Cakewalk and Behringer X Touch

[Bassfaceus]

Hi all..

I have the big X touch and have /am finding it frustrating that i cant control 3rd party VSTs

(should i be able to get some of the buttons to react to ACT learn

coz i cant get that happening)

Ive been trying to work this out for a while now and a, coming to the conclusion

that other DAWs have better integration

Particularly Reaper and Studio one...

they are able to control 3rd party vsts and do a lot more.

Part of me is wondering if this will be rectified in the new release

The upshot of this is that i hope i dont have to abandon Cakewalk

to get these features.

I would rather not have to learn another DAW.

 

any body have any ideas to get the x touch to do what i want???

Thanks

 

[azslow3]

10 hours ago, Bassfaceus said:

I have the big X touch and have /am finding it frustrating that i cant control 3rd party VSTs

Other can (VST, but not VSTi).

10 hours ago, Bassfaceus said:

(should i be able to get some of the buttons to react to ACT learn

coz i cant get that happening)

No, "ACT learn" is not working (in standard setup), it controls VSTs other way.

10 hours ago, Bassfaceus said:

Ive been trying to work this out for a while now and a, coming to the conclusion

that other DAWs have better integration

Particularly Reaper and Studio one...

they are able to control 3rd party vsts and do a lot more.

Not really, at least not REAPER (in standard setup).

10 hours ago, Bassfaceus said:

Part of me is wondering if this will be rectified in the new release

You mean new Bandlab products? There was no info about Surfaces Support changes yet.

10 hours ago, Bassfaceus said:

The upshot of this is that i hope i dont have to abandon Cakewalk

to get these features.

I would rather not have to learn another DAW.

Than learn how to do this in Cakewalk...

10 hours ago, Bassfaceus said:

any body have any ideas to get the x touch to do what i want???

Good idea is start reading the documentation...
For alternative options search this forum, that topic is discussed more then 100 times already...

?

[Byron Dickens]

2 hours ago, azslow3 said:

Good idea is start reading the documentation...

What ? You mean RTFM? No, Not that!

[Bassfaceus]

Thanks for the replies..

Ive been trying to do this for  a while now.coming back to it every few months

and yes ive done my fair sharing of reading and watching Youtube videos.

Just so we dont get confused I also have a Behringer X touch MINI...

this does react to Cakewalk ACT... but my main control surface is

 the big one  ...Ok so this wont react to ACT...

So in a few words can you tell me or direct me to some answers

I dont care about VST i  i just want to manipulate The VST.

Thanks

Edited July 16, 2023 by Bassfaceus

[JnTuneTech]

The big difference between the big X-Touch and the Mini, is that only the Mini can be customized. While they both offer Mackie Control Protocol (MCP) support, most plugins aren't controlled so well by that - in my experience.

In my setup, I use both of those controllers, and mostly only use the full X-Touch for a control surface - it works well for me with Cakewalk (and a custom button overlay) in that regard, selecting the default Mackie profile. -I also customize the settings a bit to use the full LCD support, and I've never had any bandwidth issues so far.

For the X-Touch Mini - I downloaded the CC mapping app for it, and created a few maps that load in seconds, and I use that to match the VST CC mappings available/assignable in many of my VSTs. -It all still leaves a bit to be desired, but it gets me a lot of the hands-on flexibility I wanted, and even with some synth control mappings as well. But yes, the big original X-Touch is just a modern MCP surface, and not customizable. Fairly solid though, not so many cheap plastic parts as some of the others I have seen.

[Bassfaceus]

Thanks JuTuneTech

 

what do you mean    "also customize the settings a bit to use the full LCD support,"

Also the mapping you mentioned for the Mini is intriguing,

is this something you are willing to share with me?

Thanks

[JnTuneTech]

I don't have my production PC in front of me at this moment, but if I recall correctly (and it has nothing to do with sharing anything special!) - here is what I know:  -So, the Behringer support site is where I found the X-Touch Mini editor app, it is free. It allows you set different MIDI channels, CCs - response types, etc. and LED actions for almost all the rotaries, buttons, and the fader.

