Korg made the Kaoss Pad famous: a flat XY surface that controls two synth parameters at once with a swipe of your thumb. The PS5 DualSense has the same surface built in — capacitive, multi-touch, clickable — and most people never use it for anything. This guide turns the DualSense touchpad into an XY MIDI controller for Ableton Live, Resolume, Bitwig, or any host that accepts MIDI CC. It is the simplest Kaoss Pad alternative for a producer who already owns a PlayStation.
- What you do: enable touchpad XY in Universal Controller MIDI, bind
CC 16andCC 17in your DAW, sweep with your thumb. - What you need: DualSense, Universal Controller MIDI v1.0+, any DAW or VJ app that takes MIDI CC.
- Time: 5 minutes.
- Cost vs. real Kaoss Pad: $0 vs. $200+.
Why the DualSense touchpad is underrated
Most controllers do not have a touchpad. The ones that do (Steam Controller, Xbox Elite Series 2's paddles excluded) treat it as a clickable mouse — not a continuous XY surface. The DualSense touchpad is 52 mm × 23 mm, capacitive, multi-touch, with a physical click. It tracks an absolute position across the whole surface, returns sub-pixel resolution, and clicks like a trackpad button. Map X and Y to CC and you have a Kaoss Pad alternative that fits in your hand. The Universal Controller MIDI bridge wraps the OS-level touch events and exposes them as standard 7-bit MIDI CCs.
What you'll need
- Universal Controller MIDI v1.0+ (download)
- PS5 DualSense or DualSense Edge
- Any host with MIDI CC input — Ableton Live, Resolume, Bitwig, Reaper, TouchDesigner, etc.
- macOS 12+ or Windows 10+
Step-by-step setup
1. Open the touchpad panel
Plug the controller in. In the bridge UI head to Settings → Touchpad. Toggle XY mode on. The default CC numbers are 16 for X and 17 for Y on MIDI channel 1.
2. Calibrate corners
The bridge ships with sensible defaults, but if you want clean 0–127 ranges across the full physical surface, hit Calibrate corners and drag a finger to each corner when prompted. Takes ten seconds.
3. Set the smoothing
Capacitive touchpads jitter at the pixel level. The bridge applies a one-euro filter by default at 0.15. Raise to 0.25 for buttery sweeps, drop to 0.05 for instant response.
# Bridge config — touchpad smoothing
touchpad.smoothing = 0.15 # default
touchpad.smoothing = 0.05 # fast, slightly jittery
touchpad.smoothing = 0.25 # creamy, slight lag4. Bind CC 16 + 17 in your host
In Ableton Live: hit Cmd-M, click any parameter, swipe the touchpad horizontally to bind CC 16, vertically for CC 17. The Wavetable's X-Y morph pair is a classic candidate. In Resolume: right-click an effect's 2D parameter, pick Edit MIDI, swipe.
5. Wire the touchpad click
The physical press is a separate input — a discrete Note 70 on channel 1 by default. Map it to:
- Snapshot the current XY position — bind to a Max for Live snapshot device so a click freezes the filter where it is.
- Freeze a delay tail — momentary freeze on press, release returns to wet/dry mix.
- Tap tempo / arm clip — in Resolume, fire the current column.
6. Optional — multi-touch as a second pair
Pro unlocks two-finger tracking. The second touch sends CC 18 (X2) and CC 19 (Y2) so you can drive two XY pairs at once — one finger on a filter, another on a chorus, no looking. The Ableton MIDI mapping shortcuts are worth memorising once you start binding everything.
Default touchpad mapping
| Input | Type | MIDI | Default use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Touchpad X (primary touch) | CC | CC 16, channel 1 | Filter cutoff / XY pad horizontal |
| Touchpad Y (primary touch) | CC | CC 17, channel 1 | Resonance / XY pad vertical |
| Touchpad X (second touch, Pro) | CC | CC 18, channel 1 | Second XY pair X |
| Touchpad Y (second touch, Pro) | CC | CC 19, channel 1 | Second XY pair Y |
| Touchpad click | Note | Note 70, channel 1 | Snapshot / freeze / arm |
| Swipe left edge → right | Note | Note 71, channel 1 | Cycle preset / next snapshot (Pro) |
Pro tips and troubleshooting
- Lift-off sends CC 0. By default the bridge holds the last value when your finger leaves the pad — toggle
Latch on liftif you want it to snap to zero instead. Useful for momentary effects. - Need finer resolution? Switch to 14-bit CC in the touchpad panel. This sends a paired MSB+LSB on adjacent CC numbers (CC 16 + CC 48) for 16,384 steps per axis instead of 128. Most modern hosts support 14-bit CC natively.
- Touchpad click also fires when you sweep hard. The button is physically below the surface — gentle sweeps will not click. Adjust your sweep technique, or disable the click note in the bridge.
- Two-finger gestures behaving oddly. The DualSense touchpad supports two simultaneous touches max. A third finger is ignored. Plan your patches accordingly.
- Bluetooth vs USB-C touch latency. Touchpad CC over Bluetooth lands at ~12 ms. USB-C is ~3 ms. Both are usable; USB-C is gig-grade.
Sample patches to try
- Ableton Auto Filter: X → Frequency, Y → Resonance. Click → Drive on.
- Wavetable: X → Wavetable position, Y → Filter morph.
- Resolume Trapcode FX: X → Particle wind, Y → Particle gravity.
- Bitwig Grid: X → LFO rate, Y → LFO amount. Sub-bass wobble in your thumb.
The touchpad is the most underused input on any controller you own. Drop Universal Controller MIDI in and the next time you tweak a filter, do it with a sweep instead of a knob.