I recently bought a Roland A-800 Pro, and am generally pleased with it apart from 

(a) the really resistant aftertouch, which I note has been mentioned elsewhere in this forum (my old Roland JX-8P also needed to be almost stood on to respond to aftertouch - eventually, aftertouch stopped working altogether) and 

(b) the horribly baffling and vague instructions on configuring the A-Pro's controller maps.
I have seen that there's one post dealing with setting up the A-Pro with Sonar but I'm not using Sonar and uncertain how far it applies to my situation.

I'm using Cakewalk Music Creator 6, mainly because I wanted something that was really simple to work with. In the past I have struggled too much with software, Sonar included, and just felt I wanted to be able to write and record music without needing to study for a degree in understanding how to run the software. I'm the wrong side of 60 years old now, and don't find technology anywhere near as easy to understand as I used to!

I am assuming there's every likelihood the A-Pro will work with Music Creator 6, since it is basically from the same Cakewalk 'stable'.

Principally, I'd be very happy even if I was only able to get Music Creator's transport controls to respond to the L1 - L8 buttons on the A-Pro, but I presume once I can grasp how to do that, I will probably be OK to assign the other controls too.

So - are there any kind souls out there who can walk me through the set-up procedure for the control maps? 

I am confused by the A-Pro Editor's interface, which seems to really limit the options of what can be assigned to which control (unless you know exactly what hexadecimal codes to enter, maybe) and further confused by a similar but seemingly functional 'mock-up' of the controller that also appears onscreen with functions attached to the various controls that somehow seem as though they were chosen from some different lists! Is the functional software representation of the A-Pro intended for testing all the functions work as expected before transmitting the data to the A-Pro itself?

Likewise, I am confused by the plethora of ACT buttons on the hardware and both software representations (and on my Standalone / VST soft synths as well). If I need to activate ACT, do I activate just the hardware one, or the software ones, or both, or what? 

Any help will be gratefully received!

Cheers!

Hello. Welcome to the forum. First, there are two types of software to be used with the A-Pro hardware. One is the A-Pro Editor, which is merely an editor  that lets you assing desired CC numbers, etc. to the A-Pro's buttons, knobs, sliders and pads, and the other is a control surface plugin that lets you assigne DAW's commands (Play, Stop, Record, etc.) to the knobs, etc. The user guide that comes with A-Pro is for the A-Pro Editor, and the help files for control surface plugins can be found in Program Files > Cakewalk > Shared Surfaces. Unfortunately, I don't know which control surface plugin you are supposed to use with Music Creator 6. I use Sonar X2, so I use A-Pro Control Surface Plugin and the help file is "APRO.chm."

To find out whether A-Pro Control Surface Plugin works with Music Creator, follow these steps:

1. Switch on A-800Pro, then launch Music Editor 6.
2. Go to the MIDI device setting page in Music Creator and select all A-Pro options shown in both Inputs and Outputs boxes.
3. Go to the control surfaces setting page in Music Creator and add a new device (choose A-Pro) and select "A-PRO2" for In Port and "A-PRO" for Out Port.
4. If the ACT button on the A-Pro hardware lights up and the display shows "Receiving..." it means Music Creator is sending your A-800Pro a map designed for Sonar (which may work fine with Music Creator). If this doesn't happen, I'm afraid the A-Pro Control Surface Plugin won't work with Music Creator, and you will have to find out which control surface plugin you are supposed too use.

You will likely to receive more info on control surface plugins and ACT if you post your questions in the Sonar X1/X2 forum.

Many thanks, Jlien,

Step 3 helped. I'd already got A-Pro in there as a control surface but had not realised that I needed to select the In and Out options from drop-downs.

The ACT button didn't light up, but the transport controls on the A-800 Pro now start, stop and pause playback and initiate recording. That makes me very happy. The L1-L9 sliders appear to be doing what they should for volume of individual tracks, too. I've not tried anything else yet, but will become somewhat more adventurous now I can see they two items are talking to each other with more than just notes!

Thanks again!

Great. And if you don't mind, I want to ask you these questions:

1. Which control map are you using? Press the left arrow key on the A-Pro hardware until you see "CTRL MAP" in the display. There are 20 maps (0-19) available, and when you select the map #19, what do you see in the display? Does it say, "NO ASSIGN"? (If you see "Sonar ACT Map 2," that means your A-PRO already received, at some point between your first use of A-Pro and your first post in this forum), the Sonar ACT map 2 data from Music Editor.  

2. Which preset did you select from the pull-down menu in the upper left corner of the A-Pro Control Surface Plugin? Can you actually open this control surface plugin? (Maybe your Program Files > Cakewalk > Shared Surfaces folder doesn't contain "APRO.dll" because you're not using Sonar?)

3. Does the control surfaces setting page in Music Creator have the "WAI Display" option? If it does, check the "Console View" box and see if the console strips in Music Creator show colored horizontal bars below them.

If the map 19 says "Sonar ACT map 2," you might be able to fully use the ACT feature. If not, I suppose you are using control map 0, which is "Sonar ACT map" that is embedded in the A-Pro (not transmitted from the DAW).