Getting a Controller map for A-500

Hey guys,
 
I just bought a A-500 Pro controller to use with various Sonar applications (Home Studio, LE, 8, etc.) and I'm having a real tough time creating a controller map. I'm able to access to Options-Controller Surface's dialogue box, and I've been able to work with maps as long as I use either the "Generic Cakewalk Surface" or the "ACT Midi controller" but when I try to enter my A-Pro it doesn't come up in the drop-down box where you assign properties or in at the bottom of the "Tools" menu (the others do).
 
I'm sortof getting by with the generic presets but things would make more sense if I could access the midi controlls through an interface that matches my controller. Anyone know what I'm doing wrong?
 
Thanks for any help.
 
David

Here's how i have mine set-up, and it's fully working... I'll apoligise for over explaining everything, it's because i'm going to write a new tutorial for Sonar X1 so i can copy some of this info when i come to write that.

(In Sonar X1, press P to open the main options menu, and under the midi section, click devices).
In anything before X1, click options, then midi devices.

Next, tick everything. For the inputs, you should have A-PRO MIDI IN, A-PRO 1 and A-PRO 2. For outputs you should have A-PRO MIDI OUT and A-PRO.

Next, click Control Surfaces (still in the midi section for X1, or for pre-X1, click options, controllers/surfaces).

Click the yellow star to add a new control surface. You should now be able to select "A-PRO" from the Controller/Surface drop down menu. Select A-PRO and for the in port select A-PRO2, and for the out port select A-PRO. (Not "A-PRO MIDI OUT", just "A-PRO".)

Now when you open the control surface edting page, you should see a copy of your A-PRO on the screen.

If the above doesn't fix you're problem, have you installed the A-PRO as a control surface aswell as a keyboard? (There's 2 installers).

If not (or if you don't know) you can get it from here http://www.cakewalk.com/S...eader.aspx/2007012938#

In my opinion, setting up the A-PRO to be registered by Sonar is just the beginning of actually setting the whole thing up. You might want to check out my tutorial, and the posts that come after the tutorial to learn a lot more about the A-PRO. You can find my tutorial here - http://forum.cakewalk.com...;m=2077977&mpage=1

Another very good tutorial can be found here http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=2181430 This tutorial is more indepth than mine because it explains how to set-up the A-PRO without ACT (but i don't know why anyone would want to do this inside Sonar) and it shows how to edit midi cc data (so you can have one of the sliders as the control for mod wheel, instead of the (frankly stupid) spring loaded mod wheel on the A-PRO.


Finally, i'm going to write a new tutorial for the A-PRO to try and get everything in one place. It's not going to include setting up the A-PRO without ACT though so the above link is still the best place to look for that. Instead, i'm going to call it "A-PRO - Everything I Know" and it will just be (hopefully) very useful information.

I don't think it should make a difference, but is the ACT button lit on the A-PRO? If not, press it, and see if that fixes it.

Also, have you tried restarting Sonar? (If you had this problem a while ago and you've since restarted Sonar then obviously restarting won't fix it). But i remember from setting it up that i had to restart Sonar before i could use the transport controls.

On the main Sonar track page, do you have little numbers to the left of the track numbers? You should have numbers 1-8 with a coloured background (only if you have tracks though, so if you only have 3 tracks, then you'll only see little number 1-3. If you see those numbers, double click on any of them and it should open the control surface properties page.

One more thing, are you saying you can't select A-PRO from the drop down menu that's near the audio engine on/off and reset buttons? What happens when you click the icon (to the right of the audio engine buttons) to open the control surface properties page?

When you say you "can't get the A-PRO entered in the controller/surfaces box", do you mean it isn't listed there? Or it's there but you can't click on it? Or something else?...

When i click options, controllers/surfaces, click the yellow star to add a new controller/surface, after setting everything up and pressing ok, after a few seconds wait, it automatically adds the A-Pro to the controller/surfaces table (where you have controller/surface, input port and output port in rows across). It also automatically adds the A-Pro to the drop down menu to the left of the audio engine, and the coloured numbers appear in the track view.

I'm guessing yours doesn't automatically do that when you select A-Pro from the pop up that opens when you click the little yellow star to add a new controller?

I have two main questions...

1. When you click the yellow star (square) to add a new controller, after you select A-Pro for the controller/surface, and the input port to A-PRO 2 and out port to A-PRO, and then press ok, what happens? Can you see what the in and out ports are listed as? And does it say A-PRO-1 to the left of the input port? After you've done that, when you click Tools, what's the bottom option? Does it say A-PRO and you just can't click it (like it's greyed out) or does it not even say A-PRO?

2. When you say you "can't get the A-PRO entered in the controller/surfaces box", do you mean it isn't listed there? Or it's there but you can't click on it? Or something else?..

OK, I think I'm on to something now.

I checked in the Tools- Plug-in manager under control surfaces and although it lists all of the options I get from the yellow star Add Controller Surface box (including A-Pro), when I highlight a particular surface, say RedRover or Edriol (this is still in the plug-in magr) it lists both the File Name and something called "CLSID", however when I highlight the A-Pro the filname field is blank.

This led me to suspect that I have a missing or misplaced .dll file for A-Pro, and I seemed to be on the right track when I noticed that my A-Pro .dll file was in a different directory than the others (One in Program files and one in program files (x86). So anyway, I copied it into both directories to be sure, thinking I figured it out, but lo and behold it still didn't work.

Still, I think this has something to do with the problem.

-DF

Well, I still can't it to work. I've put the APRO.dll file in the shared surfaces folder (where the others are), unistalled/re-istalled, put it other directories like shared componants, VST plugins. I've probably got APRO.dll on about 5 seperate directories and every time I do the VST scan from the plug-in mgr. I still come up empty-handed.

It's weird cause it lists the A-Pro as one of my register plugins, but it lacks the file name/path while all of the other include this info.

Hmmm, I'm out of ideas.

-DF

I'd heard that you needed to install 32 and 64 bit drivers if you're using 32 and 64 bit Sonar, but i never would have guessed that you needed to install 32 bit drivers on a 64 bit exclusive system. How strange.

Well, i'm glad you figured it out. If you need any more help or info i'll do my best to help.

Ahhhhh. Of course... Very good point.