Old Controller Support i.e. Roland U-8 and Yamaha Pro Mix 01
Greetings All,
If you are lucky enough to have and old Roland U-8 or a Yamaha Pro Mix 01 and thought you were out of luck for using them as controllers, fear not for I bring you tidings of great joy.
Roland U-8. Its old and no longer supported. The full software for it only ran on Windows 98 (and seems to work just fine on an Oracle Virtual Box...oh yes it will see the Roland U-8 as being alive on the USB port, install the CD and your are off and running)
So to get things going to use the U-8 as a controller, power it up and plug the MIDI out into your MIDI input that Sonar knows about, then open up the Controller Surface section () and for this time choose the ACT Midi Controller.
When that's selected and you have correct MIDI in and out for that, go to the properties page of that controller. You should be seeing this.
Next, on the Roland U-8, press the Audio+MIDI button (its not really titled that way on the unit, in fact, no title at all) until the MIDI 1-8 red LED is lit. Now the U-8 will send out *MIDI Controller 7 Messages* for the faders instead of the SysEx it sends for AUDIO or AUDIO+MIDI. Now you can click on the S1 cell to put it into MIDI Learn Mode so it will capture the fader movements. Rinse and repeat for all remaining faders. Please title your preset and save it as ... oh I don't know...Roland U-8 ?
Now you have to reconfigure the buttons on the bottom row using the Options tab in the properties. For the Buttons select Bank 1 and then B1 (for that actual button cell that you saw on the Controllers tab) and set the button to RTZ from that really long list of commands in the drop down box just to the right of that. Again no title on that either LOL.
You can continue to map out the buttons like this but you only have 8 of them. The other buttons on the first row are only available if you have a shift key and the Roland U-8 does not have a shift key that SHIFT Learn can recognize (at least I have not found it yet)
Ah yes, the Jog Wheel on the Roland U-8, I've seen a lot of old posts about this and no one has been able to get that to work...until now. I got it working. Ya know why? Its not a jog wheel at all, so get that out of your head for a second. It is, in fact, a double sided button. Let that sink in for a second because the light will go on soon.
Egg Zachary! You need to reserve 2 buttons of the 8 you have for this wheel button to work. Set B7 to "Go to start of this measure or start of prior measure" and set B8 to "Go to end of this measure or end of next measure" in the options tab. Next go back to the Controllers tab and click learn on B7, turn the wheel one click left, then click learn B8 and turn the wheel one click right. Two separate button messages. Who knew? Now when you spin the wheel you will be clicking a head or back a measure for each click. Merry Christmas.
I should mention that Cakewalk has a very well written StudioWare panel for the U-8 but it does not include the jog wheel function. Most of the other buttons do work in that and you may find the Set marker particularly useful as it will set markers on the fly as the project is playing.
YAMAHA PRO MIX 01
I still have this from when I bought it new back in the 90's and figured out that will work as a controller for 16 faders at once (you need to use the Cakewalk Generic Midi Controller to set that up, otherwise you are limited to 8 with the ACT Midi Controller), but there are no transport buttons...at least not yet that I have learned.
However, assuming you know about your own Pro Mix 01, hit the PAN button and select the first PAN control for channel one. Set up the second row of controls in the Cakewalk Generic Midi Controller properties to PAN and click learn for channel 1. Then spin the rotary dial on the Pro Mix 01. Once it is learned, then go to PAN for Channel 2 in Cakewalk Generic Midi Controller and select the channel 2 PAN in the Pro Mix 01. Click on learn and spin the wheel on the Pro Mix 01. You can set them all up on all 16 channels.
When its all said and done, you will be able to hit PAN on the Pro Mix 01, select a channel and use the wheel to set the PAN on the corresponding channel to Sonar. Not bad. You can use this same type of thinking on each of the 4 sends on the Pro Mix 01 as they are all separate MIDI events, so you can control your sends and busses in Sonar. Not Bad.
Again there is also a well written Cakewalk StudioWare panel that will control most of the functions of the Pro Mix 01. You just need to have 16 MIDI tracks open for all the messages to send. They can all be set OMIN out on the MIDI interface you have or channel 11 is the default for Pro Mix 01.
In closing, if anyone has any questions I would be happy help. Old controllers never die, they just get left in a closet somewhere only to fall on the heads of those who dare open them.
Jeff Clark