After I sent my previous mixer Rack out into the world the feedback I got was ‘very nice, but too complex for us’!
So I decided to rustle up a simple 8-in/1-out stereo mixer and this time I’ve made it MCU-compatible, so it should work with any Mackie-style controller, including the Behringer X-Touch, with which I tested it. Channel levels, solo and mute should all work.
Make sure the Rack has a MIDI input from your MCU controller and a MIDI output back to your controller and it should work as expected.
…and the mixer Rack now returns audio levels to the MCU device, so you can see those pretty meter LEDs bouncing up and down! It will also populate the scribble strip when loaded.
I’m using this mixer Rack with a Behringer X-Touch. I can now control all aspects of the mixer from the X-Touch, and I have meters, moving faders and scribble strip all under Cantabile’s control. It works really well!
There’s an example scribble strip message contained (but de-activated) in the Mixer Rack.
I would typically action a scribble strip message with a binding to Song Load. To do this, copy the binding example from my Rack, paste it into your Song bindings, and edit the sys-ex message to suit.
Here is a newer version of my Mixer Rack that exploits Cantabile’s new-ish bi-directional binding feature for the faders. Functionally it’s identical to the previous version, but slightly tidier: Mixer Simple MCU Bi-Di.cantabileRack (404.8 KB)
Thanks The_Elf, that makes sense. I was scratching my head as to how this could be done so it picks up the track names automatically. Short answer, it doesn’t, and that’s fine , and the SysEx editing isn’t that onerous.
John
This is absolutely fantastic work, thanks @The_Elf , and it has inspired my own implementation, which sends and receives levels to my StreamDeck, using the StreamDeck MIDI plugin. I’ll post up more info soon
I have got it working with an android app (mixing station), but some stability of connection issues to work through. Not at the top of priorities right now. A stream deck is something I’ll look at at some point.
Might be looking at a CQ2b as a combined interface and mixer for the band.
My Stream Deck has become the centre of my Cantabile world. Once you realise what it is capable of there’s really no going back. Brad has done an amazing job of the interface.
Thanks @The_Elf for your great work in working out the MCU MIDI control messages and sharing via the template above. I’ve implemented some of the learning in setting up a Streamdeck+, so that I can adjust levels on the device, and see levels coming in.
What I quite like, is that you can duplicate controls across different pages on StreamDeck, and it all stays in sync through the StreamDeck plugin.
n.b. Some of this is probably easier if you have the official Cantabile StreamDeck plugin and/or use proper bi-directional MIDI bindings (both require the ‘Performer’ version, which I don’t have yet!).
TLDR: you need to use a virtual MIDI port program (like loopMIDI) to route MIDI between Cantabile and StreamDeck, and use the ‘MIDI’ plugin in StreamDeck - the Mackie controls in this are the ones to use for MCU. Inspect The_Elf’s template above to get the bindings you need.
Thanks for the recognition @sideburnz, and pleased you’ve been able to glean something useful from my efforts.
To my ‘Simple Mixer’ Rack I’ve just added the ability to change scribble strip colours on the Behringer X-Touch. You need to be at 1.21/1.22 firmware in your X-Touch for this to work. Here’s the latest version.
I’ve added a Rack ‘on load’ binding to send both text and colours to the X-Touch. These bindings could be set to Song ‘on load’, or made with any other suitable binding, but the ones in the mixer Rack should serve as a template.
The format of the colour message is:
0xF0 x"00 00 66 14 72"
x"07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07"
0xF7
The middle row of repeated '07’s are where the colours for the eight channels are set. Colour codes are:
00 - Dark
01 - Red
02 - Green
03 - Yellow
04 - Blue
05 - Pink/Purple
06 - Cyan
07 - White
Unfortunately it still requires the binding Sys-Ex to be edited to achieve all this. At some point in Cantabile’s development I’m hoping that I can drop text strings into a binding, such that plug-in names, or Rack names (or others?) could be inserted into a common Sys-Ex string. I’ll see how that feature request goes. And I’m hoping for some MCU-compatibility to be baked in - transport controls at least. This is all for @brad to decide.
…and today I have uploaded a new version of my ‘Mickie’ DAW controller Layout for MIDI Designer Pro, which now responds to the colour messages received from my Cantabile mixer (or other MCU-compatible DAW). Mickie in Colour
You are giving me GAS. I have been admiring the X-touch for a while. But I really hate to have to do complex programming on multiple devices and keep them in sync. You seem to have solved that issue.
On the other hand, it’s a little large for my live rack. I just dumped my NI S61 because I wasn’t really using the dispays, soft buttons/knobs and I preferred something with a better keybed. Decisions…
, and the SysEx editing isn’t that onerous.
