Can we have some way of shifting control surface mappings around the mixer?

[death]

In traktion, I used to be able to set up a control surface to map to the volume controls of the first 8 tracks, and then move that block of controllers around so that they could address any 8 tracks in my mix. I can do the same thing in Live, but that's partly because of the python scripting that units like the launchkontrol xl ship with.

I'd love to be able to do something like this in reaper. I've been enjoying the track grouping functions, as this allows me to set up an 8 track 'mixer' as the first 8 tracks in my project, and then link the volume and pan controls to other tracks further along. Great for setting up a master mix, but still not ideal when you want to get in amongst your drum group and get hands on.

i notice the sws extensions now have functions enabling you to cut and paste channel grouping settings, potentially allowing one to set up some kind of macro that moves those linkages around, but so far my attempts to make it work have mainly ended in crashing.

I like the option to hard link tracks to controllers, and I like the option to use group tracks to organise control logistics, but I'd still really like to be able to drop in anywhere in a large mix and have 8 sliders map to the 8 tracks I'm looking at.

In other words, I'd like an extension of the 'adjust volume of selected track' action.

I think, basically, the best version would be a bunch of actions which adjusted the volume of the track after the selected track, 2 tracks after the selected track etc etc, so that you could map as many controls as you wanted, and then click on the track you wanted to be '1' relative to your controller and mix to your hearts content.

Another possibility could be a 'adjust volume of first visible track' function, so that we could use snapshots to adjust what the controls address.

In some ways, both would be ideal! You could have one bank set up for roving instant control wherever you click you mouse, and another for master project control, with a bunch of snapshots giving you buss channels, returns etc etc

The current hard linking system is great if you have a massive mackie control desk, but if, like myself, most of your peripherals have 8 controls tops and you tend to take advantage of reaper's awesome track flexibility to create weird and wonderful device chains and layers, it isn't that practical in a project with 60-100 tracks and sub tracks.

Of course, if there is an obvious way to do this that I've been missing, apologies for taking up forum space, and can someone please point me in the direction of the page of the manual I clearly didn't read? Cheers.

[death]

Found a way of hacking it, sort of.

Set up 8 tracks and assign them as group master for groups one to eight. Link their parameters to your hardware.

Make a custom action using the SWS 'Set selected track to group X (default flags)' actions, interleaved with 'go to next track' actions. Then go to the track group dialogue and set the 'slave' option as the group flag default.

Finish it off with seven 'Go to previous track, keeping track selection' commands

Now when you click on a track and launch the macro, it will set that track and the eight that follow it to be controlled by your master 8 tracks.

Finally, make a shortcut to the 'Remove track grouping' action. When you are done with this 8 tracks, hit that shortcut to disconnect them. That's the only clunky thing about the process, but I can't think of a way to select a new starting track and then have the macro remove previous mappings before defining the new ones, as the whole thing is leveraged off of the selected track feature, and you break the link to the previous selection by selecting a new track.

To neaten it all up use the track manager to hide your 1-8 control tracks in both mcp and tcp, and you have an invisible reassignable mixing platform.

That'll do me for the moment. Love the flexibility of this program. That said, a built in system that bypassed all these action chains would be more efficient.

[death]

Hmm. And if you are close enough to the end of the mixer such that there are only, say, four tracks beyond the one you select, the last track in the selection will always be group 8, as the action will keep remapping it till it gets to the end of it's command line, and your back selection will roll back beyond your first track, so perfect it definitely ain't...

Is there some way of introducing if.. then logic into action lists? Or should I be learning to program actions from scratch at that point?

[Banned]

Yes, REAPER already supports "shifting control surface mappings around the mixer" - at least it does so for OSC control surfaces. However, this requires that you're actually using a 'control surface' setup, rather than 'hard linking', i.e. using the 'Learn' window to set up bindings.

NB: this OSC Control Surface feature can also be used to hook up a *MIDI* controller to REAPER, via some external OSC<-->MIDI conversion scheme - I actually use this method to connect MIDI controllers to REAPER all the time - not in the least because this also provides 'feedback' to the controllers (unlike 'learned' bindings).

PS: it's quite funny to see your username followed by "Human being with feelings".

[death]

Ok. Yeah, feedback, control surface, all good.

What do you use to map your midi controllers to osc. I currently use a NI kore, which I have set up on midi mode to do a whole bunch of functions, but running concurrently as a mackie classic control surface just for the jog wheel (I couldn't get it to behave smoothly with any of the midi jog wheel actions, but it works fine if I set it up as a control surface, and then assign all the other knobs and buttons with midi as usual). I also have a launchkontrol xl, which is the item I'd like to hook up to control mixer functions in reaper.

Ha, Yeah. Death. It was my gaming tag when I was 15 (reading too much Terry Pratchett or something). I couldn't get my usual no-one-ever-has-this name when I signed up to the forum (who else actually uses a name as stupid as manhippo?) so I tried it and was astonished to discover that on a forum for a product called Reaper, with a scythe for a logo, no one yet had the nickname death. Still a human with feelings.