You can integrate your Control Surface with SONAR as deep as you want!

In case you have some cheap device and you think how good it could be to have something like Mackie MCU:

• what about instant control, "endless" feel or hi precision changes using your normal rotary/slider?
• what about "touch sensitivity" imitation for your not touch sensitive sliders?
• have you thought about having several "banks" with easy switch by rotary?
• can you imagine one of your rotary is a jogger with scrub function ?

And even in case you have some "good" device, may be with some SONAR support:

• do you want some sliders control tracks and other buses ?
• do you want control parameters from different effects, synth, strips without changing the focus?
• does some of your controls not doing what you want?
• may be you want to see "Silence, I Record my song" on display of your surface ?
• have you thought what is THEORETICALLY possible to do from Control Surface with your DAW?

In case some answers are "Yes", your need SuperUltraHyper Control plug-in which can do all that and much more!
 
You can ask where is the joke... Here it is: it is not a joke!
 
This "Hover car" between Control Surfaces technology you can download by following the link in my signature. And do not worry about the price, it is free!
 
Only several words of caution: I do not claim it is "plug and play", it is not; I do not claim it is commercial ready quality and never fail or crash, it can fail or crash (but I had no bad crashes so far).
 
EDIT: it has "Startup preset" now, a kind of genetic "plug and play" solution.
There are also presets for MCU (complete, but untested) and A&H ZED R16 and QU16/24/32 (tested but simple). PreSonus FaderPort (complete). Frontier Alphatrack (complete). HUI (basic).

This is great work. I will test it out soon. 

I'm more than curious about this.  Thanks for the hard work azslow3!

BlixYZ
following this thread.   i'll try it when i have some time.

Ditto.   I have a BCF2000 that I'm curious to try with this...

stevec
Ditto.   I have a BCF2000 that I'm curious to try with this...

BCF is Mackie compatible device. So a bit more tricky then usual. I am writing "MCU explained" and there will be ready to use preset for it (precisely speaking for TouchDAW). That should be much better starting point for BCF then current blank "configuration".
 

dubdisciple
I will try too.  my MPD drives me nuts at times

The plug-in should have no problems with MPD (for long time). MMC for transport is recognized, and the number of controls is unlimited. You can just follow "ACT MIDI explained" tutorial and take parts which you need.
Since MPD has no endless encoders (if I understand the documentation correctly), I can suggest to try different combinations of curved/instant and endless imitation response. I hope you can find what is best for you.

CakeAlexS
Seems interesting. Still holding out for a Behringer: X-TOUCH myself, maybe it will get released when X4 comes out (not holding my breath).

I do not think Behringer release "X-TOUCH deep integration" for SONAR  prior X8

fitzj
Well done azslow3 if it works great. Thanks

I am working with computing centres and big farms for long time. The usual conclusion during investigations after accidents is:
"Out system was working great, till this (sometimes the only) user has tried to use it..."
 
Writing the plug-in is up to me, but checking either it works (great or at all) is up to you

Karyn
You have a forum full of alpha/beta testers to draw on here.

The plug-in was announced long time ago... There was several replies (as in this thread), but there was not much of usual "alpha testing" reaction.
 

I have a BCR2000 that I want to use ALL of the rotary controls, not just the few I can use with act... (unless I was doing something wrong,  I gave up with it)

Compare to ACT MIDI, there is no display (after implementing MCU display, I have got an I idea how that can be done. So it is is plans now). But in all features the plug-in can beat it. At some degree it can beat any other SONAR CS plug-in. To be fear, in features but not in stability (with one home user AKA developer, it is unknown) and for sure not in simplicity.
 
For BCR2000 the roadmap is the following:

• try to go throw "ACT MIDI explain" tutorial (just with 1-2 encoders, duplicating them is easy as you can find at the end).
• find good working mode for encoders, some "relative" should be the best. BCR documentation is not precise there, so I can not give exact recommendations. You will need to play with "Value" parameters to match ("Endless" "Accelerated" "Reversed").
• At the end of the Action List (after "Value") add "Monitor" "Parameter Value" "Fast (or Ultra)" and in the Feedback Actions for it add "MIDI" "<Use Ctrl MIDI>" "Value". That should make your LED ring animate (again, depending on BCR mode that potentially requires some tuning in what to send).
• Do not forget that you are not limited in what you control. Just several examples, good for encoders:
  • jogger (especially nice in scrub mode, try set "Tick" with relatively hi multiplier)
  • fixed direct parameter (4th send from Guitar bus, particular Synth or effect parameter), independent from ACT and WAI (the strip should not be in current WAI and ACT can focus other VST).
  • you can use one row of encoders for tracks and another for buses (and yet another for mains, if you have many)
• good reaction for buttons can be hard to find. Search in "Command" and "Function".

 

I will definitely check this out this weekend,

Don't know how I missed this thread, but I'll be keeping an eye on it. I'd love to have a control surface, but from all the posts I've seen here of people having endless trouble making them work with Sonar, I've been sitting on the sidelines waiting/hoping someone would figure this out. 
 
Thanks for all your hard work Alexie (azslow3)!! Looking forward to further developments.

