Hardware Control surface how-to

R

Rayne

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I got the first portion of my DAW hardware control surface working!! ! !
I'm setting it all up to be Generic, so that any mixer (or any hardware unit) capible of sending midi CC messages can be your control surface. It should be able to work in any sequencer, but since i"m using Cubase SX, i'll only have templates, and scripts for that sequencer... if you want to set up your sequencer to follow the same messages, and export a template to share that would be great!

I'm using cubase SX with a DMX6fire soundcard.
To control the faders I have a Roland VM3100 digital mixer. ($300) Great little mixer for the price, onboard effects, and superior routing abilities.
For transport and real-time controls I'm using a DM2 controller ($30)

I've set the first 10 faders to control the Volume envelopes for the first 10 audio tracks in cubase.. I still have to assign the master fader to control my main buss out, and I want to set up the second bank of faders to control the send/effect for each of the 10 audio tracks. This particular mixer allows you to switch between MIDI chanels1-8 (volume) and 9-16 (sends)with the push of one button.... This has already made life alot easier... and I can see TONS of great mixing oppertunities with this.
rolandvm3100_1.gif


The second piece of gear that is being used is a DM2. This is the ltitle toy controller for the mixman studio programs. Pdoom has hacked the drivers for it, so that you can assign any midi note/messgae/contralchange data to any key. It also has banks 1-4, so you can reuse the same physcial button to control more functions. The rewriten driver is free from http://www.pdoom.ch/dm2/ It allows you to set up the controller in whatever way you want to control tons of settings, or clone already built gear. This can be set up to control ANY program that uses MIDI messages. Thsi includes audio sequencer, effects, Dj software, VJ software, and video editing software to name a few... defiantly worth every penny i paid for it :-D

GG%20DM2%2029.GIF


My plan for this was to set it up so that the transport at the top controlled, start, stop and record... the A and B woudl control fastforward and rewind.. the crossfader would be just that. The large scratch rings can be used as scrub wheels. All those indivual keys (16, 8 each side) will be the mutes, direct headphone, R/W toggle, and useful edit functions.... This is the next step I plan on taking. The midi learn fucntion isnt' working well for me, so it's taking longer than i expected. I thought a post might get some peopel researching these great products, and when i'm all done I'll post the templates and stuff i made, so that anyone who has this stuff will be able to use it as a control surface. For example, teh DM2 has a joystick. I would love to be able to figure out how to make it contrel the mouse pointer, but i don't think it can. It could be useful asa 5.1 surround pan, but i don't have enough speakers to test it. It might also be cool as a way to control effects... any ideas!?

I want some feedback tho, on what would be the best way to use all this stuff.... Any ideas or suggestions as I get this ball rolling? I'm learning alot about hwo MIDI works by doing this, it's a great and fun way to learn it all. What do you look for in a control surface, and because this is such unique gear, how can this be put to the best advantage (for creavity and real time work) I've yet to have any problems with latency issues, and i'm only running a 1.3Ghz P4
 
A DM2? wow, i thought i'd never see that thing used for anything useful. rayne++
 
Rayne!!! You are the Muthaf*ckin Man
A friend of mi has the DM2, the usb version, and couls not find drivers for it. We will try that driver from the ling you suggested.

And I had plans of using a Fostex VM88 I found @ a local Pawn Shop as a Control surface in Sonar. Using the DM2 fro Transport comtrols is a great ides.

And the Joystick mouse ides sounds great.

This has to be one of the most informative Hardware post ive ever seen on this site


Thankx man!!
 
Why do you have a DMX6fire if the VM3100 has an audio output to the computer?? Don't you have the Roland RPC-1 sound card that usually comes with the VM3100?? It has 8 ins and 8 outs, so I don't understand why you are talking about an external mixer and the DMX6fire. Maybe I am missing something here, but the VM3100 is a digital mixer plus audio interface plus MIDI control surface in one unit.
 
