Old 06-28-2009, 06:58 AM   #1
netnoggin
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Default Digidesign Control 24 thoughts

All,
I have used Pro Tools for a few years, and am ready to jump to Reaper (past ready, really). One thing standing in my way is my studio has a Control 24 control surface ( http://digidesign.com/index.cfm?navi...00&itemid=4877 ) that I really don't want to abandon, even though Digi has. If you google for images of the Control 24, you see many studios that have this control surface, so I would imagine there are many out there in the same boat.

Bottom line is I would like to be able to use my Control 24 with Reaper, or at least partially (motorized faders, S, M, R, buttons, etc.). Now for those of you unfamiliar with it, the Control 24 does not use any known standard way of communicating with the DAW; instead it is proprietary and specific to Pro Tools. That said, some initial investigation into the way it communicates leads me to believe there is hope (more on this later).

I see two initial challenges here. One is technical and one is legal. On the technical side, I can tell you a couple of things:

1. The Control 24 is ethernet based. To use it with Pro Tools, you install a protocol driver under your NIC card's properties. In fact you can remove every other protocol if you wish. No IP stack is needed as it's layer 2, for instance.

2. Using the network sniffer program Wireshark, I captured some of the conversation between the computer and the Control 24. What I saw was very encouraging. While I haven't analyzed it all, there are some clear indications of how the protocol works. I can go into more detail if needed.

On the legal side - assuming one could indeed work out the technical, what are the legal ramifications of such a solution? Most likely Digi doesn't want people doing this, but to what extent do they have control over someone developing software that communicates with a piece of their hardware? There does seem to be a couple of different sub-angles as well. If I did this for my own enjoyment, I suppose there would be less concern than if support was built into a commercial product. Another possibility is if middleware was the answer (and that seems to me to be the best answer) - a Control 24 to HUI or MMC translator, if you will. That relieves the DAW maker from any risk, as they are only supporting a generally known protocol.

Back to the technical for a moment. I have done programming in a previous life (Borland C), but I do not consider myself a programmer now. It's been too long. But I do remember enough about it to know this is most likely doable, barring any crazed authentication routines in the Control 24 firmware that aren't readily apparent across the ethernet wire. But I have an opportunity here, as my studio is currently in a construction transition period, so I have no deadlines or other distractions except my normal daytime job (network and telecom manager). My equipment is available for any testing and data gathering it would require to get the job done.

Is anybody else intrigued by this possibility? Your thoughts are welcomed and anticipated. I am definitely interested, and am willing to commit to substantial support for the effort. Not only for myself, but also the hundreds (if not thousands) of Control 24 owners out there.

Brian
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Old 06-29-2009, 11:17 AM   #2
FarBeyondMetal
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I'd be willing to try this if it ever came into existence, if only to blow the minds of the people that own the studio I internship at. Honestly though, I don't think very many people with a control 24 want to use it with anything other than pro tools.
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Old 06-29-2009, 02:48 PM   #3
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I may be wrong, but I think you'd be surprised at how many would be happier with at least the option to use something else. And there are many folks that feel Digidesign's increasing issues with every version point to a difficult road ahead with that product. The problems have been somewhat incremental, so users who try nothing else do not realize how much they have been putting up with. One trip around something like Reaper, and it becomes quite clear.

But if you look around, many studios have not only invested in the Control 24, they have built their control room around it. Custom console furniture, etc. makes it difficult to start anew, not to mention your alternatives for a 24 track controller are limited if money is a concern. If I had to buy something else today, it would likely be a Mixed Logic MC24, but even then you are looking at almost three thousand bucks. If someone instead gave me the option of just keeping my Control 24, I believe I would jump at it.
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Old 08-04-2009, 03:38 AM   #4
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Originally Posted by FarBeyondMetal View Post
I'd be willing to try this if it ever came into existence, if only to blow the minds of the people that own the studio I internship at. Honestly though, I don't think very many people with a control 24 want to use it with anything other than pro tools.
In my opinion I think that many studio owners that has a control-24 can benefit greatly from the fact that they could offer both Protools and Cubase/Locic to their customers using the control-24 (if we were to succed of course :-)).
I myself have rejected "protools-only" studios from time to time when the focus was more arrangement/composing than tracking/mixing. Often the c-24 is naturally placed in front of sweetspot and rigging an extra table or using c-24 as a table for mouse/keyboard controlling other daws is selldom an optimal solution.
Again, I'll think that a middleware connecting c-24 to any daw using maybe the hui protocol would be a dream come true for many studio owners.