By customizing I meant: - The default settings in the Cakewalk Mackie Control Surface leave the full LCD support off - since many controllers have no LCDs, and it also adds to the bandwidth that goes over the USB-MIDI connection. -If you go into the Cakewalk help files for using the Mackie Control Surface setup as a control surface, there is a better explanation of the options in there.

Edited July 16, 2023 by JnTuneTech
clarifying - hopefully!

[msmcleod]

Pressing the Plugin button should give you access to the plugins.   The control surface up/down arrow buttons will navigate through the plugins, whereas the left/right will navigate through pages of parameters.   

Pressing F1 on the MackieControl control surface dialog will bring up the Mackie Control help - I strongly recommend reading it, and practicing going through the different modes. It takes a while for muscle memory to kick in, but when it does, you'll appreciate the increase in workflow speed.

Plugin parameters that are available are either shown in order as published by the VST, or can be defined in MackieControl.ini (see later on in this post about how this can be edited more easily).  ACT Learn does not work when using the MackieControl control surface. 

Assuming of that the X Touch has a one-to-one button mapping with the Mackie MCU,  if you hold down M1 (Shift on the X-Touch) while pressing the plugin button, it should switch it into "Synth Rack" mode and you can use the control surface up/down buttons to navigate through the synths, and the left/right buttons to navigate through the parameters.  Pressing the Plugin button without holding the M1 (Shift) button will put it back into normal plugin mode.

Originally, there are essentially 3 strip modes using the Mackie, which essentially mirror the three sections in the console view:

• Track Strips
• Bus Strips
• Main Outputs (your hardware outputs)

Synth Rack is an additional strip mode which was introduced for the Roland V-Studio 700, but until recently wasn't accessible via the Mackie control.

To be honest, I've always found the plugin control on the Mackie MCU (and especially those that emulate it) a bit clunky/restrictive - even before we allowed Synth Rack access. Having only 8 parameters in view, and a 6 character display isn't that great for modern plugins - I guess when the MCU came out, plugins were much simpler.

Personally I use the Mackie C4 along side the MCU, as with 32 rotaries it's far easier to use for plugins.

If you do manage to get the X Touch into Synth Rack mode, be aware that the number of parameters for VSTi's is usually overwhelming to the point of not really being useful at all.  Even on the C4 which has 32 rotary controls, navigating through 100's of parameters with a 6 character label for each isn't really useable.  It takes forever to locate the parameter, which could have been found almost immediately using a mouse on the plugin UI. 

Attempts at creating sensible synth layouts in the MackieControl.ini file haven't been particularly useful either, as what might seem an appropriate set of parameters for one sound are not always appropriate for another.

If you do need hardware control of a synth, you're much better off using a separate MIDI CC controller along with ACT Learn for VSTi's.  This way you can limit the number of parameters to the ones you find useful.  The Korg nanoKONTROL 2 (in CC mode) or the Akai MIDIMix are good examples of CC controllers.

Personally, I avoid synth control altogether and just use the mouse... but then again, I don't generally do any real-time control on synths apart from the standard pitch-bend/modulation. On the rare occasion I need something else, I'll just manually draw automation.

If you want to edit your plugin layouts, you can use my C4 Mapper utility which will edit MackieControl.ini for you using simple drag/drop. You can download it here:   https://msmcleod.co.uk/cakewalk/C4Mapper.zip :



BTW - the reason I've duplicated the controls on the top/bottom rows is so I can use the bottom row on the C4 (which is easier to reach), and the top row will show on the MCU should I want to edit things there instead.

On the MCU / X Touch, just remember to limit yourself to only the top row of controls, and set "Number of VPots" to 8 for each plugin. The M1 - M4 checkboxes give you an additional 4 pages of control mappings, which can be accessed on your X-Touch by pressing the Shift, Option, Control and Alt buttons. 