The VM3100 PRO comes with the 8 track interface for the computer... and it also is incompatible with windows XP.. so i jsut bought the VM3100 (not PRO) which doens't have the R-bus (8 channel serial interface)

It is true that I can mix down with the board, and just send it all into a stero signal into the computer. But I would loose alot of functionality that way::: I'm able to record multiple tracks at once this way..

More importantly:: The latency ont eh DMX6frire is much better than the old Santa Cruz card I had... I often record mixes, and mix over them again with Dj equipment.. so I need to be able to hear very closley.. and using the DM2 as a drum pad, I need spot on latency. ( I can detec tno noticble differance) so I can bang away rhythms with no problems when I listen to other music playing...

PLus I didnt' have any digital inputs or outputs on my other soundcard... But I DO on teh DMX6 fire... so I can send things to and from the VM3100 without converting it back and forth in analog and ruining the quality...

I like the break out front panel.. it's useful to connect things to the RCA hook ups directly... (like my portable minidisc player) i jsut got back from recording some voice overs for a play I'm doing... and it's alot simpilar to just hook up some RCA cables, than plugging everythign up to my mixer each time I need to do something like that.
 
well, I have the VM3100 Pro and don't know much about the differences to the non-Pro. I thought the only difference are the two 24bit effects units the Pro model has?!?

Why are you losing multi-track recording capabilities if you could record and playback 8 tracks at once with the VM3100 and the RPC-1 card? That's the whole point of the VM3100: its a complete 8in/out recording solution. As a mixer (baaad pres) or MIDI controller (not much to control here except "play", "record", "stop" and the non-motorized channel faders) it totally sucks.

The VM3100 Pro and non-Pro are both WinXP compatible (a lot of users just don't know that you have to drag the setup file from CD-ROM to your desktop and click on the "Win98 compatibality mode"), and is has digital ins and outs in combination with the RPC-1 card that usually ships with the VM3100. Latency is also no issue at all. I have 9msec but could go down to 4msec if I used a smaller buffer, 9msec suits me fine, though. Your setup seems weird to me, Rayne, and you don't use most of the features the VM3100 is capable of.
 
the VM3100 only has 1 effect and 1 compressor... the Pro version has 2. .. the PRO version also lets you save more user presets.

ONLY the pro version uses the R-bus.

the vm3100 doens't even have the serial connection on the back to plug the R-bus in... it's not about shipping with it or not, it's not built to use it.

Personally I think most of the effects are Junk...... (but I have utilized them.. I was running a theatre production from that board and one effect worked perfectly) the compressor is a nice touch, and has a pretty good sound to it. I dont' often utilize it tho.. because I like to keep things dry.. it's easier to change compression settings later in the DAW.

The MIDI featurs aren't why I bought it.. i have 1 midi keyboard, and I don't use it all that often.... But when I was researching it I knew that I would be able to set up teh faders so I could control cubase and use it as a control surface.. I dont' care about transport controls. I have them mapped to the keybaord anyway , and can do ti on the DM2 (once i finnaly have time to set it up).... I also like that I can save snapshots. It makes it really easy to use the board for alot of differant applications at once.


it is DEfinatly not a LIVE board... not good for running like a PA, or anythign wher eyou have to change alot of settings at once or quickly. becasue there is alto that it can do, but a very limited number of buttons.. you can only change a channel at a time. But i often don't need a board for that... It is portable (I can easliy carry it in a backpack with everythign else I need) 44.1k sample rate is fine for me::: If I'm in the field I record to a portable minidisc, so higher sample rates woudl be lost anywyaz. 24 bit is nice for processing later...



Honestly:: I don't multitrack often: if i'm only running 3 sources through the board, 8 outs won't do jack... I wasn't talking about loosing multitrack capabilties with the board tho... I was talking about my old soundcard.. it only had 1 stereo input...
 
Rayne said:
The VM3100 PRO comes with the 8 track interface for the computer... and it also is incompatible with windows XP..

The vm3100pro is compatible with windows xp. I've been using it with windows xp for over a year now.
Click to expand...
 
yea .. the vm3100 is a regular mixer in addition to everythign else it can do ::: and a damn good little mixer too ;)
 
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