I knew Brian Crabtree's and Kelli Cain's game-changing Monome device was the controller for me the moment I laid eyes on the prototype. There was an instant understanding of and joy in the deep possibilities held by a decoupled grid of buttons and lights. I was hooked years before the larger-in-number but still hand-produced 40h units ever left their secret lab.

Fast forward to 02009 at Expo '74. Darwin Grosse is playing twining, ambient autoharp music on the floor of the Max/MSP/Jitter Science Faire at the UCSF Conference Center here in San Francisco. My ears direct my feet to investigate, and I find in Darwin's hands another controller with an immediately understood, wide-open conceptual space: a Snyderphonics Manta. Uses and techniques for the device immediately begin to spin from the center of my mind.

The Manta, as described on its maker's site, is a "touch-sensitive controller for audio and video with a hexagonal layout and programmable LED feedback." Like the Monome, what you press and what lights up are decoupled. You can display information programatically with the LEDs for sequencing and visual feedback. You can also rest easy in the default startup mode in which pads and lights are connected: what you press is what you see.

There are forty-eight hexagonal pads, two horizontal sliders and four buttons on the Manta's touch-sensitive face. In addition to simple touched/untouched state information, continuous streams of press intensity data are simultaneously provided by each pad. This can be used as velocity or pressure sensitivity. The sliders display only eight divisions in the LEDs running beside them, but you get gloriously smooth values from 0 to 4096 as output.

LEDs under the etched front plate give a warm glow beneath the interface elements, bright but soft at the edges with the shape defined by the metal masking above. The wooden frame creates a perfect sense of anachronism. It's as if Jules Verne tired of knobs and levers and designed a human interface device with no moving parts, infused with the luminescence of the deep. This is not simple poetic inclination from a music technology geek: with a bit of practice the Manta becomes fluid beneath one's fingers, like water.

The Manta dovetails nicely with Monome devices. A Monome button has only two states: pressed or not pressed. The play area of a Monome is strictly divided into 64, 128 or 256 of these states. It's about control to a depth of a single bit: on or off, with absolutely clear lines between the points of interaction. The Manta is fuzzier. Because the surface is flat, you can slide from point to point. The metal pads provide just enough tactile feedback to indicate transition between control elements. Glissandos are crazy fun. Take into consideration the continuous values generated by press intensity and the Manta is a flowing counterpart to the 1-bit perfection mechanism of the Monome.

Manta i/o is handled by a custom, audio rate Max/MSP object, [manta~], written by Brad Garton and Jeff Snyder with velocity detection algorithm by Angie Hugeback and centroid detection by R. Luke Dubois. [manta~] outputs data for things like sensor on/off, velocity, continuous value lists, slider position and sensor maximum lists. It also takes messages to directly set LED states and turn on unique and sensitive modes like turbo and hi-res. There is a full feature set of bells and whistles available, even an option to convert the entire surface of the Manta into a single, giant x/y controller. Max users won't have a lock on this arcane device for long: an app is in the works for mapping Manta output and behavior without the need for Max/MSP. I suspect, though, the main embracers of this device will, like the Monome community, always contain a high percentage of Max users.

As a Noisebridge member and hackerspace proponent, I'm happy to see Jeff did some of his Manta design and fabrication work at NYC Resistor. The build quality is exceptional. The Manta is in the same league as Monome: hand created, all parts sourced and made in the United States, ROHS compliant, solid like a century tree. 400mA of power is drawn over USB, which provides both juice and i/o. A svelte 0.873cm (11/32") thickness and feather weight means it's easy to take everywhere you will take your laptop. It even comes with a swanky neoprene case.

I'm working on some Max performance patches for the Manta, which I'll release here and in the Snyderphonics forums when complete. More on these soon, once my perfectionism has its last input. If you'd like to take a closer look, I'll also be showing off the Manta and one of these patches, Honeycomb, at the next Overlap.org Max/MSP/Jitter/Live Salon on 020090603.