New free BCR2000 control surface plugin now available

oops. forgot to include the two SYSX files you may need to ungroup the bank switches if you aren't using Behringer's editor. I've uploaded them now to sourceforge.

Will it work with the BCF2000?

Re: BCF2000. It should work fine although functionality will be a bit restricted. You would only have 8 rotary controls with switches, so you could assign the switches to Record Arm, same as the BCR2000, and the 8 knobs to match up with the second row of knobs on the BCR2000. This would then give you most of the functionality but you would not have control over send gain or send pan , and you would only get 8 parameters per insert and not 24. I would have thought Mackie emulation mode for the BCF was a better bet for you - the BCR doesn't offer this, hence this project.

Re: downloading the RTF. I just tried now and it seemed to download fine. The notes are fairly brief so I will post them here, if that's acceptable. Should give anyone an idea of what it can do, anyway.....




BCR2000 full-duplex control surface - version 1.0

This is the much-delayed version 1.0 of the full-duplex control surface. Full documentation is shown in the 'how to use it' section.

Who am I?

I'm a professional software engineer (or at least, I like to think I'm professional), and a systems architect who also loves music (and Sonar). Frustrated by the total lack of decent control surface plugins that would support my BCR2000, I wrote this software to make my life easier. I'm sharing it for free because I think that Open Source is a great idea. I have a day job, anyway.....


Installation

I have not packaged this up into a full install package at this stage, but the process is relatively straightforward.

1. Unzip the binaries zip file into a folder
2. Run the install.cmd batch file to register the files

3. You need to configure a preset on the BCR2000 with a specific set of control assignments. These are shown in the appendix to these instructions. You will need to assign the settings as shown and then save the preset. This is the preset that you will always use with the control surface plugin.

Note that the BCR2000 bank switches also (the four switches labelled "encoder groups" need to be reprogrammed. This is because they are used by the control surface plugin. You can either do this by sending a special SYSX string (discussed below) or by using the Behringer editor utility and ungrouping the bank switches, then reprogramming them as discussed below.

Once the bank switches have been reassigned as normal switches, they should be assigned specific settings as described below. (these settings are also included in the control surface settings discussed in the appendix).

4. Go to options/control surfaces and add the bcr2000control surface, routing to the appropriate MIDI port, usually the Behringer USB MIDI interface (i.e BCR2000 01). Don't use the BCR2000 01[A] setting - that's the physical MIDI port on the back of the unit, not the USB connection. I am assuming you've already downloaded and installed Behringer's MIDI driver, of course.

5.If not using Behringer's editor utility to reconfigure the bank switches, load the supplied sysx, bcr_egroups_1.syx, by selecting view/Sysx in Sonar, and then clicking the 'load bank from file' toolbar. Then press the 'send bank' toolbar to send the sysx to the BCR2000.

This should remap the bank switches (i.e encoder group switches) to behave as individual controllers. Note that this only affects the currently selected preset. Other presets are not affected.

6. Now, exit Sonar, and use the BCR2000's edit functionality to redefine the four bank select keys. You need to assign these to send MIDI CC messages on channel 1, and they should be CC values 124 through 127 for the four switches, starting at the top left (i.e top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right). Also set them with val1=127, val2=0, mode='tOFF' and the last knob to the right on the top row should select "OFF".

All four switches should be configured this way, with just the CC numbers differing as shown. All switches should be configured to transmit on MIDI channel 16 (the same setting is also used for all the other controls in the appendix).

Note: this is different from the way the switches were configured in the older version 0.5 of this software.

7. At this point you should see the four bank switches behave as momentary switches, and they should no longer switch the encoder groups.

8. Save the BCR2000 preset. It's up to you if you want to save to a new location instead. Just make sure you load this preset before using the BCR2000 with Sonar and this software.

9. Note that if you want to reset the original behaviour, play the bcr_egroups_4.syx file back instead (or reassign the keys with the Behringer editor utility). Then resave the preset. But because this override only applies to one preset, it's unlikely you'll ever want to do this. You can still use the bank switches as normal for other BCR2000 presets.