A few caveats for using this:

1. You must have used the plugin at least once in CbB after you've been using MackieControl, and closed down CbB cleanly for it to show up - this ensures it has an entry in genericpluginparams.xml, which C4Mapper uses to read the available parameters.

2. As MackieControl.ini resides in a sub location under C:\Program Files, you will need to run C4Mapper as administrator for it to have writable access to it.  Each time you save, a backup of the previous MackeControl.ini is saved along side it... bear this in mind, as these backup files may build up, and you may want to delete them periodically.

3. C4Mapper reads both Cakewalk's plugin inventory in the registry and the genericpluginparams.xml file to get its list of plugins & parameters.  If you have a large amount of plugins, it can take up to a minute for C4Mapper to start up.

[azslow3]

Heh... I always forget that VSTi are also controllable since a while (since I don't have/use real MCU, that change just doesn't stay in my head...).

For Mini,  https://www.azslow.com/index.php/topic,377.0.html can give an idea what is possible to do with ANY controller. So there is more then one way to bind a controller to Cakewalk. When people write "MCU has 1001 function in REAPER", they normally use CSI or other third party solution. For Cakewalk there are less
third party solutions, but at least one is available.

"ACT" is still confusing term. In general, it covers all surface integration plug-ins in Cakewalk (including Mackie). But "ACT Learn" is related to one sub-component, I call it "Dynamic plug-in mapping", which is not used in Mackie plug-in. Note that working with these mappings can be tricky, Mackie mappings are more "stable". 

[Bassfaceus]

thanks for the thorough and thoughtful

response from everybody...

im not interested in controlling synths or any other VST i

all i want to do is control VST fx 

like an EQ plug in:

instead of using my mouse i can nominate a group of rotaries on ,

pref my x touch or if not my xtouch MINI 

but then i will have to have 2 surfaces connected which i would like to 

avoid due to space restrictions

[JnTuneTech]

7 hours ago, msmcleod said:

To be honest, I've always found the plugin control on the Mackie MCU (and especially those that emulate it) a bit clunky/restrictive - even before we allowed Synth Rack access. Having only 8 parameters in view, and a 6 character display isn't that great for modern plugins - I guess when the MCU came out, plugins were much simpler.

-Indeed, and that's being kind!  MCP doesn't seem to have been updated since it was set up long ago. I can only hope MIDI 2.0 gets going soon, and manufacturers & software designers can go forward with using some of the 2-way configuration specs proposed, so that things like these control surfaces and plugins can work much better without as much manual intervention.  -As to wishing more control parameters & display characters were available, seriously agreed, but if there is no standard and you have to manually program each connection for each controller to VST pairing, this type of control setup will always be clunky.

With my X-Touch use in (originally SONAR) Cakewalk, I got more use out of it after having found a button panel overlay that specifically matches the naming of the functions in the settings dialogs. I find that most of the MCU clones use slightly different naming for the extended functions, maybe for avoiding licensing or copyright issues?  -Well, I will have to try out that C4 mapping utility, see if that helps any - thanks!

[azslow3]

MIDI protocol improvement can't improve the situation with surfaces. All modern surfaces are USB connected, they can use any carrier protocol they want (and some do). F.e. OSC allows bi-directional communication practically without any limits in precision or the length of display(s).

There was several attempts to establish "control standards". Mackie, EUCON, NI "Komplete Kontrol", etc.

But there are at least 2 problems. The first you have already noticed. Even so there is ONE MCU device, the layout for buttons is DAW specific (there are different overlays for different DAWs). I mean even with just one device you can't make something "standard" which works fine in any DAW, the parameters you want to control are different.

And once you have several significantly different devices... There can be  some "automatic" mapping (Cakewalk plug-in dynamic mapping in fact has user configurable pattern rules to auto-map parameters of new plug-ins...), may be even AI based. But till computers can read particular user mind, it is hard to tell which from 1000+ particular plug-in parameters particular user want control in particular situation. So there should be a possibility to overwrite the "expert choice".

