Hey Folks,
I always wanted a DAW-Controller for Reaper but I'm pretty thrifty so I never found anything totally satisfying.
Then one day user @Tukan_Studios posted a self-designed Midi-Interface for his analog Soundcraft-Mixer. I was completely in love and wanted that too. So I searched for a mixer with motorfaders and Midi-Support and found Behringer DDX3216. This thing was published in 2001 and was sold back then for about 2.000€. Nowadays it's not available as new anymore but you can buy it really cheap on eBay. I bought mine for about 200€.
That thing has 16 Faders, that you can use twice by switching from 1-16 to 17-32. So I have 32 Tracks in control including Mute-Buttons and Panning Pods.
So I asked @Tukan_Studios for a little support and he helped me a lot. With ReaLean (by Helgoboss /
https://www.helgoboss.org/projects/realearn/) it was a cakewalk to integrate that thing in Reaper:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW7-47j7xXs
Like always there're a few disadvantages in this workaround:
- The Faders have only 7-bit, so just 128 Steps, that is not much.
- I can trigger the Mute-Events from the mixer to Reaper but not vice-versa. I don't know if I'm doing anything wrong or if it's just not working.
- The mixer doesn't provide Midi-Events for the Solo-Buttons (Goddamnit Uli, why???)
But there're also some advantages, I didn't mention yet:
- The mixer has also 16 Busses, so you could use it as a remote for another 16 Tracks. But the busses don't have Panning...
- You also can use the Faders for Aux, FX-Sends and -Returns, so all-in you could have a remote for 60 Tracks. That's pretty neat. But for these last ones you also don't have Panning.
- ReaLearn is integrated as a VSTi, so I have my Standard-Reaper-Project and don't have to start anything else before working with my remote.
- I managed to use the mixer as a percussion instrument with automation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPNs7QN8Ovc
That was fun! :-)