I have Axiom61. Should I get a new to use ACT?

Guys guys don't panic! Making ANY midi controller work with ACT is not that difficult as you make it sound. All you gotta do is understand the philosophy. ACT is a "layer", a virtual controller- midi thru that sits between your controller and Sonar.
When things don't work as expected you have to figure out if it's the controller-> ACT communication is broken or the ACT->Sonar/plug in parameter communication broken.

What this virtual layer does and how it affects parameters is the "controller/surface properties" :



Provided you have correctly set up your midi ins-outs for Sonar you have to first of all add you controller in options-> controllers/surfaces (for Sonar 8.5 and earlier) - for Sonar X1 press P and find the relevant option.

In there, add a "new" controller/surface" and make sure you choose "ACT midi controller" and then your device's ins-outs as show below:




Now we have made our controller able to "talk" to ACT but its essential to understand how and where to make it talk to ACT the way WE want it to.
To test this out create a new project and add 8 tracks (this is essential for our testing not random)

Now while the project is opened, open the "controller/surface properties"
The squares you see in there are "slots" of physical controls. ACT is supposed to map your controller's 16 sliders-rotaris and 8 buttons. Aditionally notice that it gives you a slot to map a button as a "shift" key (we ll come to that later, manual doesnt mention an important aspect of it)
Of course in order to do that, ACT has to know what kind of controller you have and if you are lucky it will be there in the presets. Truth is, I suspect many people are frustrated because whenever I tried, the given preset of Sonar with my controllers NEVER worked in its entirety or it wasnt mapped how I would map it.




The seemingly hard way (mapping it yourself) is the best way. Remember we are still talking about the controller->ACT communication.
So to recap, either you choose a preset or you map your controller to ACT how YOU want. To do that click on the upper half of the first square and you ll get a "midi learn..." message.




 Thats when you move your first physical slider-rotary to map it to that first square. DO the rest, as you must have figured there is a limitation on behalf of ACT here.

You can only map a total of 16 physical controls of sliders-rotaries (incremental decremental values CC) and a total of 8 physical controls of switches (buttons or note messages) to ACT. If you have more physical controls those cant be mapped to ACT although that doesnt mean you only get to control 16 plus 8 parameters in Sonar (more on that later)

Notice that the third row shows "shift+" . This is because you don't get to add 8 more buttons there BUT by configuring a "shift" button (a 9th physical button of your controller) you can use it as "shift" key (like in a qwerty keyboard) plus any of your 8 mapped buttons for eight more functions - those which are shown in the "shift +" squares. The picky thing here is that ACT doesn't seem to recognise ANY other command as a shift key besides a note on-off message. This means you have to configure a button on your controller to send a note on-off mesage (any note) and NOT a on-off CC parameter change (0 - 127). Also note that if you set up your controllers buttons those can be of two kinds: either push buttons (send 127 when pressed , 0 when released) OR as switches (send 127 when pressed, send 0 when pressed again and on each subsequent press,cycle thorugh these two values ). Generally speaking yoy dont want to configure "switching" behaviour buttons to things like "play" or "stop" because then Sonar will require two presses of that button to work. So if during your testing any button seems to work every second hit, make sure to configure it as a "send 0 on release" button. Usually this means tinkering with your controller's settings so read its manual - ALL M audio controllers have a specific paragraph for setting up the buttons in one of the desired ways above.

*important tip* - after finishing mapping your controller to ACT, it would be very wise of you to hit the "save button" and save this mapping with a custom name - you can see in the pictures mine is saved as "Oxygen 49 only FX" - in case Sonar looses your controller (usually happens when you fire up Sonar and you havent switched your controller on beforehand) all you have to do is re-set the midi ins-outs in "controllers/surfaces" and re-load your preset in "controller/surface properties". Take note, that from this step onwards the controller -> ACT part of communication is done, even if ACT wont work as expected you wont be troubleshooting in any of the above settings - but rather in the options below

If you have been following my tutorial and have an IQ more than average (ha kidding) you have managed to map your controller to ACT and ACT by default has mapped its squares to what it thought best inside Sonar - this is the part where you need 8 tracks to see squares assigned to anything, or else even though ACT works it doesnt find any parameters to assign its "squares" to.

