Hi all

I have watched the helpful videos on Cake TV, but I am failing at the first hurdle here...

I want to set up my new ACT ready Roland A-300 Pro to work under ACT. I am able to play soft synths through it, but am getting stuck with ACT set up.

Under midi preferences/control surfaces, I hit the yellow star to add a new surface. In the dialogue box, in the controller/surface drop down, I can only see ACT midi controller, Cakewalk Generic Surface, Mackie C4,XT etc - i.e., there is no A-300 listed. The A-300 is listed in midi devices.

Please can someone point me in the right direction.

Should add it is a new PC, running Platinum on Windows 10.

If you're just starting, I'd suggest getting AZ's free ACT Controller plugin for SONAR and learn from there. You can use a Google search term like: "site:forum.cakewalk.com azslow act controller" and check previous posts. I'd also suggest going to his site (it's in English, with a wonderful Russian accent!) and forum. Lots of good info there. And he posts regularly in the SONAR forum. He's VERY helpful. Why he does all that he does for free? I don't know, but I am most thankful.
 
http://www.azslow.com/
 

You need this: http://roland.com/support/article/?q=downloads&p=A-300PRO&id=60424789
But start from reading the documentation for it, the user interface is not self explaining...
 
Once you want control plug-ins (FX/Synth without internal MIDI map) with ACT Dynamic mapping, follow: http://www.azslow.com/index.php/topic,13.0.html
 
In your case you do not need AZ Controller, but other utilities from my site can help

Excellent - that's got my faders and pan dials working in the console view. Thank you very much.

I watched a lot of videos on setting up ACT but this one is my favorite and taught me a great deal about setting up ACT to use a controller. its created by our own Mr.Karl Rose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObsW0t5FnzM

Also...this thread might be helpful.
 
http://forum.cakewalk.com/UPDATED-Configuring-Your-APro-to-Work-WithWithout-ACT-m2181430.aspx
 
 

I have been in and out of the forums over the years, and it seems that setting up ACT and subsequently getting it to work has been an ongoing challenge for some users. I've just skimmed the thread in the post above, and the sheer length of it shows that, as well as the countless very helpful YouTube videos.

It should just be a case of plugging in a control surface and bang, it works. If you want to tweak it and get under the hood, then fair enough, you need to learn how to do that. The A-300 has a nice ACT button, but it is still not plug 'n' play. Perhaps that's impossible, I don't know.

Once again, thanks for all your input.

I propose you think a bit different way about it...
You have 30-100 hardware controls on your device and 5000-10000 parameter you may want to control.
They could say "By your Fader 1 you control the volume of your first track". No other variations. No configurations.
Plug 'n' play. Just the same as on analog mixer. But that takes away the major advantage of modern DAW, its flexibility. And as soon as you have more possibilities, that unavoidable makes things complex.
 
Also note that in the last link only ~1/5 of the text is about ACT, the rest is about normal MIDI mode.