10. Now you should be able to run Sonar and control the BCR in full duplex mode.

How to use it

There's quite a lot of functionality tucked away here, so please read carefully. In summary, here's what you'll be able to do:-

Control as many tracks, busses and masters as you have in your project (gain,mute,solo, record arm, pan, send #1 gain, send #1 pan)
Get immediate full-duplex feedback to the control surface; if you change something in Sonar, the control surface immediately reflects the change.
Set parameters for track inserts and track EQ.
Control Sonar's transport
Scrub the transport
View 'scribble strips' for all controls so you can work out what's controlling what.


The bank switches

The top two bank switch buttons move you back and forward along tracks. To keep life simple, all the tracks, i.e your channel tracks, busses and main outs, are all considered to be one set of tracks, with track 1 being your first channel track, so that if you had, say, four channel tracks, three busses and two main outs, these would be numbered as follows:-

Track 1-4 : your channel tracks
Track 5-7: the busses
Track 8-9: main outs

This is similar to how you see the console view in Sonar normally. (i.e on the left, your channels, in the middle, your busses, and on the right, your main outs)

When you press the RIGHT bank switch, you move forward either 8 tracks, OR, if a boundary between track types comes earlier, to the first track of the differing track type. In the example above, pressing the bank switch once will move you forward to track 5, the first bus track. The leftmost rotary controller on the top is therefore channel 5 gain (or, bus 1 gain, depending on how you look at it).

Pressing the right bank switch again will move you to track 8, the first main out. Pressing it again will get you back to track 1.

The LEFT bank switch works exactly the same but moves you backwards, jumping to the first track of a particular type as appropriate, or 8 tracks back if it can.

The shift key

The bottom right key in the bank of four switches (that are normally all bank switches on the BCR2000), is the SHIFT key. Pressing and holding this key modifies the operation of the bank switches. Now they move you forwards and backwards ONE track at a time.

The shift key is also used for some other purposes, including scrubbing and fine parameter adjust. These are discussed later in this document.

Channel strips

The top section of the BCR2000 i.e the top eight knobs, their switches and the two rows of switches below those, are always assigned to channel strips as follows:-

Gain
Record arm (the switch on the knob) (not applicable to busses or mains)
Mute
Solo

In the example above, if you have not used the bank switches to move about, the leftmost top knob will control channel track 1 gain, and the fifth knob in from the left will control bus 1 gain (because this is track 5).


The second row of knobs normally controls channel PAN. The third and fourth rows control the gain and pan for the first SEND on that channel, if any.

Transport controls

The bottom four keys control the Sonar transport. From top to bottom, left to right, they control play, rewind, record and fast forward


The page key

By default you are on page 1. The remaining bank switch key - the one we haven't discussed yet (i.e on the left in the second row) - is the PAGE key. Press this key to increment the current page, or use the SHIFT key and the page key to decrement the current page.

There are seven available pages. You cycle through these each time you press the page key. Sonar will show the current track and page on its control surface status display.

The function of the three rows of knobs in the main section of the BCR2000 changes each time you move to another page. On Page 1, they are assigned to channel strips as defined earlier (i.e strip PAN, SEND GAIN and SEND PAN).

However on pages 2-7 all 24 of these knobs are reassigned to control only the leftmost strip, as follows:-

Page 2 - EQ parameters - All the EQ parameters for the leftmost strip are controlled by these knobs
Page 3-7: FX parameters. All the FX parameters for FX #1 through #5 on the leftmost strip are controlled by these knobs.

Fine parameter adjustment

To make fine changes to a parameter controlled by any of the main section knobs, press and hold the SHIFT key and then rotate the selected control. This allows you to quickly select the value by rotating the knob then fine tuning using the shift key.

Note: the top row of knobs, channel gain, behave differently when rotated while SHIFT is pressed. This is discussed below.

