Realearn + Fabfilter Pro Q3

[Robkress]

hello All,

I'm just now stepping into the world of control surfaces and found realearn. Wow, that's really something for sure. Here are some questions:

I am interested to control all instances of FabFilter Pro Q3 with a common set of knobs and buttons. It seems like realearn can do this and I've even done a little trial and error with some success. But of course I had some trouble as well.

Does anyone have a realearn template for Fabfilter plugins? Is this something folks share?

Or, is there another technology (the control surface integration effort) that I should be investigating and pushing on?

My end goal is to have a single controller (hardware that I will customize) to control my common FX chains, basic track functions, and basic project navigation. I'm not interested in endless tweeking but I can definitely see the value of a handful of hardware knobs and buttons to do my most common adjustments.

Realearn looks really powerful but I'll admit I'm not sure where to start. I have downloaded the manual and just started reading. That will take a minute for sure. And then you can understand how an example template might be helpful.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Cheers,

Rob

[helgoboss]

Hi, do you want to control whatever Q3 instance is currently in focus? What controller do you have?

[Robkress]

Helgo,

Yes, I would like to control which ever instance of Q3 that is in focus. I would post a pic of my config here but I'm not at my workstation at the moment.

I was able to do that by selecting focused in one of the drop downs but I had this other problem.

When I moved from one instance to another of Q3, turning the knob associated with the frequency would jump the position of the new instance to the frequency position of the first instance. So, I guess in some way I did not have the feedback set up properly from Q3 to realearn.

My expectation is that the knob would inherent the initial value for the knob from the current instance.

I was also wondering about trying to add a control to scroll through the active EQ points in an instance. One instance with 3 EQ points, another instance with 5 EQ points. When I activate the instance, I'd like to be able to scroll thru (either knob or next / previous buttons) each EQ point in the instance. With this control, then I'll only need one knob to adjust the frequency parameter of the EQ and one knob for the gain.

Thank you for the help. Realearn is awesome and I'm sure I'll be able to do what I'm looking for. I'm just at the front end of working with it so I don't know what I don't know at this point.

The controller I'm using at this time is an Akai MPK225. It is temporary for the moment though. I am using it to figure out how to do all these things with realearn and a midi control surface and then I'll be purchasing specific gear (like a midi fighter twister).

Cheers,

Rob

[helgoboss]

You probably want to follow the "Auto-load" tutorial in the ReaLearn user guide. Simply selecting "Focused" in the FX dropdown menu will lead to problems because it means "Any FX which is focused", so it could also be a totally different kind of FX.

As for the parameter jumps: Does your controller have endless encoders? I just had a look at the website of the MPK225 but couldn't figure out if the knobs are endless.

Long story short, if you want to avoid parameter jumps, this works best with endless encoders, which you then need to configure (via MPK setup tool) to emit relative messages. Then it will just work. If you don't have endless encoders, you need to use mode "Make relative" OR "Performance control" OR set Jump Max to a low value.

[Robkress]

Thanks Helgo,

I knew there would be a recommendation on how to start. And I could tell that just select focused was "not enough".

I will goto the tutorial and give it a try. If I have more questions, I'll come back and ask some more.

The encoder that I am using is an endless encoder. I do understand that the MPK has lots of settings for these and I'll test out the different ones to see if I have it set wrong. I believe I'm set to midi CC note at this time. I'll look at that.

Thanks again for all the help,

Cheers,

Rob

[Robkress]

Helgo,

Thanks man. That was a perfect tip to go to that tutorial. I was able to set up 2 endless encoders to work work properly in any instance of Pro Q3. Just what I needed. Right on!

And now that I am in just a little bit....

I wonder if there is some easy way to assign a next and previous button to the eq points in the instance.

I don't know if this is at all possible because I don't know of any keyboard shortcuts within Pro Q3 that will allow scrolling between eq points via any kind of command or keyboard stroke.

Is there a way to simple have realearn "try" the next eq point and if it is not present it scrolls back around?

I know this is a crazy and detailed question but if anyone would know if this is possible, I think it might be you

Thanks in advance for the help.

Cheers,

Rob

[helgoboss]

Glad it helped.

This next/previous band use case, it depends on how Pro Q3 exposes its frequency bands as automatable parameters. An easy way to check is to enable automation touch mode, playing the project and moving the frequency bands around. Then it should record a few automation lanes. It would be interesting what parameters that are and how they are named. Maybe you can post a screenshot of the large automation parameter view of the track. From there, I could maybe come up with a way to achieve what you want. It would also be interesting to do the same with one additional band added and have a look at the automation parameter view again. I'm hoping to conclude from this how Q3 indicates whether a band is active or not.

Unfortunately, I can't try this myself because my FabFilter evaluation period is already exhausted twice

[Robkress]

Thank you H,

I will try to do what you've asked.

I did find the next button in the Pro Q interface but when I tried to automate it (with Reaper native learn and with realearn) it did not work. Very interesting.

It's also interesting that the Fabfilter manual talks about this use case and describes a next / previous band feature via midi but I simply can't find any way to do it yet.

I'll investigate more today and see if I can find some more breadcrumbs. Pro Q3 is a very sophisticated plugin (which is why I use it) and I use almost all of the features in it. But, there are the basic ones that I touch all the time. Boy it would be nice to be able to do that with some knobs.

Thanks again for staying in with me on this one and helping out.

Cheers,

R

[Robkress]

Helgo,

Thank you again for all your help with my try at controlling FabFilter Pro Q3.

I've posted another thread on the topic with a little bit more general question for the group but wanted to feed back here on what I've learned since last...

I've come to know that there is a difference between the list of controllable items in the Reaper learn engine and the native FabFilter midi learn engine.

Indeed the list of controllable items is vast (24 bands and roughly 10 to 15 items per band plus additional controls). All of these are great but specific to specific bands (by number). In the native Fab learn engine, they offer access to the next and previous buttons as well as generic access to the "active band". This doesn't exist in the Reaper learn engine.

So now I'm trying to understand if there is a way to use the Fab learn function instead of the Reaper learn function.

I can tell that this quest I'm on will take a minute for sure. However, it feels like it could be worthy in the long run.

Thank you for all your help so far. Realearn is really great and still on the table for my ultimate solution. Not sure though if I'll be able to get passed this hurdle with next and previous.

Cheers,

Rob

[helgoboss]

Just for the sake of completeness, here's how you would do it with ReaLearn and ReaEQ (can be done the same way for Pro Q-3!).

Open the attached RPP file (needs a recent ReaLearn version). Press A and D to switch between bands. Press W and S to increase/decrease gain. Needless to say, this also works with MIDI or OSC sources.

BTW, I just found that FabFilter Pro-Q3 exposes as parameter whether a band is used! See here: https://imgur.com/a/k4yMjlf ... so really, it provides us with all the information needed to even deal with the current issue that one can jump to an unused bank.

[Robkress]

Helgo,

Thank you for your last post. I'll give this a try and see how that works.

Rob

[cwdain]

Did you have any luck?