[JnTuneTech]

4 hours ago, azslow3 said:

MIDI protocol improvement can't improve the situation with surfaces.

Well, I would have to agree to disagree there. For instance, if a standard set of primary control functions (like in GM) could be proposed, and adopted by major parties, even at a basic level (VST common development, etc., as was done within VST2 using program change integration that matched MIDI standards), these things could be at least allowed to function with less user intervention. A DAW could support plugins that, when queried by a USB 2.0 MIDI device driver (and vice-versa), would respond to that request with the available mapped parameters, and then even present an interface to allow matching acceptance, and further customization if desired.   It is possible.

As it stands, and has for many years now, yes, there are still disagreements with communication standards for control of musical devices beyond note triggering, but much of the technological issues that were present in the early days have been removed with increased bandwidth, and now two-way interactive communication standards have a much better chance of working going forward, I think.  -Unfortunately, it will be some time before any of us may benefit from that, so until then, there's old protocols like MCP, and apps that include MIDI learn functions, which still always have to be set up manually to get going.  -Ah well.

Edited July 17, 2023 by JnTuneTech

[Bassfaceus]

Glad to see i have stimulated some

interesting discussion.

I am starting to think that it will just be easier to

use my mouse as i have been doing.

Even if  the control surface did work as i wanted 

i would still be attributing rotaries to  many ( some times too many )

VST controls  too many to keep track of.

Something like the Slate Raven type of interface is what i would

ideally like...  the more i think about it the more i think that  

mouse manipulation is the best method ..

I am old school i started on Tape and large format desks

so twiddling knobs is where i come from

 

Edited July 17, 2023 by Bassfaceus

[azslow3]

6 hours ago, JnTuneTech said:

Well, I would have to agree to disagree there. For instance, if a standard set of primary control functions (like in GM) could be proposed, and adopted by major parties, even at a basic level (VST common development, etc., as was done within VST2 using program change integration that matched MIDI standards), these things could be at least allowed to function with less user intervention. A DAW could support plugins that, when queried by a USB 2.0 MIDI device driver (and vice-versa), would respond to that request with the available mapped parameters, and then even present an interface to allow matching acceptance, and further customization if desired.   It is possible.

Program change was almost abandoned since most synth and many FXes are unable to switch presets instantly. Note that the list of parameters (and automatable parameters) as well as choosing presets exist in plug-ins API. VST3 has tried to bringing that to the "next level" (effectively killing MIDI support). Queering surface capabilities has not standard at the moment, but at the end of the day that part can be manually done for most controllers within several minutes.
And fixed "set of functions" is incomplete (and if someone will try to make it complete, the same thing will happened as in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel's_incompleteness_theorems).

As I have tried to explain, even when you know the controller layout and which parameters are available, there is no "one and the only right" mapping between these sets.
The whole challenge is create more or less reasonable mapping. For DAW (at each production step, i mean recording, mixing, mastering) and individual plug-ins (can also be step dependent).

The number of physical controls is limited. Obviously when you have more you can directly map more parameters at once (as with C4). You can try to use "banks" (fixed, as in Mackie or ACT MIDI or arbitrary as in AZ Controller), but that comes at price.

I think one of the most advanced example of pre-made mapping at the moment is NI NKS. At least for instruments with following FXes (for not so clear reason, NKS is not working strait for just FXes, I guess the reason NI has not produced any controller without keyboard yet and so the whole concept is VSTi recording oriented). With a bit of "extra", that is reasonably usable during recording (https://www.azslow.com/index.php/topic,604.0.html). When complete setup is specially designed to work together (NI Maschine, Ableton, Pesonus, AVID have dedicated controllers), the workflow is even more convenient.

But generic "device" with general "software" will never play perfect together, at least not automatically.

