Cockos Incorporated Forums - View Single Post - Control Surface Integration (CSI) Technical Feature Discussion

dixo · 12-31-2018, 01:36 PM

Hi Poetnprophet, Geoff,

Thanks very much for your replies! I really appreciate you (and many others) spending all this time helping everybody out.

I realized that my questions may have been quite random and unclear, possibly caused by my very incomplete understanding of how CSI is set up, and which parts are not implemented yet. I have spent the last couple of days reading the entire thread again, and much has become clearer now. I also realized that I did not really understand what workflow I actually wanted to implement, so I sat down and figured out how I ideally would like to use my control surfaces (QCon Pro + Ex) with Reaper.
And I hope that you can give me pointers on how to set this up using CSI.

So, what would I ideally like to have:
- A tracking/mixing page that controls all mixer faders and pan knobs, and a transport. This is working great already.
- A page to control the sends for all tracks. This is working fine too, but optionally I would love to have a mode where I can control all sends of a single track on one page (similar to how Klinke does it).
- There are a small number of plugins that I include on almost every track (e.g. EQ, Compressor), and I would love to have separate pages to control these, using all widgets (faders, knobs, etc) and with the QCon LCD showing sensible info. These pages would ideally be accessible by a dedicated button on the QCon (e.g. one of the F1-F8 or the EQ button), but using NextPage is ok too for now. I am still very screen focused, so I would like the associated FX window to open on-screen when that page is selected, and close when the page is left. I have been experimenting to set this up, but so far it does not really work well, requiring mouse clicks in the FX list to open and select the FX to get the widgets to map. Maybe I don't understand the selection keywords (TrackOnSelection, MapTrackAndFXToWidgets, TrackOnFocusedFX, MapSingleFXToWidgetsForTrack) properly...
- For all other VSTs I would like to be able to map the parameters to the rotaries, and have two buttons to navigate through the FX list of the selected track, with its VST window opening on-screen when selected and the QCon LCD indicating the parameters controlled the knobs below, and maybe the name of the plugin too. The other widgets (e.g. faders etc.) should keep behaving as in the main mixer page, so this would be more like an overlay on the mixer page than a separate page.
There was some point in the thread where this was discussed, but I believe it was put on the backburner, is that right?
The way I set up most of my (recorded) tracks is with an EQ on top that does basic clean-up of the signal (e.g. high-pass to remove the extreme low-end). Later in the FX chain I will have another EQ to really shape the tone. If I use different EQ VSTs for that there is no problem with the .fxt mapping, but how can I handle for instance 2 ReaEQ's on the same track? Which one will be mapped, or is it random?

I also have a BCR2000, that I may want to use to map the most common VSTs to, but at the moment my desk is too small to conveniently place it, the QCon and EX already take all the space. So I would love to have everything available on the QCon and have the BCR as an add-on extra later.

So, would this be possible to achieve with the final CSI (I guess the answer is going to be 'yes'

), and how much is already possible?

Geoff: the new version you put up today behaves much nicer on the QCon w.r.t. the Time Display. All modes are now clearly readable and all 'stale' digits are cleared. Thank you so much!

A small feature request: how hard is it to create a 'JumpToPage <page name>' command in addition to the NextPage command?
I know that there has been talk that this should ideally be combined with the radio button mode, but even without that, and no LEDs to indicate the selected page I think it would already be very useful to have.

Thanks for all the great stuff so far, can't wait to see what else you have in store for us...

And: all the best for the new year!

Cheers,
Paul

12-31-2018, 01:36 PM	#2273
dixo Human being with feelings Join Date: May 2011 Posts: 92	Hi Poetnprophet, Geoff, Thanks very much for your replies! I really appreciate you (and many others) spending all this time helping everybody out. I realized that my questions may have been quite random and unclear, possibly caused by my very incomplete understanding of how CSI is set up, and which parts are not implemented yet. I have spent the last couple of days reading the entire thread again, and much has become clearer now. I also realized that I did not really understand what workflow I actually wanted to implement, so I sat down and figured out how I ideally would like to use my control surfaces (QCon Pro + Ex) with Reaper. And I hope that you can give me pointers on how to set this up using CSI. So, what would I ideally like to have: - A tracking/mixing page that controls all mixer faders and pan knobs, and a transport. This is working great already. - A page to control the sends for all tracks. This is working fine too, but optionally I would love to have a mode where I can control all sends of a single track on one page (similar to how Klinke does it). - There are a small number of plugins that I include on almost every track (e.g. EQ, Compressor), and I would love to have separate pages to control these, using all widgets (faders, knobs, etc) and with the QCon LCD showing sensible info. These pages would ideally be accessible by a dedicated button on the QCon (e.g. one of the F1-F8 or the EQ button), but using NextPage is ok too for now. I am still very screen focused, so I would like the associated FX window to open on-screen when that page is selected, and close when the page is left. I have been experimenting to set this up, but so far it does not really work well, requiring mouse clicks in the FX list to open and select the FX to get the widgets to map. Maybe I don't understand the selection keywords (TrackOnSelection, MapTrackAndFXToWidgets, TrackOnFocusedFX, MapSingleFXToWidgetsForTrack) properly... - For all other VSTs I would like to be able to map the parameters to the rotaries, and have two buttons to navigate through the FX list of the selected track, with its VST window opening on-screen when selected and the QCon LCD indicating the parameters controlled the knobs below, and maybe the name of the plugin too. The other widgets (e.g. faders etc.) should keep behaving as in the main mixer page, so this would be more like an overlay on the mixer page than a separate page. There was some point in the thread where this was discussed, but I believe it was put on the backburner, is that right? The way I set up most of my (recorded) tracks is with an EQ on top that does basic clean-up of the signal (e.g. high-pass to remove the extreme low-end). Later in the FX chain I will have another EQ to really shape the tone. If I use different EQ VSTs for that there is no problem with the .fxt mapping, but how can I handle for instance 2 ReaEQ's on the same track? Which one will be mapped, or is it random? I also have a BCR2000, that I may want to use to map the most common VSTs to, but at the moment my desk is too small to conveniently place it, the QCon and EX already take all the space. So I would love to have everything available on the QCon and have the BCR as an add-on extra later. So, would this be possible to achieve with the final CSI (I guess the answer is going to be 'yes' ), and how much is already possible? Geoff: the new version you put up today behaves much nicer on the QCon w.r.t. the Time Display. All modes are now clearly readable and all 'stale' digits are cleared. Thank you so much! A small feature request: how hard is it to create a 'JumpToPage <page name>' command in addition to the NextPage command? I know that there has been talk that this should ideally be combined with the radio button mode, but even without that, and no LEDs to indicate the selected page I think it would already be very useful to have. Thanks for all the great stuff so far, can't wait to see what else you have in store for us... And: all the best for the new year! Cheers, Paul Last edited by dixo; 01-01-2019 at 05:42 AM.