This is always a work-in-progress. If you have ideas for this, write them down in a post. Keep it simple and compatible with Reaper as far as you know.
What is this ?
Send midi(/osc?) commands to midi(/osc?) devices for the purpose of displaying status information.
This is often automatic in control surfaces for things like the play or stop button, but it's not automatic for non-control surface midi devices or even some OSC touch display apps. The send mutes come to mind.
Personally, I want the volume of sends to show up on my knobs LED rings.
For this the floating point value has to be punched in to a midi 0-127 value and sent via a command I provide in a placeholder of my choosing to the device of my choice.
For example, a midi cc 64 with a value that's derived from the send # volume parameter value.
Why ?
Many of us, including myself, have a whole slew of unused leds, button lights and meters on their midi devices that are going completely unused.
An X-Touch Mini for example has eight 0-127 leds and a whole bunch of buttons that could be used for feedback, and it's just $40.
A Novation Dicer has five larger and three small buttons, all capable of display six different colours.
How ?
Who knows ? I'm looking at Traktor 3 by Native instruments. It handles this in a list of stuff that is sent out. I posted an image of how Traktor 3 handles it in post #3.
In the end it could be a simple output list sent with a 10 Hz(or other) or whenever a parameter on that list changes.
Example
X-Touch Mini has two banks of 16 buttons. The LEDs can be turned on or off with two different midi commands.
Those buttons can be lit with this command, in this case the left most button on the lower row of bank on :
The same command at velocity 0 turns it off. So this would need two commands defined by the user. Device specifics could be collected to be included in a future release of Reaper. If considered, keep in mind that you can reprogram these devices too, so user-made command collections for a device should be possible.
So, maybe Traktor 3 is a good inspiration. Maybe Ableton Live or Bitwig is. How easy can this be made for the user that knows little about coding ?
More ideas (not implentations)
The user often has stuff midi-learned.
Let's present that list of midi-learned stuff for use in building a feedback list. Pick and choose. The user will want to use the parameter value from the parameter that the midi-learned knob/button/encoder is controlling.
So it's not just track volume, track pan, send volume, send pan, mute, solo, phase, arm and so on, but everything the user might be controlling via some knob, encoder or button.
The user should be able to do midi-learns on all selected tracks on their matching parameters. That would seriously save time on existing projects.
I'm researching what other applications are doing in this area.
Native Instruments Traktor 3.
Holy shit, that thing is deep. Reaper's almost Logic 1.0 in comparison on control customization. I'm still wrapping my head around it. The amount of stuff you can attach to buttons, encoders and faders/knobs is endless.
You can create a world of output stuff, which Reaper has nothing of.
Check it out here. The manual is on that page. Check out page 116 and later for midi controllers, but the best thing is to just get the application and run it in demo mode. Runs fine.
Here's the way Traktor 3 handles a single control, adjusting the high band of the mixer EQ, with a Behringer X-Touch mini, first knob on the left, bank A.
An input is learned, as is the output, because most devices actually respond to the current state just being sent back to the device.
IMHO, a universal, decently configurable Control Surface extension such as "CSI makes more sense.
-Michael
I certainly plan to use my Faderport16 with it. CSI is the best option such a piece of hardware that is used for my kind of work, which is mixing in post production.
For the midi knob boxes I use, CSI isn't the right fit just yet. I need to be able to setup and control an entire channel strip. Reapers current per-track midi-learning is the most painless to setup and maintain at this time. This might change in the future, and CSI could turn out to be better for it. Or Reaper gets improvements in that area as well, and CSI feeds off that to improve itself further.
This request is one possible improvement for the stuff Reaper already has. It's an option for those that need it.
There are lots of ways you can do this with various scripts and things CSI, realearn etc etc. But I definitely agree that basic midi feedback should be incorporated as part of the application!
I am of the belief that it would be a simple and elegant solution for what the majority of users want to use midi for.
MCI does not support free mapping of controls. Basic to me would include "you can map any midi control to a control in REAPER and have an option for REAPER to send feedback" Ableton, Studio One, Tracktor, FL studio, Bitwig, Cubase and more have this functionality. It is the default behaviour in most other modern DAWS.
REAPER is the only DAW I know of that allows freely mapping midi controls to actions and parameters that DOESNT provide feedback to the source.
It could be in this menu that would be really great, just having a tickbox added to this menu that said "send feedback to controller"
Also having the ability to send midi feedback for all of the "last touched ...." actions would be really useful:
Also to be clear.
I use a faderport with the community driver, It's excellent.
I am the type of user who would learn to use CSI if I had a controller that I felt that would be useful. I think these types of community projects are great and needed.
I just think the reality is most people who want to map a hardware controller to something in REAPER don't want to have to install or configure external scripts, extensions or plugins in order to have midi feedback.
I certainly have had times where i just wanted to simply map something on a keyboard controller or TouchOSC to something in REAPER and it was frustrating to not have feedback.
I just think the reality is most people who want to map a hardware controller to something in REAPER don't want to have to install or configure external scripts, extensions or plugins in order to have midi feedback.
I understand that in the rather near future a lot of configuration files for CSI covering a lot of different Control Surfaces and a lot of different workflows will be available (e. g. via ReaPack, and hence easily findable). IMHO this is the best support possible for "most people".
I strongly disagree. I don't think most people who use REAPER even know what ReaPack is. It's a community project and you need to have spent some time on the forums or watching videos to hear about it.