Scrubbing

To scrub the transport, press and hold the shift key and rotate any of the top row of knobs. Each knob, from left to right, offers progressively coarser control of scrub transport position, allowing you to quickly and easily set the Sonar now time to any position you like. When you release the shift key, scrubbing is cancelled and the now time remains set to the currently chosen value. If the transport was in play mode, playback will automatically resume at the new 'now' time.

Note: scrubbing is disabled during recording operations for fairly obvious reasons.

The Console

Because the BCR2000 is a low cost device, it has no electronic scribble strips. Therefore the plugin includes a visual console which mimics the control surface but also includes scribble strips showing you track and parameter information.

To display the console, press the shift key twice. If the console is visible, pressing the shift key twice will hide it. You can also close the console from your computer keyboard by pressing the ESC key.

Note: occasionally on first loading a project, the console window may not display in front of Sonar when you first load it. Simply click on the window on the task bar to bring it to the front. After that the problem is unlikely to reoccur.

Note also that when you select any page other than page 1, the 'LEDs' on the console change colour to show what page is selected. They change for the leftmost strip controls as well as the 24 middle section controls, to show you that these are logically grouped for that page.


Notes:

1. Not all insertable FX components have controllable parameters. The Sonitus plugins do, but a number of Cakewalk ones don't. Also, a few VST synths configured as plugins have controllable parameters, but others don't. Wusikstation is an example of a synth that does.

2. There appears to be a defect with the control surface SDK that precludes managing FX on MIDI tracks. Therefore MIDI tracks will not show any controllable parameters on pages 1 onwards.

3. The parameters are ordered left to right, top to bottom, as the control surface SDK returns them. In most cases this means that they don't group neatly to strips of knobs. I'm thinking about a future enhancement that would let you drag and drop them into whatever order you liked, and then this would automatically be 'remembered' for any plugin with the same name.

4. It does not appear to be possible to automate the enabling/disabling of effects from the control surface SDK, so although you can twiddle their params, you can't actually turn on EQ or FX from the control surface. Sorry about that....

5. You can control only the first 24 parameters of a plugin. Some(but very few) plugins have more - Wusikstation, for instance has 2,000 controllable parameters! . But trying to manage that many parameters is probably not the best use for a control surface, I think.


MIDI assignments

The control surface is assumed to be programmed to MIDI channel 16. However because it is using MIDI CC, you need to be careful about inadvertantly passing on the control surface messages to a softsynth. Therefore ensure that MIDI tracks don't include the BCR2000 USB MIDI in as an input. This will resolve that issue. This was also a consideration in selecting channel 16 as the standard channel - it keeps the surface as out of the way as possible from other MIDI devices. So if you DO want to define the BCR2000 USB Midi in as an input to a MIDI track, set receive to any other channel than 16 and you are 'out of the way' of the control surface.

Indeed, you could set up other BCR2000 presets that transmitted on different MIDI channels and switch away to one of those at any time. The control surface will effectively be disengaged but now you can send MIDI messages from the BCR to, say, a softsynth. However, of course, you won't have full-duplex operation. You could also use this technique to combine the control surface with learned assignments split over multiple presets - very useful.

NRPNs

I could modify the code to use NRPNs. However these consume a *lot* more MIDI bandwidth and will use more CPU resource for no real obvious benefit (you already have fine parameter adjustment now).

Would it work with the BCF2000?

I would think so but I don't own one. Of course, the console display will be wrong. But if you assign what controls there are on the BCF, I can't see why it won't work. Of course, you've already got Mackie emulation for the BCF, so this may not be so useful to you.

Hacking around with the source code

If you want to hack the source, you will need Visual C++ 6 and you will need Visual Basic 6 as well, because the visual console is written in VB (much much easier to do the complex graphics required in VB!).

The slave console is self-contained in the subdirectory 'console' from the zip file supplied. Load the project and recompile as required.