PS. In Cakewalk AZ Controller is relatively simple way to play with "mappings". You can check that hardware definition takes short time, even with devices like MCU. And you have access to all parameters/functions (controllable in Cakewalk, "Dynamic mapping" and "Mackie mapping" including. But in practice you can spend years to find "perfect" mapping for any device with more then just transport buttons (and even just with transport buttons, think about transport and focus dependent button combinations ).

[JnTuneTech]

9 hours ago, azslow3 said:

As I have tried to explain, even when you know the controller layout and which parameters are available, there is no "one and the only right" mapping between these sets.

Yes, and you have explained it quite well. Also, from what I have seen, your work on controller mapping software has been very helpful, thanks for that.

To what I said earlier - there are ways to establish and use basic standards. Otherwise, we wouldn't have a long list of manufacturers and instruments in Cakewalk who participated in the MIDI 1.0 GM & variations of initial standards, and things like MIDI CC1, 7, usage etc. would not have been (and still are) widely adopted as standards. And although I don't know the entire story, obviously Mackie (or the company they once were) managed to push a hardware & MIDI mapping standard set that still exists today. From what I have read of the development of MIDI 2.0 specifications, that is something that the newer guidelines are hoping to give more possibilities for developers to create and build out with modern capabilities.  And I for one, am also hoping so.

@Bassfaceus - I definitely understand what you mean. And even though the X-Touch seems to be a fairly decent piece of hardware, and I even happen to be fine with drilling into the manuals, or downloading configuration apps & all that entails, I too just wish some of these devices had an easier way to use what I consider basics - at least baseline control definition sets, with plugins, because I too prefer to twiddle knobs more than dragging a mouse...   And by now, MCP is so behind modern system & software designs, but sadly, none of the other frameworks for that kind of stuff has come out on top.  -Definitely frustrating, and it can't be helpful to DAW developers either!

[Bassfaceus]

ive downloaded a demo of Studio One

and it integrates the X Touch with  3rd party VST

way better than Cake....but it leaves out some things 

in navigation  that are a trade off.

 Studio One does look and feel more sophisticated than Cake

but it is no where near as flexible as far as i can see.

Might have a look at Reaper next .there are some 3rd party 

files that extend the X Touch features..looks very interesting

 

Edited July 18, 2023 by Bassfaceus

[Bassfaceus]

Hmm ....

the more i look into it 

the more im thinking that the pros of staying with Cake 

outweigh the cons...

ive been experimenting with the ACT controller

and if i limit myself to the first eight rotaries of my 

X Touch MINI (which i also own)

i can use both surfaces together and have the mini just for controlling

VST knobs

Now what i want to figure out is how enable FINE control

(which i would normally do by pressing /holding CONTROL and 

mousing the parameter knob of VST)  in a way that avoids me  pushing down on the rotary(X TOUCH MINI ) which is cumbersome to do

I would much rather hold down CONTROL but this doeant work.

Any ideas 

[azslow3]

4 hours ago, Bassfaceus said:

Any ideas 

I have no idea what you want here... You have started with some "claims", continued with some statements. You have got already almost all possible answers.

Including RTFM. From that you could easily extract most answers. For your last post,  there is no fine control in "ACT MIDI controller" nor in "Cakewalk Generic Surface" plug-ins. Coarse resolution is also not configurable.

You want a solution for X-Touch Mini which support ACT, Fine/Coarse switching and tunable resolution for both? It is already mentioned in this thread.

You want yet other one? Then I can disappoint you, msmcleod and me are the the only people which was providing surface solutions/improvements last 8 years...

[Michael Vogel]

It’s the same old problem.

Groups meet and after many years of meeting they develop a standard.

In the meantime manufacturers looking for a marketing edge develop a protocol peculiar to their own hardware/software and so we end up with numerous different so called standards that don’t coexist particularly well together.

Take VST, any version, where individual developers implement the spec in different ways. Again we end up with incompatibility between plugins and different plug-in developers. Very few plugins are developed with strict adherence to the particular protocol.

They should all learn music and focus on harmony.

Edited July 19, 2023 by Michael Vogel