New BCR2000 control surface plugin available

[ajaym]

Hi folks

The Behringer BCR2000 control surface plugin previously available for Sonar users has now been ported to Reaper.

This plugin provides full duplex control of all key DAW functions, including

channel gain, pan, mute, solo
send gain and pan
transport control - play, pause, rewind, go to end, record
Navigation - previous/next measure, previous/next marker
Per-track record arm
Full scrub control with coarse and fine scrubbing
Full control of up to 7 insert FX per channel, with up to 120 parameters per FX. Each 'page' controls 24 parameters at a time,while still allowing access to the core track parameters (gain, mute, solo, record arm)
Coarse and fine parameter setting for any controlled parameter.
Track selection from control surface

Full console UI with electronic 'scribble strips' for each button and encoder, so you can see exactly what's controlling what.

The plugin allows the BCR to still be used with other applications; it does not require any Mackie emulation software.

Full source code is also available

Go to www.sourceforge.net and search for BCR2000

I have tested this fairly comprehensively on several large Reaper test projects (and it has been in use by Sonar users for quite some time now), but I would of appreciate feedback on any issues or comments you might have with it.

I'd like to thank all the people who contribute to the developer forum for their assistance in helping me get this ported. It was much appreciated, folks!

[nicholas]

Thanks for this, off to investigate now.

[Susan G]

Hi aj-

I love your SONAR version -- looking forward to checking this out!

Thanks-

-Susan

Edit: I'm not seeing it on that page, though, just the SONAR one and the SysEx converter.

[Phoby]

It looks like the .dll file for reaper is contained within the version 1.2 download for Sonar. Have not tried it yet, just downloaded to have a look at it...


Thanks for this.

[Susan G]

Ah, okay. It didn't look like the file had been updated, but I was only looking at the date.

Thanks!

-Susan

[Susan G]

Hi aj-

So far no problems, it's working great! I really missed this in REAPER after relying on it so heavily in SONAR.

I'm also able to use a different preset vis MIDI-OX and MIDI Yoke, as you suggested.

Thanks so much!

-Susan

P.S. You might want to update the description on SourceForge to include REAPER if you think it's ready to go. There's no indication on either the Search or Download pages that it supports REAPER now.

[ajaym]

EUREKA!

This morning I had a quick look at this 'dead time' issue as has been reported by others and I can now reproduce the encoder behaviour that some people have encountered with Reaper. Luckily, it's just a BCR setting and can be fixed in 30 seconds.

The problem appears to be that some software - Reason seems to be the main culprit - alters the default global 'dead time' setting, which on my BCR is still at its factory default of 90ms. Now, this, along with the MIDI update interval setting, is not terribly well documented in Behringer's manuals, and I have to admit I didn't know about them. Having read the template guide, which as far as I can see is the only place they are mentioned, Behringer don't explain anything about them. From experimentation I have figured out that the dead time setting, which can be set from 0 -> 1000ms, alters the BCR response to an incoming MIDI message so that when an encoder is rotated, any MIDI feedback that occurs within the dead time interval is ignored.

The MIDI update interval, on the other hand, controls the frequency with which the BCR will send MIDI events back to the host. Its factory default value is 2ms. Setting it to a higher value will cause control movements to become progressively 'jumpier'. There is no reason to change the interval, therefore, from its 2ms default.

Now everything falls into place. With dead time set to anything less than 30ms or so, I start seeing the reported behaviour. This will be because Reaper is feeding back the previous encoder setting and the short dead time window causes the BCR to immediately reset the encoder. This causes the 'fighting'.

The cure is therefore to set the dead time to a higher value. It can, in fact, be quite high in almost any situation without causing a problem. To see exactly how it works, try setting it to 1000ms. Now while you wiggle an encoder on the BCR, also move the corresponding track fader. See how anything you do to that fader within 1 second of moving the BCR encoder is ignored. Then the encoder will suddenly jump to the final fader setting. With shorter dead times, you will see that this period shortens progressively.

A dead time of around 100ms should therefore work just fine, but you can, as I said, set it up to quite a high value and you are unlikely to in fact see any change in surface behaviour, since only the scenario I've just mentioned makes it visible. But too short a dead time and you get the erratic encoder problem.

