Control Surface Integration (CSI) Technical Feature Discussion

[Geoff Waddington]

FYI update.

Have thought through the "engine" part of this and am about to start coding said engine.

Basics are this:

External control surface can send message to Reaper.
Reaper can execute ordered list of things when it receives message.
Reaper can send feedback to external control surface(s) in response.
Reaper can send message to control surface(s) whenever a certain event happens in Reaper.

There is an incredible amount of detail missing but that's the basics.

[airon]

Pretty neat Geoff. I'm up for testing whatever you implement.

My current setup uses one control surface(the basic i-hate-mackie csurf of the MCU), 5 midi devices, one jog wheel device and one OSC tablet. At the very least, I'd like to give my control surface a proper workout, and likely everything that can blink.

[orbiterred]

Hey Geoff, would love to help test on this. I just got a Faderport 8 up and running with Klinke. It works great for what it does but it's definitely not "bug-free". I'm not much of a coder, but happy to be a guinea pig!

Cheers from Charlottetown!

[kurthendrix2013]

Everything everyone posted are very specific and seem to follow along the post I entered today.
Here is my post:

Help, question RE: Midi Mapping
I really enjoy Reaper. I've got my first paid session using Reaper but ran into a problem. This software does not seem to save midi mapping Faders/Knobs/pads on my Novation SL25 Remote. Have I missed something here?

I noticed that Reaper does not recognize the Control Surface. I use Novation Automap v 4.7 for my SL25 MkI.
I tried using HUI but Reaper gives me an erroe that says "The following Midi inputs could not be opened" and "The following Midi outputs could not be opened".

I've spent days trying to get my Novation SL25 Remote (Midi Controller) to work.
I need this to Automap or set up manually individual CC's for Faders/Knobs/pads....


Thank you for any guidance.
Last edited by kurthendrix2013; Today at 12:45 AM. Reason: Exhausted all my resources
kurthendrix2013 is online now Report Post Edit/Delete Message

[nofish]

Originally Posted by kurthendrix2013

I tried using HUI but Reaper gives me an erroe that says "The following Midi inputs could not be opened" and "The following ... could not be opened".

There are two places in Reaper to assign MIDI controllers:

1. Preferences -> MIDI Devices

2. Preferences -> Control/OSC/web

make sure that the same MIDI devices (ports) aren't assigned to both at once, otherwise it would give this "The following ... could not be opened" error.

[Geoff Waddington]

FYI update:

Engine coding is proceeding along quite nicely

[matthewjumpsoffbuildings]

exciting to hear, really keen to see an alpha

[nofish]

Nice to hear it's coming along.

Adding to ideas / requests:
An option to auto color (or otherwise indicate) in Reaper which tracks are currently controlled by the surface.

[airon]

That's an aspect we may wish to present to Cockos for Reaper v6.

Better selected track highlighting. Optional independent track selection by the control surface, per control-surface option.

Multi-operator setups start to become possible that way.

[nofish]

Sure would be nice if Cockos implements this.

Actually I was curious and experimented a little with this with a mod of Klinke's plugin.
This is admittedly a crude version of it but you get the basic ghist (here I'm switching track banks back and forth and Reaper instantly giving feedback which tracks are currently under control, coloring them red). It's only a proof of concept though (too many bugs currently to make it public / add to Klinke's plugin).

But as it's already possible now (to some extend at least) without waiting for Cockos implementing this, hence this request here.

https://i.imgur.com/YA0mHPj.gif

[airon]

Certainly an attempt worth presenting to whoever will work on theme updates for Reaper 6. They might bake this in to an element of the MCP, so colouring the whole track would become less of an issue.

Nice work. Has anyone modded the Klinke csurf to include access to automatable send volume ? That an the occasional freeze is keeping me away from that.

Looking forward to seeing what Geoff has done.

[nofish]

Originally Posted by airon

Certainly an attempt worth presenting to whoever will work on theme updates for Reaper 6. They might bake this in to an element of the MCP, so colouring the whole track would become less of an issue.

That's a good idea. I've already thought about what would be the best way to do this currently but haven't come up with anything satisfying. Coloring the whole track - temporarly wipes previously assigned custom colors, not really good. So indeed havimg a dedicated element for this would be best. Thanks.

Has anyone modded the Klinke csurf to include access to automatable send volume ?

Not that I know of, would like to have this myself.

[Geoff Waddington]

Originally Posted by airon

Certainly an attempt worth presenting to whoever will work on theme updates for Reaper 6. They might bake this in to an element of the MCP, so colouring the whole track would become less of an issue.