Conversion from Midi to ethernet and back shouldn't be that hard. The easiest way is to use virtual midiports like myokent. The harder way is to make a custom device driver that behaves like a midiport (to advanced for me right now :-().
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Old 07-07-2009, 11:16 PM   #5
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All,

On the legal side - assuming one could indeed work out the technical, what are the legal ramifications of such a solution?Brian
That is indeed the thorny side. Read your EULA and/or other documentation that came with the 24. This should be where you'll find allowed & disallowed behaviors.

If prohibited, you could always challenge!
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Old 07-07-2009, 11:47 PM   #6
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the legalities of it will totally depend on what country you're in (at least, at the moment). as far as i know, clean room reverse engineering for purposes of interoperability is usually legal, unless you have to break an encryption scheme to do it (but your mileage may vary, and i am definitely not a lawyer here, this is just my understanding of the situation).

to be watertight, in the past, this sort of work is usually done by two groups of people. one group reverse engineers and documents the system. they then hand that protocol specification document over to other people who develop the emulation. this is how the IBM PC bios was cloned (by compaq?) in the 80's, and there are lots of examples of this sort of thing being cleanly and legally done. so it probably is possible. but the legal aspect of it can get hairy depending on minutae.

on the other hand, reverse engineering the pro tools session file format is possibly not entirely legal, because there's a definite encryption layer there (so it's possibly covered by the DMCA - again, probably country dependent).

if you're doing it for your own use, no one would ever know, though. and everyone implements the MCU protocol, for instance, which is probably the same sort of thing legally.
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Old 07-08-2009, 03:57 AM   #7
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Robg, I bought the console on ebay a couple of years back. Let's say for the sake of argument I didn't receive any documentation. I wouldn't know about the EULA, so how could I be bound by it? That's just an academic question, of course. I did receive said docs, and the truth is there is no way I could begin to complete this task without actually installing Pro Tools to enable analysis of the communication protocols. I don't remember it, but I probably clicked on "I agree" somewhere in that installation process. It is an otherwise interesting question though. If I buy a piece of electronics from a garage sale, I don't know that a company could stop me from analyzing it and disseminating my findings, having agreed to nothing with that company.

dub3000, interesting perspective - thanks for the info. Now that you mention it, I do remember reading about the 2-group method used by Compaq back then. And I agree about the encryption issue. Lucky for me I have no intention of dissecting their file format, and the communication between the Control 24 and the PC/application is definitely not encrypted.

On that subject, I have done many captures to understand the protocol. I have been fairly methodical about it to isolate activities, with good results. My initial captures went like this (each one is a separate capture file:

Capture 1. Open the program, do nothing else.
Capture 2. Open new project, do nothing else (this is true each time).
3. Create 1 new track.
4. Press mute button.
5. Press solo button.
(repeat previous for all buttons on that track)
6. Move fader, wait, return to original position.
7. Repeat captures 3-6 with a second track added.
8. Partially repeat for 24 tracks, just for grins.
9. Insert signal generator on a track to create meter movement
10. Cycle transport buttons.

And so on. While I won't go into the details of the findings at this point, I will say the captures clearly indicate the events. These events are repeatable, and are structured in a discernable way (i.e., command code, control ID/address, control state/on/off/position, display text, and so on). There are some parts that are still a mystery to me, but I haven't really spent much time on it yet either.

So it's an interesting exercise at this point. And I plan to continue looking at it, to satisfy my own curiousity if nothing else. :-)
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Old 07-08-2009, 04:13 AM   #8
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definitely sounds like fun. I love re-tasking/hacking electronic equipment I buy. Makes you feel like you own it. If I had a control-24 I'd help out, alas I don't.
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Old 07-08-2009, 09:31 AM   #9
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I would think the next step would be to find some software that allows you to capture and rebroadcast the network/lan data for one of the tasks you list (ie. 4. press mute button) and then broadcast it back to the Control 24 to see if you can manipulate it. That could be a brute force way of getting things at least mocked up. Just an idea from someone who also doesn't have a Control 24 but I wholeheartedly support your effort.
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Old 08-15-2009, 07:53 PM   #10
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...the captures clearly indicate the events. These events are repeatable, and are structured in a discernable way (i.e., command code, control ID/address, control state/on/off/position, display text, and so on). There are some parts that are still a mystery to me, but I haven't really spent much time on it yet either.
I guess the next step is probably having some type of conversion app to convert this output data to MIDI or something that REAPER can understand and use. Good job! I ventured into this a few years back but didn't get as far as you.