The control surface DLL is contained in the subdirectory 'control' from the zip file. Load the DSW and recompile as required.

The code is reasonably commented but technical questions are welcome; please post to the Cake developer forum & I will attempt to answer.

By separating the console UI from the control surface plugin you could write new 'skins' for different control surfaces very easily. The control surface plugin uses COM to communicate with the external console, so it would be very easy to change things for different hardware. You could also write a new console in, say, .NET or Java if you liked, and replace the existing one. You'll see from the console source that there are only a couple of simple COM methods that are called to exchange information between the control surface and the console.

Caveats and notes

This software is released under the BSD Open Source License. This pretty much states 'Do what you will with this piece of software'. If you do make changes, acknowledging the original authorship would be courteous.

Please do not think about suing me if you use this software and something bad happens while you're mixing down your masterpiece. I did test it carefully, I am a professional developer and wrote it carefully, and I don't think it's overwriting memory or doing anything bad, but YMMV. I use it too, though, so I've got a vested interest in it working correctly.

If problems occur, removing the control surface from Sonar with Options/Control surface, will remove all traces, so the risk is pretty slight.

If for some reason you can't restart Sonar after installing this software, unregister the control surface DLL as follows:-

regsvr32 /u bcr2000control.dll

This should allow Sonar to start normally.

If you open multiple projects in Sonar and leave the console open, it may display the wrong scribble strip information. Just scroll the tracks once to fix this. Sonar doesn't unfortunately notify when projects are switched, so this is a bit tricky to handle.

Acknowledgements

I would like to (once again) thank Bob Damiano and Morton Saether at Cakewalk, who were enormously helpful to me when I got stuck. That was, embarrassingly, a fairly long time ago, when I wrote the first early beta of this software. Then I got kind of sidetracked for, erm, a while. A long while. Ah well, it's done now!.

Truly, Sonar is an exceptional product and the development team are peerless. Bob, I'm sorry I didn't use the new SDK framework stuff - all those cool state machines and stuff!. Please forgive me, but I'd already gotten quite a bit through the design process with the old SDK.

A small raspberry to Behringer, who managed to utterly ignore my request for information on SysX commands and then at a trade fair snootily told me to get lost. Jeez, guys, I'm just trying to help you sell stuff!.

Thanks to the folks at Dreampoint for somehow getting this info and producing those useful SysX strings. I don't know where that site has gone now, unfortunately.....



Appendix:-

Control assignments:-

The controls should be configured as follows:-

Note: set all controls to transmit on MIDI channel 16.

Top rotaries:- CC 1 through 8
Rotary switches (i.e the pushbuttons on the top row of knobs) - CC 33 through 40

Top row of pushbutton switches - CC 65 through 72
Second row of pushbutton switches - CC 73 through 80

Second row of rotaries: CC 81 through 88
Third row of rotaries: CC 89 through 96
Fourth row of rotaries: CC 97 through 104

Bank switches: (top left through bottom right): CC 124 through 127, momentary ON

Note: I have not configured the foot switches. Sorry!. If this really bugs you, let me know via the Cakewalk forum and I will add them.

Thanks AJ -

I'll let you know how OI get on.

Geoff

I don't have the Behringer editor up and running on this computer but from memory there is an option to separate the bank switches in the editor - you have to do that first so that you can then define them as controls, otherwise they are defined as 'built in' bank switches where the BCR2000 does its own bank switching, and so the editor doesn't allow you to reconfigure them until you've performed that first step.
If all else fails, play the SYSX string supplied through Sonar out to the control surface and that will do the trick. Best of luck...

Well, it does control up to 24 parameters for up to five inserts per track, but there are control surface SDK limitations on what you can access. For example,softsynth parameter access if the softsynth is not set up as an insert is not, as far as I know, possible through the SDK.