Though I apparently don't have time to even fire up Sonar often enough to even recall how to use it these days (or play my instruments, or be musically inspired, or...), I'd be very interested in the depth of integration with the BCF2000 device in MCU mode as well.
 
Looking forward to your guide/preset - then I'll try the plugin, assuming I can get away from creating websites, fixing computers/servers/networks, and running a business for long enough to even do the laundry regularly! :)

Dyonight
I have a Nucleus which need a lot of attention here, I will SOOO gladly alpha test this plugin and give as much feedback as I can!

A combination of big expensive surface with free plug-in... that sounds interesting. Does it represent itself as MCU plus extender on different ports? If you by chance know technical details of some "native" mode, it could be better to use it directly instead of MCU compatibility.

Blades
Looking forward to your guide/preset

Unlike "simple" plug-ins, CW Mackie Control plug-in has quite some logic inside. I am not sure I am going to explain/configure everything it can. I use TouchDAW and it simply does not allow to test everything.
 
So far I am done with Initialization, complete transport section and basic track operations (volume/pan + display). I want to extend strip functionality at least to Track/Bus and may be  ACT before I publishing the initial preset/docs.
 
I do not know what other expect/need/want. I guess my own needs are unusual and I can not just follow my nose. Except "looks interesting... I will try..." I have got effectively zero response so far. So my only conclusion: no one wants surface integration till it is "instant auto magic". My plug-in provides a way for good integration, but it is not (and will not) do this "magically". It is the same as SONAR in respect to music: SONAR is a good DAW, but it does not generate music on it's own, not even on the level of simplest auto-arranger.
 

bjornpdx
So far it's been working fine on my M-Audio Oxygen 49 using the Quick Start instructions.
I've never been able to get  ACT stuff to work  but this looks promising. Thanks.

Quick Start is the first step... but you have many miles to go "ACT MIDI Explained" is the next route to take.

Vastman I have an old M-Audio keystation pro-88 with a zillion buttons, knobs, sliders

I have no space to use it as CS (it is my "mobile" piano...), but I can debug problem with it (in case you spot some).
 
Since AZC has internal display now, practical use of high number of controls is finally feasible .

First of all, many thanks for the first detailed comment about my plug-in/tutorial. And the first bug report
 

dwcaldwell
 I tried several combinations of relative encoder modes along with the "Endless" "Accelerated" and "Reversed" Value parameters, and they worked okay to control strip controls but I had trouble getting them to work with ACT controls.

I could quickly reproduce that on one of my set-ups. So that should be a bug... I can not reproduce it now in my test/development environment, but I will try to understand and fix it once I am back at home.
 

  But using Absolute controllers with Direct Linear worked fine with both strip and ACT controls in the tutorial.

Does BCR change the reference value in that mode? I mean in case you change ACT context (focus another plug-in) and start to turn the knob, does the parameter "jumps" to the position where corresponding parameter was in the previous plug-in? Novation knobs do that, so there is effectively no difference between "Endless MIDI" and "Absolute" with monitoring, but I do not know about BCR behavior is such case.
 

I still have a LOT to learn, but I'm very excited about this control surface plug-in. Thank you for your efforts.

I also have a lot to learn in all directions, developing the plug-in has opened my eyes on what Control Surface is and what it is not. And I will be happy in case I can help other in that narrow area. I am "newbie" in everything else
 

Is it possible to use your control surface plug-in to manipulate ProChannel effects and the QuadCurve EQ? (I haven't found a way to do that yet in my experiments.)

A kind of yes. The corresponding action is called "Filter". Not only from Control Surfaces perspective, ProChannel is a new incarnation of the Filter concept. While some of the ideas match (only one EQ/Comp possible), other do not (the position of EQ was fixed in Filters and there was a fixed set of possible "modules"). And there are some bugs on SONAR side (see my comment in docs).
 
In practice, in case the strip is Selected/Highlighted/Current, ProChannel is shown and the module is "activated" (so it was at least "enabled" before with mouse), all delivered with X3pro Modules should be controllable. This (and most other features...) is not intensively tested.
 
Please note that ProChannel modules can be also controlled with ACT.
 
In the latest published API there is new focusing method. It is used by VS-x00 plug-ins (and most probably that is the reason why these devices reliably control EQ). But this method is not yet exposed in AZC.

dwcaldwell
I'm not sure if it is a bug or not. I think endless encoders are intended to be used when there is no parameter feedback provided to the control surface so I have no problem with using Absolute/Direct with feedback. Secondly, this "bug" only happens on my system with certain plug-ins.

My observation is the same: happens with several plug-ins and sometimes start to work after track automations... A bit strange. The reason - some granularity in mapping for value inside SONAR and/or plug-in. I wonder either Mackie device owners also observe it.
 
I have implemented some workaround ( in v0.2r6). It is not perfect, but should work.
 

dwcaldwell
When I change ACT context between different plug-ins, the BCR encoders immediately change to reflect the parameter values of the focused plug-in. This is how it should behave, IMO. I don't have to turn a knob before it updates to the value of the focused plug-in.

That is good. So you do not really need "endless" mode.