Absolutely agree, I'm even thinking of things like, when you hit record the TCP panel expands vertically all the tracks in record mode to give you better visual presentation of the recording waveforms.

Another one re: themes, imagine going from tracking theme to mix theme at the touch of a control surface button, and hey, this button looks like a good candidate for a phone/pad, but of course could also be a hardware surface button, all up to you.

The whole idea is to allow you to make highly customizable maps of Reaper responses to control surface input, using ALL your available surfaces -- hardware/phone/pad/web/etc. to create a large format surface made up of various software/hardware modules.

Think of a large format console, where you order by module like this:
Input Channels - 24
Aux Channels - 16
Compressors -- 4
etc.

Let's say we have the following modules:
8 Channel fader packs - 2
Softube Console 1 - 1
MCU - 1
iPhone - 1 (possibly more)
iPad - 1 (possibly more)

The whole idea of this open source project is to allow you to make a large format surface with the modules (hardware/phone/pad/web/etc.) at your disposal.

The whole reason it is open source is that there's no commercial incentive for any control surface manufacturers to want to support integration with competitors hardware and there's no consortium, so all I can say on that is... well.. donations accepted

Imagine being the drummer on a studio gig, and by launching an App on your iPad, you get automatic discovery (via bonjour, etc.) of Reaper running in the control room, it automatically sets up an OSC connection, and Voila! you have your own personal monitor mix on your iPad. That's just one example of where this is going.

OK now imagine you can have many such maps, almost like saved presets but really more like layers on a digital board, for your scenarios/workflows/setups.

As far as future work, this could be extended to other DAWS as well, but that's way down the road

[ivansc]

Geoff: You are an absolute star, mate. Sincerely hope you bring this off in the near-ish future!
FWIW I think you are simultaneously addressing SO many little and not so little Reaper niggles with this.
More power to ya!

[Geoff Waddington]

Originally Posted by ivansc

Geoff: You are an absolute star, mate. Sincerely hope you bring this off in the near-ish future!
FWIW I think you are simultaneously addressing SO many little and not so little Reaper niggles with this.
More power to ya!

Thanks man !

Yeah, it's starting to develop into something workable, should be about a month or two to a working engine (MIDI only for now) and then... sigh... the editor... so that you can customize said engine. That is going to be a bear to get right, but looking forward to the challenge.

[Geoff Waddington]

Wow, one of those super weeks you get every now and then, mostly by luck

Pleased to announce a working prototype -- maps are hardwired in code right now, so next step is to read/write map file, then we can put out an alpha.

A billion details yet to solve, but thought I'd throw out some terminology and explain basic architecture so that you good folks can find holes in the thinking as early and as often as possible.

Seriously, please make sure to point out any design errors/omissions you see, let's get this thing as "right" as possible from the git go, it's way easier to solve problems earlier in the cycle !

OK, here's the basic architecture from the "Russian Dolls" code viewpoint:

Control Surface
Contains Components (e.g. Mute switch, Fader, etc.)
You can name a Component anything you like.
Component tells Reaper to perform an Action (more general than Reaper Actions)
Component can receive feedback from Reaper
Arbitrary Surface Components can be gathered together and treated as a Channel

So we have:

Control Surface
--Components
--Channels
----Components

Now on the Reaper side we have the functionality that can be controlled by the surfaces:

Reaper itself has Actions -- global things like Transport
Reaper Tracks -- Actions are things like Fader, Mute, etc.
Actions -- not Reaper Actions, but rather arbitrary Actions than can be performed like "Adjust Fader", "Toggle Mute", etc.
You can name an Action anything you like.

So we have:

Reaper
--Actions
--Track
----Actions

with Control Surface:

Control Surface
--Components
--Channels
----Components

Components and Reaper Actions are linked by names you define, name a Component and Action the same and they're linked, it's that simple.

The only caveat is that names must be unique in a given map file.

I'm sure there be dragons somewhere, but the Mackie basics, Channels, Transport, and Bank are working right now, along with this bonus -- Pushing top switch on rotary encoder switches between Pan and Width.

It's all described with just map entries that are saved in a file that you can customize

Really, really, need your input -- now's the time !!

What do you think ?

What's wrong ?

What could be better ?

[matthewjumpsoffbuildings]

this already sounds amazing, even if it goes no further than just reading a custom map file, it will be invaluable to getting control surfaces workin with reaper

thanks for the hard work already, cant wait to try an alpha

[Spurk]

Originally Posted by nofish

There are two places in Reaper to assign MIDI controllers:

1. Preferences -> MIDI Devices

2. Preferences -> Control/OSC/web

make sure that the same MIDI devices (ports) aren't assigned to both at once, otherwise it would give this "The following ... could not be opened" error.

