fitzj
What happened the project that cakewalk announced sometime back  that they would release the Mackie code on  the open market and qualified members with experience in midi controllers would fix any issues and add new functionality?

 
https://github.com/Cakewalk/Cakewalk-Control-Surface-SDK
 
Last checkin was 22nd March... Yup everybody is lining up....

I'm always shocked how few people use control surfaces. When I ask at seminars how many people use control surfaces, only a few people raise their hands. Most seem to mix with a mouse, which IMHO makes it impossible to treat a mix like a performance.

 With the cheaper Behringer, if you are trying to write an automation curve, only tracks the actual movement and then sets back to zero rather than stay at the point you moved to.

Really?  Is this just an X3 thing?  I'll need to check this with my Behringer BCF2000. 
The video I did for my website about the BCF (I can't believe this was Sonar 7).  At around 80% through the video, I show how to record automation and I don't have this problem there.  I'll have to try this same thing in X3 and see if it behaves as it used to or not.  Hopefully this is not another one of those weird things that stopped working in the X-line of Sonar (that I missed).

Blades

 With the cheaper Behringer, if you are trying to write an automation curve, only tracks the actual movement and then sets back to zero rather than stay at the point you moved to.

Really?  Is this just an X3 thing?  I'll need to check this with my Behringer BCF2000.

 
I'll be curious what you find. I've used the BCF2000 with Sonar and never had any problems, once I had it set up correctly - which was never easy, and often required several trips to the Behringer site to get updates or app notes. But once I got it working, it stayed working as long as I always used it with the same USB port.

Blades

 With the cheaper Behringer, if you are trying to write an automation curve, only tracks the actual movement and then sets back to zero rather than stay at the point you moved to.

Really?  Is this just an X3 thing?  I'll need to check this with my Behringer BCF2000. 
The video I did for my website about the BCF (I can't believe this was Sonar 7).  At around 80% through the video, I show how to record automation and I don't have this problem there.  I'll have to try this same thing in X3 and see if it behaves as it used to or not.  Hopefully this is not another one of those weird things that stopped working in the X-line of Sonar (that I missed).

In the old days of moving fader you had an absolute and relative moving fader modes. Maybe it's something like that (I appreciate these may not be moving faders).

I am still unsuccessful in finding a way to toggle my X32 faders to run busses in X3 (or X1).  My new (desperate) strategy is to assign a couple of X32 buttons to send MIDI note and value  to SONAR to toggle the faders from tracks to busses.   
 
Anyone out there happen to know (or has documentation) on what MIDI note or pgm change corresponds to the Track/Bus buttons in the Control Section of the Mackie Control surface?
 
 

I had the BCF2000 and got rid of it.  If I'm tracking volume automation for example and I move the fader up and I get to the place where I want it to stay, the curve will drop back to the center or zero position.  I researched it and in fact the faders are not actually touch sensitive on that unit and Sonar only senses the actual midi movement but I could not find a way to have the (volume) curve to remain at the different endpoints so I end up with a curve looking like this:   ____/|____|\_______  So the curve writes the upward movement, drops back to zero when I stop moving and then tracks the down ward movement leaving me with an written automation curve that is unusable.  If someone knows how to make this work correctly, share with others.   I now use a touch sensitive Tascam 1884 and all works well.   Frontier alpha track also works correctly as will likely the NEW Behringer stuff

I need a solution to work with lots of tracks because I plan to do lots of mixing and post-production on film projects.
 
I honestly may just have to shell out the money for the Avid Artist Mix surfaces if nothing else works well. Does anybody know how well the Artist Mix works and does anything even control pro channel? (I really like Pro Channel EQ)
 
I'm just looking for options cause nobody seems to have anything that works completely and I'm unsure of what even really works.

If you are wanting to make use of the motorized faders, you will have to run in Mackie mode or you will not get any feedback to the faders. Only the Mackie mode provides this. In generic surface mode in Sonar you gain a little more control, but loose the feedback from motorized faders.

Stxx - never had this issue before.  As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I will have to take a stab at this in X3 and make sure that I don't have the issue now, but I can imagine that it would be frustrating and useless for automation for it to behave this way.  Almost sounds like there was already automation on the track to have the volume at zero that was being READ while the automation was being recorded, causing the volume to jump to the level that was being read when there wasn't anything actively replacing it in write mode.
 
Also, regarding the "touch sensitive" part, it's true that they aren't touch sensitive, but you have to barely move the slider for it to engage.  Touch sensitive would make it engage when simply touched, not moved.  This particular aspect was never an issue for me since the move required to get the fader's attention was so small.