I never heard about it until I had used REAPER for a few years and I had actively spent a lot of time on the forums and customizing REAPER by that point.
You are right in that ReaPack definitively should be automatically installed with any Reaper installation by default (unless the user actively disagrees).
That might prevent a lot of support requests in the forums.
MCI does not support free mapping of controls. Basic to me would include "you can map any midi control to a control in REAPER and have an option for REAPER to send feedback" Ableton, Studio One, Tracktor, FL studio, Bitwig, Cubase and more have this functionality. It is the default behaviour in most other modern DAWS.
REAPER is the only DAW I know of that allows freely mapping midi controls to actions and parameters that DOESNT provide feedback to the source.
It could be in this menu that would be really great, just having a tickbox added to this menu that said "send feedback to controller"
Also having the ability to send midi feedback for all of the "last touched ...." actions would be really useful:
That's a good place for this to get started. Most controllers just expect the same midi CC to come back on the same channel.
Reaper would need to send the current value of what that midi cc is controlling as soon as the user selects the track this is on. If more tracks are selected, it'll depend on whether or not the control is mapped with one of the "Enable..." checkboxes.
On top of that, you could have additional data sent to devices with that suggested Output List. With a 10Hz or 15Hz output you can run decent meters on some leds on some devices, i.e. anything that can be addressed with a single midi or osc command.
Reaper would need to send the current value of what that midi cc is controlling as soon as the user selects the track this is on.
It makes a lot off sense to have a controller be assigned to different functions at different points in time (e.g."banking"). Hence IMHO this is jumping much too short.
It makes a lot off sense to have a controller be assigned to different functions at different points in time (e.g."banking"). Hence IMHO this is jumping much too short.
-Michael
I at least would be very happy with airon's suggestion for a start.
It makes a lot off sense to have a controller be assigned to different functions at different points in time (e.g."banking"). Hence IMHO this is jumping much too short.
-Michael
I agree with you about this! But i think user defined banking parameters is territory well left to something like CSI.
I feel that a simple midi feedback option like this would be useful for situations where one just wants a simple quick mapping of one or two parameters.
It makes a lot off sense to have a controller be assigned to different functions at different points in time (e.g."banking"). Hence IMHO this is jumping much too short.
-Michael
Obviously you don't use that feature already. There you can set it up in a way it's only active when the GUI of the plugin is open (and selected). So there is practically no limit in CCs and no need for banking as long as your controller has enough knobs.
Fiddling with preconfigured (global!) mappings with your usual plugins is really a joy. Put on two buttons of your controller the open next / before plugin action and you don't need a mouse unless you want to draw in RX.
Traktor is pretty sophisticated but also Reason 2.0 and Ableton 5 already had that stuff going. It's just a tick box in that MIDI/OSC Learn dialog. Not more we are asking for. But I see again you have an agenda against this FR. Have fun. Thanks for the bumps.
The Midi/OSC Learn dialog box should let the user pick the target device, or at least send the midi CC back to the source device.
For that it needs to be enabled as a midi output. Perhaps the midi learn dialogue box should include the option to enable both the midi output device and the midi feedback for that parameter.
As a simple example, say midi device id 3 sends MIDI CC 0 , which is midi-learned to control a plugin parameter.
Reaper converts the parameters value to a midi data value (0-127 decimal) and sends that to the midi device id 3 as MIDI CC 0 with the aforementioned value.
If the midi device 3, let's call it "Knobbox", does not have its midi output activated in the midi device list in the preferences, Reaper can offer to activate it in the midi learn dialog box. Could be a checkbox.
Feature development could let the user pick the device, midi CC and value range, with the same device and source midi CC pre-selected. That way other devices can display the status of certain plugin parameters.
The next level would be to let the user freely create new midi output commands to be updated at a specific frequency, as the source parameter data changes or when certain conditions arise.
What do you guys think ?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mschnell
You are right in that ReaPack definitively should be automatically installed with any Reaper installation by default (unless the user actively disagrees).
That might prevent a lot of support requests in the forums.
-Michael
On the other hand I have had it installed since the get-go and pretty much never use anything in it. I know - I am a tape-addicted luddite.
If you are looking for feedback from your controller, I suggest The Reaper Blog's YouTube channel, and his video about midi feedback. It's a bit of an effort to set up, but it works. It's mostly for synth plugin parameters, though, from my research.
Thanks for this video! This is exactly my use case. Don’t need transport functions or other DAW control.
I’ve been using the Xtouch Mini with soft takeover to control a couple of EQs and compressors since a year or so. It kinda works but the workflow with the soft takeover it is rather annoying - even though I am glad that at least there is that option to avoid parameter jumps.
So, to follow the approach in the video, I need to download, set-up and rely on four 3rd party pieces of software..?!
I am using Reaper since the early 2000s and I scratch my head that this basic midi control environment workflow is still not implemented in the DAW in 2020. I am not a programmer, I am not going to learn how to code scripts. I don’t want to set-up fancy stuff. Only want to use my EQs with knobs.
I will try the approach explained in the video... but pretty please... have mercy... make Reaper handling that stuff without the need of so much extra software
I suppose the CSI Reaper extension might be a more promising way of handling such things. (Unfortunately not for the old "Faderport" hardware, though)
-Michael
MIDI Feedback Output List
Linear Mode