Shane
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Old 08-05-2009, 02:28 AM   #11
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All,
I have used Pro Tools for a few years, and am ready to jump to Reaper (past ready, really). One thing standing in my way is my studio has a Control 24 control surface...

Bottom line is I would like to be able to use my Control 24 with Reaper...

Is anybody else intrigued by this possibility? Your thoughts are welcomed and anticipated. I am definitely interested, and am willing to commit to substantial support for the effort. Not only for myself, but also the hundreds (if not thousands) of Control 24 owners out there.

Brian
You'll see mine in my avatar image. I've sat in front of it for 5 years. From my experience with it, it's way over priced junk. I've brought up this same topic here a few years back. Best to offload it and move on in my opinion.

Shane
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Old 08-05-2009, 04:05 AM   #12
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C'mon Shane, where's your sense of adventure?

Overpriced for sure, if you paid more than $5K for it, which I didn't. But my point was lots of people have one for whatever reason and maybe "dumping and moving on" is outside of their budget. A bird in the hand, etc. I don't use the pres, and frankly a lot of the functionality is of questionable value. But as a straightforward 24 channel control surface, it does the job. Heck, I think if you could only get automated faders, S-M-R buttons, and transport control, it would be worthwhile.
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Old 08-05-2009, 05:19 PM   #13
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It would have to be hacked. You'll need some type of software to read the values coming from Ethernet after a button press or fader move. If it's encrypted, then that would be a major barrier. I did catch wind of one individual who hacked their Digi Icon system.

Mine was used for 3 things. The monitoring system, the talk back, and a foot rest. Other than that, I didnt even use it. One prob after another with that overpriced Digidesign crap.

Shane
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Old 08-06-2009, 02:41 AM   #14
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Wireshark (formerly Ethereal) does the captures; I have a bunch of them already (see post #6). I'm on the road and don't have them with me at the moment. But they are not encrypted; even the scribble strip data is plain text ascii. But I will say it's not quite as cut and dried as one would like to see. I'll post when I get back.

You must be one of the many that had a problematic Control 24. Stories abound about power supply and harness problems, but mine has never acted up at all.
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Old 08-11-2009, 09:34 PM   #15
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Wireshark (formerly Ethereal) does the captures; I have a bunch of them already (see post #6). I'm on the road and don't have them with me at the moment. But they are not encrypted; even the scribble strip data is plain text ascii. But I will say it's not quite as cut and dried as one would like to see. I'll post when I get back.
Keep me posted on this venture of yours then. I posted this same topic a few years back and got no interest at the time. I'll contribute what I can.

Shane
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Old 01-21-2010, 11:35 AM   #16
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Default Mackie modifier keys!

Hi All!

Now that Christmas and a new year is behind us I have more time to continue my development. It looks really good now. All the basic controller stuff is working like faders, meters, rec arm, mutes, solos, timecode display with modeshift (beats/smpte), all the transports, scrubwheel (with shuttle), undo, save, eq (parameters is populated on the channelscribbles), inserts, pan, some markers, cut and paste and so on. As soon as I have implemented the modifier keys (shift, alt, option...) I'm going to make a videoclip demonstrating the application :-) but.........

I'm totally stuck with the Mackie controls modifier keys. I have absolutety no idea what the MCU is sending so....

Is there anybody out there with an mackie control unit who can put it in Mackie mode and press the modifier keys whilst recording the midi events and send the result to me? Or maybe you know someone who could...

I have scanned the net and found some midi spec implementations for the mackie control but they all seem to be wrong (at least cubase won't react to it).

Any help is greatly apreciated.
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Old 01-21-2010, 04:53 PM   #17
Geoff Waddington
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Here's a C# file with the MCU mappings.

Give a shout if you need any help

Last edited by Geoff Waddington; 07-21-2017 at 05:32 AM.
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Old 01-21-2010, 11:53 PM   #18
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Thank you, thank you, thank you! Looking good! (It feels like cheating in a game though ;-), the most buttons I got from reverse engineering the mackie interface on cubase...) Now I will fix the modifier keys and put out a video.

Have a good weekend/
Indys
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Old 02-11-2010, 12:57 AM   #19
snerk4000
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this is awesome. from the first time i used a control 24 six/seven years ago, i dreamt of snooping the ethernet connection and making some kind of translator for it. alas, my programming skills are nonexistant.

even though i don't own the thing that i admire the amount of work you've put into this project. the fact that this is possible now makes a used C24 somewhere down the line not so out of the question... ruling.

-a
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Old 02-12-2010, 09:32 PM   #20
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any update? I've been wanting to use one of these for yeaaars.... just not a fan of protools... so this is awesome!
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