After months of closed beta testing, Bome’s Midi Translator Pro (Windows only) has finally been released for public consumption. Midi Translator is a powerful addition to your midi kit, allowing you to translate midi messages into different midi messages, qwerty key presses (control non-music apps with midi controllers), or to stop them completely. The latest versions include the following new features:

• Keystroke as Incoming Action
• Rules: variable assignments, mathematical expressions, jumps, and conditional execution
• Timers: repeated or delayed execution of Translators
• Changed to file-based approach: presets are now saved in project files (*.bmtp).
• A migration wizard will savely convert your old presets in the registry.
• Added log window for convenient verification (debugging) of your translation presets
• MIDI device selector in Tray menu
• Reload MIDI device list if a device is plugged in
• Add separate keystroke press/key release Outgoing Action
• Allow compound MIDI IN messages, e.g. NRPN and RPN messages

Italicised features are available in Midi Translator Pro only, which costs 59 Euro. Bome’s Midi Translator “Classic” is still free for personal use, or 29 Euro. The classic version will be enough for most uses, although Pro gives you some serious midi ninja options, and is required for to make the BCD2000 jogwheels work properly in Traktor.

 Midi Translator is extremely powerful, and reasonably confusing. I have some half-finished presets here for Resolume, After Effects, Premiere and Photoshop which have been waiting around for the public release to prod me into completing and posting them. So look out for them soon. In the meantime make with the downloading, and hit the comments with your midi translation ideas and setups.

An inexpensive MIDI controller with useful scratch and mixer controls, for DJing, live laptop performance, and VJing? We’ve all been anxious to know whether the BCD2000 delivers. Our resident live visualist gives it a spin (so to speak).

After waiting over a year, I finally have it. The Behringer BCD2000 was announced in January 2005, initially shipped small numbers in August, and then incessantly delayed until finally being delivered worldwide in late April 2006. Considering that the device has been in the wild for over a year there is a surprising lack of information online. Not that it was a nerve-wracking purchase decision at AU$265 street (US$200), but I couldn’t do the usual review harvest before picking it up. I was looking for a midi controller to compliment my BCR2000 and bridge the VJ/DJ divide. I think I may have found it.