chakko

I rather see two different markets there. Just like with Cubase and Sequel.

Yes. How good that we have different DAW's, which are priced differently. Although you have to be careful with that really. Reaper, for example, is often praised for its low price. It's a very "bare bone" DAW though, which comes with no additional content at all, unlike other DAW's, and, if you're making a living with your music, the price is actually $225, which, considering you get zero content, is a rather regular price, comparable to the competition (considering that those come with a lot of content, compared to Reaper). You can also take thousands of dollars for your DAW, like SawStudio does. The only question is if people are willing to pay so much for your software. It's all a matter of what the customer is willing to pay for it. Bandlab will have to figure it out. And will have to see whether or not people are willing to pay that price. As usual.

Such an easy concept, yet so hard to grasp for most, for some reason.

There's gotta be something wrong with your system then. I have the same interface, and never had that issue.

FWIW, no complaints about that here at all. If anything, I think updates are overrated (especially the paid ones 😉), unless there is something blatantly missing, or broken with the software.

1. The owner is a multi millionaire. 2. It has surely been bought to at least partly promote the Bandlab service. Also, why is "profit" always the term being used? (Always sounds like people confuse the audio software industry with the stock market...) Especially in this small industry, it's not like there's loads of multinational billions worth corporations. All the companies are mid tier to small business, and most are run by enthusiasts or musicians. If that counts for you. As long as there's still money being used in this world, companies need to make sure to bring food to the table.

If you're interested, I created a thread on the topic some time ago: I don't think anything has changed since then. tl;dr: Cakewalk has no full support for the HUI protocol. The things I mentioned in the thread simply don't work, probably the same as on the Launchkey. It doesn't look like there is interest to make them work, so, I wouldn't hold my breath for it. azslow3 in that thread mentioned that you could do it yourself, as the source code is freely available, but, I don't know anything about coding, and probably wouldn't understand it anyway. I don't want to sound sour, but, any other DAW I tried supports HUI fully. Studio One, Cubase, Reaper, Ableton, all no problem. I understand why the implementation is a problem, and that it's an ancient protocol, but, that doesn't change that some devices still use it, and can't be used to their full extent in Cakewalk. If you want a recommendation, I'd recommend to go with another controller, if you want to have the additonal functionality, no Novation ones. Arturia's controllers also work in MCU mode, so, they will probably work (better) in Cakewalk.

Thanks for your answer. It's a bit of a shame, because, as I mentioned, there are current keyboards which use the HUI protocol to provide easy mapping of the knobs and faders in DAW's. Any other DAW I know provides HUI support (Cubase, Studio One, Reaper). Here are a few keyboards which use HUI: Novation Launchkey mk3 keyboards, Novation Impulse keyboards, Arturia KeyLab mk2 keyboards, Arturia KeyLab Essentials keyboards, M-Audio Oxygen Pro keyboards etc. It's really pretty common, even today.

Just wondering, but, apart from the MCU improvements, will you also update the Maeckie HUI support at some point? Some MIDI keyboards (like the Arturia Keylab controllers, or the M-Audio Impulse) use Maeckie HUI for DAW control. Last time I checked some versions ago, with the Maeckie HUI (Beta) protocol, some things didn't work, see this thread: https://discuss.cakewalk.com/index.php?/topic/34322-question-about-hui-protocol-implementation/#comments

nvmd

If you're not on the net, you probably have very little issues with it. And, even if you are on the net, you probably have very little issues with it. I never was a fan of Automap though. TBH, I dislike most of those manufacturer's solutions. And, I don't really like most DAW included MIDI mapping systems either. If I want to map my controller keyboard's controls to VST's, I use their internal MIDI mapping systems (or set up a template for those with fixed MIDI CC's), and, for DAW control, I prefer stuff like the Maeckie HUI protocol, which works in almost any DAW. That way I can also make sure that my controller works the same universally in any DAW. Maybe I'm a bit finicky about stuff like that, but, it simply works for me.

Automap was discontinued by Novation, and, they even updated the firmware of the Impulse to make use of the Maeckie HUI protocol for that. None of the newer Novation keyboards use Automap anymore. Thankfully, TBH. I was quite a mess IMO. Crashy, buggy, and, I can do without having every plugin double in my DAW as well, because you always needed a wrapper, if you wanted to use Automap to map your VST's. Don't get me wrong about this thread: I don't need this functionality to work with Cakewalk, it was just interesting for me why it didn't work, and also interesting whether or not it's possible and worth the effort to improve/extend the HUI funcionality in Cakewalk. If it's not happening, so what. Would be cool if it was fully functional, also for other users, but, hey. Cakewalk isn't even my primary DAW. I just had an impulse (no pun intended) to find out why that stuff isn't working.

