Akai MPK49, Sonar 7, and ACT

After looking at a few different 49-key controllers, I decided to try the Akai MPK49 because of its build quality, overall feel, and especially because Cakewalk says that there are ACT presets for it. The keyboard part works wonderfully with pretty much everything, and the transport works great with Sonar, but I'm having some issues with the knobs and sliders.

Before I get into my issue, in case anyone has one of these and can't figure why the transport isn't working even though you've added an MMC surface to Sonar - you need to actually also set the transport to MMC in the keyboard's own internal menu. For whatever reason, mine wasn't set that way by default.

Now, to my problem..

The MPK49 comes with its own Generic Surface preset to allow its knobs and sliders to control Sonar 7's channel strip. When I use this, the knobs control pan and sliders control volume in the channel strip, but nothing I do can get the knobs or sliders to control any VSTi's via ACT.

So, after a lot of trial and error, I realized that I could remove the Akai-recommended preset Generic Surface and just use a straight-ahead ACT surface. Which actually works, even though the Akai manual tells me to do it the other way. Well, mostly works.

When I set up the ACT surface, I can get the knobs and sliders to control the VSTi in focus.. or if I go into the ACT surface settings and change an option, it will control the channel pans and volumes. But I can't get it to intelligently choose either the channels or VSTi's depending on which is in focus.. and going into the options all the time to change that setting is somewhat tedious.

Is there a way to do this? Better yet, is there a tested, recommended way to setup the MPK49 to work Sonar 7?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

- Cowboy

thanks, I was wondering how to get the transport controls to work on the akai mpk 49, yes wicked controller but is difficult to setup with sonar, it works flawlessly with reason but not so with sonar, again it feels like a chore to use in sonar and i think there'e something simple i've overlooked inorder to get the most out of it with sonar, i'm hoping there are Act presets for it in sonar 8

Thanks for this report.

I was looking at the MPK49 last night and was thinking it was time to replace my older 49er.

I'm interested in hearing how this controller functions with Sonar 8. Are there any success stories to be told?

I'd love to see a working Akai MPK49 ACT implementation in SONAR 8 too

Me too. Have you made any progress with the MPK49? I want to buy a MPK49; but I've seen the demo that comes with SONAR 8 featuring the EDIROL PCR 300; and that's the kind of integration I want. In the demo, the controls on the PCR 300 switch to match the effect, synth or view in the focus. How close are we to having that for the MPK49?

Thanks.

Bill

thx 4this, i just got my mpk49 2day and i 'm trying to get up and running

how about now? does it work?

Can u guys show me how to set up the MPK49 with Sonar 7 PE? I just bought a new MPK49.

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