Hi,
Can someone tell us if the HUI update for the Novation Launch Control XL MKII is compatible with Reaper?

[Geoff Waddington]

OK, pleased to report the first performance test gets a pass.

Inserting or deleting 1000 tracks takes under a second on my system, 2000 tracks about 3 seconds.

The EuCon implementation I wrote uses the same "rebuild from ground up" strategy but it takes a LOT longer to complete.

[Diego]

Great news Geoff!

[nofish]

@Geoff, I'm following with excitment.

Wondering, how do we know what is currently being controlled (e.g. which bank of tracks, or which plugins?) Does the MCU display work with your implementation or do you plan any other ways ?

[Geoff Waddington]

Originally Posted by nofish

@Geoff, I'm following with excitment.

Wondering, how do we know what is currently being controlled (e.g. which bank of tracks, or which plugins?) Does the MCU display work with your implementation or do you plan any other ways ?

Yes the display is full supported, well, will be...

Also will be supporting things like temp mode, as you move the fader the display shows volume in db, then, after you let go of the fader the display reverts back to track name.

Lots of other display trick goodies in mind, stay tuned

[Geoff Waddington]

It woiks !

Well, OK, hardwired and primitive, but here's where we are...

The engine works and is a bit under 300k in size, this is good.

I'll describe my hardwired setup, I think perhaps an example is the best way to describe the software.

Below is a line entry in
a proposed map file
describing a MIDI surface called
Avid Mix 1 which has
8 faders and uses
MIDI channel 0 for input and
MIDI channel 0 for output

Other surfaces follow

"Avid Mix1" 8, 0, 0
"Avid Mix2" 8, 1, 1
"Softube Console 1" 0, 7, 6
"Avid Control" 4, 2, 2

Order matters, the tracks will be laid out consecutively on Avid Mix1, Avid Mix2, and Avid Control.

We can name actions for banking tracks and set a page size, here it is 20 since there are 8 + 8 + 4 faders:

Track_IncDecAction "Dec1" -1
Track_IncDecAction "Inc1" 1
Track_IncDecAction "DecPage" -20
Track_IncDecAction "IncPage" 20

Now let's hook some surface widgets up to trigger the actions:

PushButton_ControlSurfaceWidget "DecPage" 0x90 0x2e 0x7f
PushButton_ControlSurfaceWidget "IncPage" 0x90 0x2f 0x7f
PushButton_ControlSurfaceWidget "Dec1" 0x90 0x30 0x7f
PushButton_ControlSurfaceWidget "Inc1" 0x90 0x31 0x7f

The name Dec1 ties the midi message sent by the surface widget to a corresponding action.

When the button is pushed the action is invoked.

I preferred a different setup for the Mute, Solo, RecArm, and Select switches on my Avid Artist devices, and so i just switched the appropriate midi message numbers in the file to make it so.

On my setup, this is how it maps
Solo -> RecArm
Mute -> Select
RecArm -> Mute
Select -> Mute

All of this stuff taken together is called a map.

That is
Control Surfaces
--Widgets
--Channels
----Widgets

Reaper
--Actions
--Tracks
----Actions

All that is one map.

You can have many maps open and cycle between them.

Since there is no dedicated Master Track in my setup, I anchored the Master to the rightmost position (Channel 4 on the Avid Control), and yes folks, anchoring uses GUIDS

I setup the RecArm button on Channel 4 to cycle maps and built 2 (silly example) maps , one with RecArm enabled and one without.

I can now press RecArm on the Master to disable RecArm on the other channels.

I'm using a 215 track project (15 tracks with audio and 200 empty tracks ) as test case and switching maps is instantaneous.

Now we have to carefully select a file format for these maps that is easy for us to read and edit.

That won't happen today, but file format suggestions always welcomed, we want to get this right, so that older stuff isn't rendered useless down the road.

Once we have that, alpha testing can begin !

[Geoff Waddington]

Just put a pre alpha build up:

https://stash.reaper.fm/v/31711/CSI%20pre%20alpha.zip

This looks for MCU like devices on MIDI inputs 1, 2, 3.

64 bit only for Mac and PC now, does anyone still need 32 bit ?

Mute, Solo, Select, and RecArm will be mixed up.

Banking will perhaps be quite strange

The whole idea is just to test that it loads and doesn't blow up

Have at 'er, let me know what you find.

[flipotto]

Yes - I still need for 32 bit reaper.

[nofish]

Me too, 32 bit Win, please.

[Geoff Waddington]

Originally Posted by flipotto

Yes - I still need for 32 bit reaper.