Could this be incorporated in the HUI support in Cakewalk? I'm pretty sure this is standard stuff, which is also used in other keyboards for the same controls (for example, Arturia seems to also use it for their keyboards).

Sorry, didn't know that the button press is the relevant thing. Here are screenthos from the MIDI messages when I press the buttons (to switch from Pan -> SendA -> SendB -> SendC -> SendD -> SendE, and back to Pan). A lot of stuff. Note that in the last screenshot, the message marked in blue is the last message from the former screenshot.

I'm not (yet) using it, but, there shouldn't be too many compatibility issues, considering that it's largely Windows 10 under the hood. Won't be long until companies release some plugin and DAW compatibility articles.

I'm not sure if you can do anything with it, but, here's the MIDI monitor output from Studio One for those 8 knobs in HUI mode: The bottom entries go from bottom to top, i.e. I turned the first of the knob, then the second one etc., and the most upper entry is for the last of the 8 knobs. I first turned them left, then right, and made sure that only 1 message turns up in the log (I think it logged the last movement twice though). Again, if you can anything with that. I have no idea exactly what you are looking for. Oh, and, it didn't matter what I configure the knobs to do, I switched from controlling the pan for the tracks to SendA, SendB, SendC, and SendD (controlling the level of the send fx for each track). They always sent the same messages (might also be obvious to you, but, I thought I'd mention it anyway, if it matters).

@msmcleod You probably already found it, but, is this maybe of help for you? https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=101328 I wished I could be more helpful with my keyboard, but, I really have no idea about HUI or MCU. @azslow3 suggested earlier to take a look at MIDI-Ox, but, frankly, I wouldn't even know how to get into HUI mode in that program. Without being in HUI mode, the knobs and faders just send the normal MIDI CC data.

Thanks, but, I don't think the keyboard does anything with that. Regardless of the "Disable handshake" option being on or off, when I switch the protocol to Maeckie Control Universal, the keyboards transport controls, knobs, faders and buttons stop working for the DAW control (they only work in normal MIDI CC mode then). The only thing that works really is the HUI (Beta) protocol. I don't see any option either on the keyboard to switch it to MCU mode or something (if that is necessary). Novation's site and the manual only talks about "HUI" as well.

You probably mean Vegas Pro Edit. That was the version you could get for, like, 21 € in the Humble Bundles. Actually, I quite like it. Using Vegas Pro Edit 15 here, and, it seems to be stable, at least for the stuff I do. Many great FX included. For capturing the screen, I use the Nvidia screen recorder, which comes with the driver of my graphics card. It's very system ressource efficient.

Thanks for your replies. I'm not really familiar with MCU. And, I doubt that it works with my keyboard, as I already had it configured as a MCU device in Cakewalk, and, the transport controls, knobs and faders basically did nothing. They only started to work when I activated the HUI (Beta) as protocol for the device in Cakewalk. As far as I understand, it's strictly for use with the HUI protocol. Here's the knowledge base article from Novation regarding the firmware update for the Impulse which added HUI functionality: https://support.novationmusic.com/hc/en-gb/articles/360009516479 I'm surprised that you say that the HUI protocol is not documented, BTW. Studio One, Cubase, Reaper and Ableton work fine with HUI devices. Did they pay some license fees to support it or something?

Hey, I'm trying Cakewalk by Bandlab out at the moment (did plan to do so for a while now), and, I've set up my MIDI keyboard (Novation Impulse 49) in Cakewalk so that the control elements (faders, knobs and buttons) work with the HUI implementation of the keyboard in Cakewalk. I first had some issues with it, after I set up the inputs and outputs, and it simply didn't work. So, I watched some Youtube videos, and one showed the Utilities -> Maeckie Control - 1 dialog, where you can set the protocol from Maeckie Control to HUI (Beta), and that basically did the job for me. All works, except for one thing: Controlling the Send levels of the tracks. The keyboars lets you switch the knobs from stereo panorama control to control of the Send levels of the 8 tracks selected, and even switch through different banks, so that you can control a total of 32 tracks. Unfortunately, in Cakewalk, it simply doesn't work. If I switch from controlling the stereo panorama to controlling the Sends with the knobs, in Cakewalk, the knobs will still control the stereo panorama of the 8 tracks. It works fine in Studio One, so, I can only assume that it's a limitation of the HUI implementation in Cakewalk. I think I read something which points in that direction, by the developer who is responsible for the HUI implementation in Cakewalk here once, I don't remember the name, but, it wasn't clear to me in which way the implementation is limited. Can anyone confirm this? And, if it is how I wrote, is there any chance for full support for the protocol at some point? It's not something I have to have today, but, it would be cool anyway. As far as I know, quite a few keyboards use the HUI protocol these days. The newer Novation ones, Arturia's keyboards etc. Thanks.