To alter the dead time, press the STORE and EDIT buttons. The 7th encoder from the left adjusts the dead time in ms. Press STORE and EDIT to exit. This is a global setting, not a per-preset setting.

I apologise that this has taken so long to resolve. Unfortunately - sod's law - I could not see the problem on my setup and do not run Reason, nor did I know of these settings. I will update the installation guide for the project to ensure that this is now documented.

[ajaym]

Bradleyfilms

By design, the software does not attempt to update controls which lie outside the current track count for the project. This is primarily an efficiency issue, because then the surface isn't perpetually refreshing all those controls with zero values. However it does have the side effect that encoders not controlling any active track may retain their previous values. Since normally the user knows from Reaper and/or the surface console, which tracks are actually active, the behaviour you see is currently by design. If you save the BCR preset with all encoders set to minimum and all switches OFF, then you may prefer the behaviour, since unassigned encoders will default to zero, unless you load a large project, and then close it, and load a much smaller one (in track count), in which case of course the encoders for unassigned tracks will retain their previous values. In this case, merely switching away from the current preset on the BCR front panel to another one and back, will re-clear the unused encoders. This seemed to me a good tradeoff, since I was concerned about control surface overheads. Of course, computers have become ever more powerful since this software was first written and I could review that decision.

d.gauss

Within the usual range of fader settings, gain is controllable by around 1dB steps. This in fact is slightly better than you can achieve using the mouse to control Reaper's faders directly (unless you press CTRL for fine adjust). Therefore I felt that fine adjustments from the surface were probably not worthwhile for channel gain, whereas for things like EQ they are essential, and this is why shift+gain is scrub. At some point I plan to make these assignments programmable along with the FX assignments; however, as I have mentioned previously this is a fairly significant development effort which I have currently costed out at probably 40-60 hours development time, including testing, which can easily come to half the development budget, since I'm sure you don't want any bugs.

I've received a handful of donations towards this work from some of the kind users in this forum and, as time (and money) permits (since I have to slot this in with paying work), I will certainly review some of this functionality.

Susan

Automation in Reaper doesn't seem to work quite as it does in Sonar and, experimenting with it, I am not quite sure how you get automation to actually replay the fader movements; every setting I've tried leaves the faders as they are. This means of course that the surface encoders do not move to reflect the automation envelopes. In Sonar, they do, by default, because the actual track faders reflect any applied automation.

You can certainly record automation envelopes from the surface OK but I can't seem to set Reaper up to replay the fader movements, even though the dialogue settings suggest that you can i.e that there is a read mode as well as trim read, but it doesn't seem to work. This may just be my relative inexperience with Reaper, of course.

[GigaMan]

Originally Posted by ajaym

The plugin allows the BCR to still be used with other applications; it does not require any Mackie emulation software.

Your work is highly appreciated. I'm wondering if statement above includes C*base 5 also? I have some projects that I need to finish in C5 (kind of client requirement). So I'm wondering if I can use this solution?

Thanks in advance!

[ivansc]

I use reaper AND sonar & would LOVE to find an easy way to use my very recently acquired BCF2000. Been checking out the behringer editor and varisou other bits but so far unable to make this puppy do a thing.
OSP attack (old stupid person) I guess

[norbury brook]

just set the BCF up in MCU mode in reaper and then add it as a control surface,easy as pie. For sonar you can set the BCF up in sonar mode and add it as a control surface there

just hold down the first button under the 1st rotary controller(top right) when you switch it on and you'l see the different modes.


MC

[ivansc]

Originally Posted by norbury brook

just set the BCF up in MCU mode in reaper and then add it as a control surface,easy as pie. For sonar you can set the BCF up in sonar mode and add it as a control surface there

just hold down the first button under the 1st rotary controller(top right) when you switch it on and you'l see the different modes.


MC

downoad the manual from behringer?? (embarrassed grin)

[jbone1313]

This is really awesome. It works in Win 7 x64.

It seems Behringer finally released 64bit drivers for Win 7. Kudos to them for supporting that.