Before I released this initial release I was all up for extending this support to multiple parameter pages, using Wusikstation as my test plugin. But then I discovered that Wusikstation exposes - gasp! - 2,000! parameters. This is very very impressive but scaling that back to the BCR2000 in a manageable way is, er, challenging, and I'm still thinking about how on earth that could work.

ACT is also, as I understand it, not full duplex, which is frustrating - I want the control surface always sync'd up with Sonar's idea of what the current parameters are at all times.

This whole area is one that all the DAW vendors need to look into. We must give Cake a lot of kudos for at least releasing an SDK - other vendors have kept the interfaces to control surfaces closed. If any Cakedevs would like to add their 10 cents worth, I'd be very happy to look into expanding the functionality because that's exactly what I bought the BCR2000 for in the first place.

I can easily imagine what I want to do - wiggle any control anywhere in Sonar and establish an immediate full-duplex link with any control on the surface, and then have Sonar remember the assignments on a per-project basis, but the infrastructure to build that is not, as far as I can see, available at this stage.

I do think that Cakewalk should step back from adding more and more features and now look at overall ergonomics. The key to this is better control surface integration.

The software is specific to Sonar. However you could of course be running one BCR2000 preset configured for this software and Sonar, and another for Cubase. I can't say how Cubase configures the knobs & stuff relative to this software, but note that you can move the knob assignments around by changing the MIDI CC numbers you program into the BCR. Within the control surface plugin these are mapped to fixed functions but although I suggest a certain layout in the notes, you could do it any way you preferred, although probably the console UI would then look a bit strange, because it assumes a certain layout. That wouldn't be hard to change, but the layout I proposed seemed to me the most obviously logical way to map the control surface. (you could change the console UI code easily, of course, to remap its model of the world, but that's a software change...)

Tell us more about how Cubase works with the BCR, if you like. It might be useful as a comparison. I am not a Cubase person - too many years of struggling with endless crashes and quirks drove me a long time ago across to Sonar-land where everything Just Works (except maybe control surfaces....)

Thank you!. I have further plans for it including metering back to the surface - unfortunately, I'm still on Sonar 3 and apparently this feature is only available in the SDK for Sonar 4 onwards (which is why version 1.0 doesn't include it). (wouldn't you love to have a meter bridge on the surface. I would!. I mean, what are all those LEDs for!) Now if Cake would give me a free upgrade... <g>. Unfortunately tis the Year of Not Spending Money on Stuff because I am trying to save for my daughter's forthcoming wedding, so Gadget Lust has had to be firmly stamped out hence because software development costs nothing but time, I'm trying to get the best out of the kit I already have.

[I did download the S6 web trial to do some quick testing but its 15 days is now expired, alas....]

When you make a fine adjustment, the control surface LEDs will still change as if you were making a coarse adjustment - this is because the actual MIDI data being transmitted will still be the same as in normal mode. The difference is that each MIDI message coming in is now used only to increment or decrement the parameter value being controlled by a small amount. If you have the console UI up, and look at the 'LEDs' on that, they should indeed move slowly around the ring of the 'encoder'. When you release the shift key, the control surface is then updated and the real LED will jump to the final adjustment position.

If this is the behaviour you are seeing then that sounds reasonably normal. I did check again tonight (while having a most enjoyable evening playing with the wonderful free VST plugins Nubi LE and Spinner - a great B3 for free. Now I can control all the drawbars and all the other params directly from the BCR2000, which is great fun. Of course, you do have to configure softsynths as inserts to be able to do that, but, hey, that's just how it is. Anyway, I didn't seem to have any obvious problem making fine adjustments, but let me know if there's a reproducible problem & I'll look at it.

I just wanted to say that this is an EXCELLENT piece of programming. Scrubbing...on screen scribble strip triggered by the surface (double shift click)...feedback...transport...and more!!! Finally, I feel that the BCR2000 was worth the cost! This is how a control surface plugin should work.

