Controlling Reaper with Edirol PCR-300

ziflingus · 10-25-2009, 03:17 PM

Hi,
I was wondering whether It is possible to program the following actions in Reaper, by my keyboard\Any other midi controller:
1) Making faders 1-8, knobs 1-8, buttons 1-8 etc., to switch between channels 1-8 to channels 9-16, 17-24 etc.
2) Using a "shift" key - that when is pressed and held, some buttons\knobs\faders change their functionality (eg. when i press and hold a specific button, solo button for track 1 becomes "arm for recording" button).
3) Enabling output of control messages from Reaper to my keyboard, so that when I press mute track 1 using the mouse, the button on my keyboard responsible for muting track 1 will light up.

If anybody knows how to perform any of these actions in Reaper, I would be more than happy.

thanks,

mrlucmorin · 10-25-2009, 03:49 PM

Hi,

Some of it is possible if program the PCR to be in Mackie emulation. Then using the Mackie control surface in Reaper, Reaper would respond to those commands.

It shouldn't be too hard actually. Mackie mode relies on note messages, so if you know how to program the controllers on your PCR, then it should work.

Look at this page:

http://home.comcast.net/~robbowers11/MCMap.htm

Tell me if you need more help, as I have a PCR-800 and I could test some stuff. I don't use my PCR in this mode as I have a BCR2000.

Regards.

ziflingus · 10-25-2009, 04:15 PM

Hi,Thanks for the reply.
I did not know it was possible to create a control map which emulates the mackie control, so that's cool.
I havn't done that yet, but when i tried to add a mackie control under "control surfaces" (using Edirol PCR 2 as midi input, and Edirol PCR as midi output, i got the following response:
"Control Surface: Error opening midi inputs and outputs"

I assume that without a virtual midi mapper such as the following, this configuration won't work.
http://www.arthunkins.com/MCUEmulationScripts.txt (which totally messes up my midi BTW).

Correct me if i'm wrong...
I wish I could emulate the mackie control with my PCR

mrlucmorin · 10-25-2009, 07:39 PM

I think you're getting this error because the MIDI ports of the PCR are enabled in the Reaper MIDI device configuration. Make sure all MIDI ports are disabled. You might have to restart Reaper to make sure.

Hope this helps

ziflingus · 10-26-2009, 11:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrlucmorin

Hi,

Some of it is possible if program the PCR to be in Mackie emulation. Then using the Mackie control surface in Reaper, Reaper would respond to those commands.

It shouldn't be too hard actually. Mackie mode relies on note messages, so if you know how to program the controllers on your PCR, then it should work.

Look at this page:

http://home.comcast.net/~robbowers11/MCMap.htm

Tell me if you need more help, as I have a PCR-800 and I could test some stuff. I don't use my PCR in this mode as I have a BCR2000.

Regards.

I managed to use my pcr as a mackie control surface, but i cant seem to manage to program any of the midi events.
Do you have any experience in that area? Can you give me guidelines of how to do so?

mrlucmorin · 10-26-2009, 04:24 PM

Ziflingus,

I'm assuming the PCR-300 defines 2 USB midi ports as does the PCR-800.

What you need to do is use one port as the notes event port, and the other one as the Control Surface port.

So I tested it here with Port 1 as the "regular" MIDI port to send notes to Reaper. I'm using Port 2 as the Mackie emulation port.

So far it works as expected.

Regards.

ziflingus · 10-26-2009, 11:41 PM

Thanks for the reply.
I did what you said, and it works fine, which means, I get no errors regarding my midi ports, but i still cannot use my surface to control reaper.
It seems, that the control map i'm using sends the wrong midi messages.

What PCR Control map do you use to emulate the mackie control?
Is it one of the default-factory ones, or is it something you programmed yourself (using the map linked me to)? Do you think you could export it using PCR-Editor, and upload the file?

Thanks

mrlucmorin · 10-27-2009, 03:53 AM

Hi,

Well, like I mentioned, I use my BCR2000 as a control surface, not my PCR-800.

What I did was use the Mackie/MIDI map to create my own test control map. I really only mapped a few items such as Start/Stop/Record.

