning I got an email from Ryan Roltek from Malta. He wrote:
"Since I use auto gain I wanted to use the gain knobs for other things so I came up with a simple solution to disable them so we could be able to remap them :)
If you are interested I can share this info on your website so I can help other people too."
He didn't tell me what his solution is. However, it made me think again about the remapping possibilities of the Gain encoder. I played a bit in the Controller Manager and here is my solution for disabling the Gain encoders in a user mapping.

Variation 1
The trick is simply to create a user mapping, add the Gain command, learn it to the Gain encoder and then set as well the Rotary Sensitivity and the Rotary Acceleration to 0. This prevents that turning the Encoder changes the Gain setting.

To reuse the Gain encoder for as many Traktor functions as possible I then added two Modifier commands for modifier #1: the first command sets the modifier value to 1 while the left Shift button is hold; the second one set the modifier value to 2 while the right Shift button is hold. Then I added two more Gain commands for deck A: the first with Modifier Condition M1=1 and the second with Modifier Condition M1=2.
When this user mapping is loaded you can map three different functions to the Gain encoders: one for the Gain encoder only, the second for Left Shift + Gain encoder and the third one for Right Shift + Gain Encoder. If you think that this is too much and if you wish that the Shift buttons behave identical open my mapping, find the Modifier command mapped to the right Shift button, select it and set the field Set to Value to 1 (instead of 2).
Variation 2
I got in touch with Ryan, he replied and explained his solution:

He created a user mapping for the four Gain encoders with the same values as they are inside the default S4 mapping. Activating the Invert option for the four commands neutralises the action inside the default mapping. The advantage of this solution is that the position of the Gain encoder doesn't change when it is turned. That way you can use the AutoGain function of Traktor and you are still able to remap the Gain encoders.
Download
You can download both mappings here:
Pro S4: Disabling the Gain Encoders
Once one of the mappings is imported you can map to the Gain encoders whatever you want.
Note
Thanks to Ryan Roltek from Malta for his solution and for getting in touch.
Written by Rainer G. Haselier
Edited by Karl Yates a.k.a. Karlos Santos on the Native Instruments forum
Last update: November 11, 2010
50 Comments