ACT Control Surfaces Help Wanted

[Stephen Power]

Apologies in advance if my terminology is not quite right, I'm still on a serious learning curve!

I bought a new controller: Nektar Impact 25+, and the set up advice from Nektar is to make the following controller surface settings:

Controller/Surface: Impact LX+
Input Port: MIDIIN2 (IMPACT LX+)
Output Port: IMPACT LX+

I've done that several times now, because it keeps changing. I had set it correctly, but going back into the page showed different controller names (LX61) and different input and output port settings - sometimes for a non-Nektar controller.

Today, I deleted the wrong ones and added the correct ones again, and it now shows the correct setting twice! See photos.

Any thoughts on how to set this correctly and for good would be welcome and thanks in advance.

[msmcleod]

Windows assigns an incrementing device ID for each MIDI device as it discovers it on start up, so the best advice I can give is to always use the same USB ports for all your equipment, and ensure they're all plugged in before you power up your PC.  This will help to ensure that Windows picks them up in the same order every time.

Unfortunately despite requests over at least two decades, Windows provides no unique identifier for a MIDI device.  The only thing Cakewalk can go on is the device ID and the device name. 

What I can tell you is that the new Sonar does a better job of checking that the ports are the same as they were previously.  If the port isn't available at all, it'll disable the control surface and notify you (rather than steal a random port instead!).

As for fixing your existing issue:  renaming or deleting ctrlsurface.dat within %APPDATA%\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core\  will essentially reset everything and you can configure it again from scratch.

[Stephen Power]

18 minutes ago, msmcleod said:

As for fixing your existing issue:  renaming or deleting ctrlsurface.dat within %APPDATA%\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core\  will essentially reset everything and you can configure it again from scratch.

Thank you for your input @msmcleod, I've been secretly benefiting from your advice to others for many months.

UPDATE (in case you read about me being worried about making things worse). I found it, deleted and changed it. Thanks for your help.

I'm certainly going to avail of the new Cakewalk Sonar, and I hope it's coming very soon.

Edited October 15, 2023 by Stephen Power

[msmcleod]

Deleting it should be fine - as long as Cakewalk isn't running at the time.

Cakewalk will create a new empty one when you restart.  The presets are stored elsewhere, so any presets you've saved will still be available.

[Stephen Power]

3 minutes ago, msmcleod said:

Deleting it should be fine - as long as Cakewalk isn't running at the time.

Cakewalk will create a new empty one when you restart.  The presets are stored elsewhere, so any presets you've saved will still be available.

Sorry about that - I grew a pair and deleted it and then added in the values. All seems to be well (so far).

If you've got the time, I'd appreciate your input into another issue I'm having with some VSTi's not playing after the first time of asking and then only when the track is frozen....in this thread.