I don't know of any pre-made control map for the PCR, so you'll probably have to roll your own.

Regards.

ziflingus · 10-27-2009, 11:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrlucmorin

Hi,

Well, like I mentioned, I use my BCR2000 as a control surface, not my PCR-800.

What I did was use the Mackie/MIDI map to create my own test control map. I really only mapped a few items such as Start/Stop/Record.

I don't know of any pre-made control map for the PCR, so you'll probably have to roll your own.

Regards.

Thanks.
Anybody knows how to program faders\knobs on edirol PCR to emulate Mackie Control?

yhertogh · 10-28-2009, 01:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ziflingus

Thanks.
Anybody knows how to program faders\knobs on edirol PCR to emulate Mackie Control?

Maybe a stupid question, but how do you the edirol even supports this ? Is it described in the documentation ? The MCU protocol is quite elaborate, and goes beyond sending simple messages back and forth.

EDIT: I just checked http://www.rolandus.com/community/in...9&tab=hands-on and from this i can see that the faders aint automated. So why dont you just use Reaper's Actions Menu and the MIDI CC Learn feature?

Yves

Yves

ziflingus · 10-28-2009, 08:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by yhertogh

Maybe a stupid question, but how do you the edirol even supports this ? Is it described in the documentation ? The MCU protocol is quite elaborate, and goes beyond sending simple messages back and forth.

EDIT: I just checked http://www.rolandus.com/community/in...9&tab=hands-on and from this i can see that the faders aint automated. So why dont you just use Reaper's Actions Menu and the MIDI CC Learn feature?

Yves

Yves

I did use the CC Learn function, but was looking for a way to do any of the actions I mentioned on the begining of the thread

Quote:

Originally Posted by ziflingus

Hi,
I was wondering whether It is possible to program the following actions in Reaper, by my keyboard\Any other midi controller:
1) Making faders 1-8, knobs 1-8, buttons 1-8 etc., to switch between channels 1-8 to channels 9-16, 17-24 etc.
2) Using a "shift" key - that when is pressed and held, some buttons\knobs\faders change their functionality (eg. when i press and hold a specific button, solo button for track 1 becomes "arm for recording" button).
3) Enabling output of control messages from Reaper to my keyboard, so that when I press mute track 1 using the mouse, the button on my keyboard responsible for muting track 1 will light up.

If anybody knows how to perform any of these actions in Reaper, I would be more than happy.

thanks,

mrlucmorin · 10-28-2009, 10:05 AM

I just realized that faders in Mackie mode are actually pitchbend messages.

I'm not too sure if the faders on the PCR can be programmed to send pitchbend messages. At first glance I'd say no, but I don't have enough knowledge of MIDI messages to be sure.

Unless there's a way to "trick" the PCR into sending pitchbend messages from the faders, it can't be done. I wondoer if it would be possible using PRN/NPRN/SysEx messages ?

What you want to do can easily be achieved through CC learn (as was mentioned by yhertogh).

Regards.

ziflingus · 10-30-2009, 01:17 AM

Does anyone know how to implement the actions in my original message, in reaper, without emulating the mackie control (maybe by using the CC learn in the action list)?

saresu.bass · 07-25-2013, 11:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ziflingus

Hi,
I was wondering whether It is possible to program the following actions in Reaper, by my keyboard\Any other midi controller:
1) Making faders 1-8, knobs 1-8, buttons 1-8 etc., to switch between channels 1-8 to channels 9-16, 17-24 etc.
2) Using a "shift" key - that when is pressed and held, some buttons\knobs\faders change their functionality (eg. when i press and hold a specific button, solo button for track 1 becomes "arm for recording" button).
3) Enabling output of control messages from Reaper to my keyboard, so that when I press mute track 1 using the mouse, the button on my keyboard responsible for muting track 1 will light up.

If anybody knows how to perform any of these actions in Reaper, I would be more than happy.

thanks,

Hi Ziflingus,

I have a PCR 500 and I want to do exactly the above! Did u get any results?

I think the question is: Where and what function in Reaper allow for example: "Making faders 1-8, knobs 1-8, buttons 1-8 etc., to switch between channels 1-8 to channels 9-16, 17-24 etc."