Win or Mac ?

[flipotto]

sorry - windows

[Klangfarben]

Hi Geoff, thanks for the great work. Will this work with an Avid S3 or Artist Mix?

[Spurk]

hi, thx for the link.
Please, can you tell us where to put the .dll?

[ivansc]

looking forward to having a play when I am over in france on my own for a week or so! RSN.

[nofish]

Originally Posted by Spurk

hi, thx for the link.
Please, can you tell us where to put the .dll?

[Reaper dir]\Plugins

edit:
That's for portable installs.

For non-portable installs:
Run action 'Show REAPER resource path in explorer'
-> 'Plugins' directory

[Geoff Waddington]

Originally Posted by Klangfarben

Hi Geoff, thanks for the great work. Will this work with an Avid S3 or Artist Mix?

Yes, I'm currently using it with 2 Artist Mixes and an Artist Control, that's what I'm using for testing, the protocol is set to Mackie mode, obviously we can't use EuCon here as it's proprietary.

Don't know about an S3.

[nofish]

Ok, I gave it a first test drive (in 64 bit Reaper).

I can choose the "Control Surface Integrator" in Control/OSC/Web.
I see the "Here ya go" pop up.

But that's it currently. No reaction in Reaper when I wiggle the controls on my BCR (which is running in Mackie emu mode).

Maybe because I don't understand this:

This looks for MCU like devices on MIDI inputs 1, 2, 3.

Sorry, what does the numbering refer to ?

[Geoff Waddington]

Originally Posted by nofish

Ok, I gave it a first test drive (in 64 bit Reaper).

I can choose the "Control Surface Integrator" in Control/OSC/Web.
I see the "Here ya go" pop up.

But that's it currently. No reaction in Reaper when I wiggle the controls on my BCR (which is running in Mackie emu mode).

Maybe because I don't understand this:



Sorry, what does the numbering refer to ?

Midi channels 1, 2, and 3,

Right now it's hardwired for those Midi channels, this will all be in a map soon, so you can modify it.

[nofish]

Hm, still nothing.

What does "looks for MCU like devices" mean, maybe it doesn't detect my BCR2000 ?

edit:
It sends Pitchbends on channels 1-8 to control track volume (among other things), according to the MCU table here:

http://web.archive.org/web/200801260...ules/MCMap.htm

and does work with Klinke's plugin and Reaper's native MCU plugin.

[Spurk]

Originally Posted by nofish

[Reaper dir]\Plugins

edit:
That's for portable installs.

For non-portable installs:
Run action 'Show REAPER resource path in explorer'
-> 'Plugins' directory

cheers

[Geoff Waddington]

Just put up a new build.

Turned on the debug console so that now you can see if midi messages are being received.

Let me know if you can get to the point of at least seeing some incoming midi

The usual minimal suspects are implemented -- Transport and Tracks (Mute, Solo, Fader, etc.) including push top switch on rotary to switch between pan and width.

The Master track appears in the normal track list but you can lock any track to make it immovable.
Just Select Track(s) and press the Mute button on the Master Track (not the MCU master, the one showing in the track list named Master) -- this locks any selected tracks in place on the surface.

Press Solo on the Master to release any locks on any tracks that are selected.

One more trick -- switchable maps are one of the big features of this software so a silly map is included. Imagine you were switching from tracking to mixing and you didn't want to hit record by mistake, I know, more than a bit contrived

If you press RecArm on the Master all the other RecArms cease to function, press again to restore RecArm functionality, that's an extremely trivial example of how you can use maps to change behaviour.

The sooner you folks can test this stuff the quicker we can get it out the door

[matthewjumpsoffbuildings]

hey Geoff, cant wait to test this, im wondering though, in its current form will it work with the Icon QCon Pro? or is it just set up for Mackie control surfaces currently?

[nofish]

Some progress with new build (thanks for the 32 bit build btw., so I can test in my usual setup).

Tried to do a screengrab to show exactly what I'm doing:

0:00
Reaper's native MCU plugin selected, move knobs for faders 1-3, can be seen in Reaper that the track faders move accordingly.

0:07
Change to your plugin.

0:23
Move knobs for faders 1-3.
Debug console shows input yay !
But track faders don't move. Any idea why that is ?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rbrowz9h60...Test1.gif?dl=1

Funny sidenote:
I hear a General MIDI piano playing each time I do something in Reaper (e.g. select / add / remove tracks) while your plugin is enabled.

I think that's because currently it's sending MIDI feedback to all available ports and so triggers the Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth.
I assume that will change when we can select select the MIDI ports for your plugin like for the other surface plugins. ?