To Glazfolk: With the latest BCR editor, on the PRESET tab (not the graphical tab), I set the number of banks to 1 <-- I don't know if that is necessary. Then on the graphics tab, I had to manually pick the pushbutton numbers in the drop-down list instead of clicking on their graphic. If you hover over the button graphic, the button number will be displayed (I'm thinking they were buttons #57 - #60). If you still can't get it, I'll go step by step next time I'm at that computer.

Again, aj, thank you for your work! By the way, I noticed on the PRESET tab that you can also use the four function buttons (EDIT, STORE, etc.) as generic buttons in case you need some more inputs (ie: single button switch from tracks to buses to outputs - hint, hint).

Thanks to everyone who's having a good time with this. I appreciate the very positive comments. I like things to Just Work, and although it took quite a bit of effort to write this, I love having the fluid control over Sonar I bought the BCR2000 for in the first place - and failed to achieve until now.

Re: sending sysx and Cubase. The sysx string only ungroups the bank switches for the current preset. This will not affect any other preset on the BCR. For all other presets, the bank switches continue to operate normally.

Therefore there should be no risk in using this software in conjunction with Cubase; just set up a new BCR2000 preset (on the BCR itself) for Sonar and you're completely safe. You can then switch away from this to your Cubase preset at any time, without any risk.

Re: ungrouping the remaining buttons to add more functionality. I was aware of this but it prevents you navigating to other BCR presets and I felt this was potentially too negative an impact. I am considering changing the transport controls to free up an extra button - the fast forward and rewind operations don't really justify two buttons, I think. Just one would do. Press it once to rewind (the most common operation by far) and a second time to go to the end. If you are already at the start, pressing it once will take you straight to the end. This seems like a good ergonomic compromise and frees up an extra button. As for what that button could do (shifted and unshifted), then I lean towards jump next/previous marker as the obvious extra piece of functionality. Alternatively, I could leave things as they are and provide shift functions for all four transport keys. Then the logical assignments sound to me like:-

shift+play: forward one measure
shift+ff: go next marker
shift+rew: go previous marker
shift+rec: back one measure

or, with the transport controls rearranged as proposed

new button: go next marker
shift+new button: go previous marker
shift+play: forward one measure
shift+ff/rew: backward one measure
shift+rec: insert marker

would be a tempting set of assignments, in my opinion

but these are just ideas at this stage. I like to sit and think for a while before rushing in....

Thanks. I wanted to implement active track support but the SDK doesn't appear to allow me to determine which track is active - I'll go back and re-check in case I missed something. I also wanted to have the option to have the surface switch the active track to stay in sync with the surface-selected track but again I don't recall seeing anywhere in the SDK where this can be done. If any Cakedevs are lurking, please feel free to enlighten me (on the dev forum if you prefer, I'm sure people don't want to talk about SDK APIs here!)

I would love to test your surface plug in but I can't save a preset from computer to the BCR with the BCR editor...
Maybe it's because I can't use the Behringer drivers. Actually, when I use those, my BCR is not detected by Sonar or midiox. When I use windows drivers, everything works fine, except the transfer of presets from computer to the BCR.
I hope I could test your plug soon...
Maybe sonar 6.2 would allow full duplex too...
Anyway, thanks a lot aj for your involment into this full duplex problem

a meter bridge would be the topping!

Man, I'd buy a bcr just for that. Heck, I'd be happy if each rotary controlled a track's level (1-32?), and its LED ring were a meter bridge. That would be pretty effin nice. Maybe have shift+rotary be pan...

Sorry, aj, don't want to make it seem like no good deed goes unpunished, again, thanks for unleashing this on the Sonar community.

Thanks aj. I thought I had all drivers / firmware etc. up to date but I'll need to doublecheck and confirm. There is obviously something wonky on my system I need to track down.

W.r.t. BCedit, it worked when I initially set things up. Your point about the Java runtime is interesting. I likely updated somewhere along the line and 'broke' BCedit in the process.

Great news about V1.1. Sounds like some decent enhancements. Again, thanks for your efforts and thanks for sharing this useful piece of software.