Now the logic of ACT can clearly be shown in the simplistic form of:
  MyController -> ACT squares -> Sonar parameters/plug in parameters




And what if you wanted to map your sliders to sends and not track volume, for example,  and what are those bank things over there?
A haaaaaaaaaaaa, turn to "options" :




Its here that you now set up the ACT-> Sonar communication. You get to set up banks which will map the "squares" to what you want inside Sonar (therefore in extension your controls mapped to those squares). Also if you have a good memory and remember what you set where you can map one of your buttons to jump to next/previous bank so for example if you have set bank1 of sliders for track volume and bank 2 for send 1 volume you can quickly change the bank by configuring a button to "next sliders bank" and another one to "previous sliders bank"

See images below:








In any case dont be confused with these two tabs,  you SET the banks behaviour in that "options" tab, you USE them by changing them in that other view, "controllers":






Now a last few tips: Notice the below options:
-ACT follows context
-Enable Active Controller technology





I wont comment on the confusing way they are presented, Bakers should get their ACT on it (ha :p)  but they are your customising friends:

-both ticked: ACT re-maps your controller to ANYthing possible in Sonar BOTH plug ins and Sonar track-mixer parameters by means of focus - click on the desired element (plug in, or just track view for Sonar)

-"Active Controller technology enable" ticked and "ACT follows context" unticked: your controller remaps ONLY to plug ins (usefull if you have a second controller to use for Sonar's mixer)
-"ACT follows context" ticked and "Active controller technology enable" unticked: your controller only controls Sonar parameters (usefull if you are planning to use it solely as a mixer controller for Sonar)


tip 1:
Capture mode:
As you must have figured by now, by changing a group of physical controls to a different bank will result to a discrepancy of the setting of those controls and the actual parameter values.....
real case scenario: you have configured bank 1 to control volume so your slider 1 is placed in its higher position (CC127) so that track 1 has a volume of 6 DB in Sonar. That track also has a send which is set to -∞ db. You have also set bank 2 to control send volume. Now when you jump from bank 1 to bank 2 for sliders, even though the slider is set at its higher position, the send volume of track 1 is set at -∞db. What happens the minute you "move" that slider? This is set by capture mode:
1. jump: as soon as you move that slider, the send volume of track 1 "jumps" to value 6 db and then follows the movement of the slider
2.  match: ACT waits untill your physical slider matches the value corresponding to the parameter - in our case,send volume is set at -∞ db so it waits until your slider goes to its lower position (CC 0). After this "match" the parameter starts to follow the slider's movement

note:in most cases, "match" capture mode is mor eintuitive and makes more sense, unfortunately I have found the latest model of Axiom to be unable to be used with this mode the reason being,  it does seem to have a peculiar "acceleration of value sending". This results in the parameter "losing" its match with the slider/rotary and I explicitly blame M Audio for their poor design and NOT ACT or Sonar. You can test this yourself if you have an OLD M Audio controller (silver design) and a new M Audio controller (black design). In the first case, observe the values send on the LCD display: no matter how fast you move the control, they "flow" incrementally/decrementally, in the second case the values seem to "skip" thus causing ACT to lose the connection between the physical control and the value. I contacted M Audio about this but well....pfffff

tip 2: also notice the "exclude this bank from ACT" tick box in the options tab - this usefull if for example you want to keep your buttons mapped to Sonar (play, stop etc etc) but still have ACT re-map the sliders - rotaries to plug ins or Sonar parameters - all you have to do in this scenario you exclude from ACT the bank of buttons that maps these buttons to your preferred parameters

tip 3: even though ACT does its best to map your sliders-rotaries to the most commonly used parameters for synth and FX plug ins, chances are you will want to map them diffrently - think "ACT-> Sonar" communication here, you dont have to midi learn anything, but you ll have to "ACT learn" via the button which appears top right corner of each plug in window. Check more in the manual for details on this - pretty straightforward


quick trouble shooting:
- no parameter/value shown on the "green square" - ACT hasnt found a parameter from Sonar to associate with this square, its pointless to fiddle with your controller or its connection since even if its setup and working perfectly ACT doesnt find anything to map it to - usually there is nothing wrong with it, for example in a project with 1 track, sliders controlling the volume and rotaries controlling the pan, obviously only the first square of the top two rows will show values. The second square will show values as soon as you create a second track and so on

- the green square shows value and Im moving the corresponding physical control on my controller yet the parameter wont change
either
a) you have set ACT in "match" capture mode so it "waits" untill your physical control reaches the parameter value to start changing it. Practically just move your physical control from one end to the other to see if it "picks up" the parameter.
or
b) Sonar has lost midi connection with your controller - check midi in - out settings - if so expect c) happened too

c) ACT has lost connection with the controller - if b) has happened probably this has happened too, so re-load your ACT preset - what you didnt save one? Then obviously you werent paying attention to my tutorial, see *important tip* above




Phewwwwww! There! the missing "how to set up ACT for dummies" ! ;)


disclaimer: tutorial applies to Sonar 8.5 or earlier - not tested in X1 but since officially not changes have been metnioned to ACT I believe the relative options and windows will be easy to find. ;)

notice: I know this whole ACT thing is not for the faint-hearted, but Im a firm supporter of it, once you get the hang of it its a real life saver - and YES I have set up various controllers and they all work fine including Axiom 61, Oxygen 49, Korg nanocontrol, Korgnanokeys, etc etc)

disclaimer 2: my setups (and tutorial above) are all done in 32bit OS environment


edited some text to bold so that users may spot the section related to their questions more easily and added some notes about capture mode  ;)