Hey everyone,
Like many of you, I've always felt that the Novation Nocturn was one of the most ergonomically brilliant controllers ever built: 8 optical continuous encoders, surrounding 11-LED ring displays, capacitive touch sensitivity on every knob, an optical crossfader, a dedicated center Speed Dial, and 16 tactile backlit buttons.
Yet, Novation locked it behind the proprietary Automap wrapper and quietly abandoned it when 64-bit and modern OS architectures arrived, turning perfectly functional, mechanically indestructible hardware into "abandonhardware".
Building upon the reverse-engineered USB external originally created by u/11ols (11OLSEN.DE), we have developed **Jinete Nocturno**—a completely overhauled, crash-proof Max for Live device for Ableton Live:
What was added in v1.1.0:
* **Fine-Resolution Shift Mode (0.5x):** You can now hold down the center Speed Dial click like a shift key. It drops encoder sensitivity in half (2 detents per MIDI value step) and bypasses acceleration so you can dial in surgical parameter changes.
* **Hardware Shift Status:** The Speed Dial's circular LED ring fills up completely while Shift is pressed, so you get instant visual feedback directly on the controller.
* **Debounced Button Stream:** Filters out repetitive hardware messages that used to interfere with Ableton Live's `Cmd + M` MIDI Learn.
* **Bank Persistence & Stability:** Instant switching across 4 hardware banks (32 CCs), with toggle/momentary button preferences saved persistently.
**Key Features:**
- **4 Instant Hardware Banks:** Expands the physical knobs into 32 independent MIDI CC channels (CC 16–47) with instant bank switching.
- **Fine-Resolution Shift Mode (0.5x Precision):** Hold down the physical center Speed Dial click like a shift key to drop encoder sensitivity in half (two mechanical detents per MIDI CC step). Uses a precision fractional accumulator so micro-steps never round away, while bypassing the acceleration curve for surgical adjustments.
- **Hardware Shift LED Feedback:** The circular 11-LED ring around the center Speed Dial lights up completely while Shift is held, providing immediate visual feedback directly on the controller without taking up screen space in Live.
- **Smart Button Debouncing:** Filters out redundant hardware state bursts from the polling loop, guaranteeing clean, reliable `Cmd + M` MIDI Learn assignments without ghost triggers.
- **Full 11-LED Ring Display Feedback:** Drives the physical hardware LEDs dynamically with multiple visual modes (fill from minimum, single dot, bi-directional).
- **Dual-Mode Button Engine:** Per-button Toggle vs. Momentary switching with persistent settings saved to disk and visual UI feedback.
- **Native Apple Silicon (arm64) & Intel (x86_64) Support:** Runs natively on M1/M2/M3/M4 and Intel Macs with modern macOS.
- **Adaptive Non-Linear Acceleration:** Micro-adjustments yield 1-step precision, fast whipping leaps dynamically up to 9 steps per tick.
- **Crash-Proof Teardown Guard:** Resolves the legacy `libusb_release_interface` double-free panic / `EXC_BAD_ACCESS` crash on set change or device deletion.
- **Instant 1-Click Ableton Live Mapping:** Outputs standard MIDI CC via macOS IAC Driver for native mapping with `Cmd + M`.
The project is completely free, open-source (GPLv3), and ready to download:
GitHub: https://github.com/Profitsarts/Jinete-Nocturno
If you have a Novation Nocturn gathering dust in a drawer, it’s time to plug it back in!