Configuring Your A-Pro to Work With/Without ACT

I purchased a CW A500-Pro MIDI controller keyboard a few months ago and realized immediately that it was a first rate keyboard.  I waited several months before trying to configure it.  But when I did … what a shock!  The exercise was so frustrating that I would have returned the unit had I not let too much time go by.  In the end, I discovered that the problems were due principally to third rate documentation (and maybe that’s being charitable).  With some experimenting and a few pointers from this forum, I finally got things seemingly sorted out.  Here’s a quick tutorial for others following in my steps.  It may not be 100% accurate, but it represents the best I could come up with via trial and error.
 
Assuming the audience for this are Sonar users, then there are three areas of interest in the configuration:
 
• Configuring the keyboard for performance (and recording) purposes, where the some or all of the controls (knobs, sliders and buttons) are given MIDI controller values
• Setting up ACT to have the keyboard function as a control surface with Sonar
• Programming the transport buttons (stop, record, etc.) to control Sonar when not in ACT mode
 
A section follows devoted to each of these.
 
Setting Up a Control Map
 
The following assumes the basic software (drivers and A-Pro editor) installation has been done per instructions in the manual.
 
In order to make use of the controls like sliders, you need to define one or more control maps.  In this, the documentation is especially not to be trusted.  The Owner's Guide contains a brief mention of control maps and refers you to the companion Control Map Guide, which just lists a number of non-Cakewalk DAWs and which preconfigured control map is associated for using the A-Pro as a control surface.  Forget all this.  In fact, take the Control Map Guide and place it somewhere inaccessible, after writing on the cover "OF NO USE TO SONAR USERS".  If you want to make use of knobs, sliders, etc. for synth performance control, you need to define a control map, period.
 
A control map is just a set of MIDI assignments to the A-Pro controls.  You can make these settings from the A-Pro itself, but that’s tedious.  Furthermore, if you make them when the unit is set to the default control map of 0, they are temporary.
 
Proceed as follows.  Choose a control map number.  Maps 1 thru 18 are fair game.  There’s some evidence that ACT uses map 19, so it might be best to avoid that one.  Bring up the A-Pro editor.  Specify the desired control map number.  Right off, do a save calling it something appropriate like "A-Pro Control Map 1".
 
Set whatever controls you want to use to values.  Let’s take the first slider as an example.  Say you wanted it to be CC1 to duplicate the function of the mod "wheel", but without the spring loaded return to zero action.  Click on the control picture in the editor window and you’ll be presented with a dialog box.  Choose Channel Message, Control Change and Control Number 1.  Leave the Min and Max values alone (or not if you have some reason to set them otherwise).  Likewise, you probably want to leave the Output Port set to 1.  Click OK.  That’s it for slider 1.
 
Do the same with the other controls in the editor window.  The editor itself is pretty straightforward and holds few surprises.  But there are some mysteries.  It would appear you can set values in the editor for Hold, the two Pedal controls, after touch and the pitch/mod-wheel control.  Don’t bother.  Those are “hard wired” in the A-Pro.  On the other hand, why do the controls like mod “wheel” show unassigned in the editor?  Why make the look as if they can/should be edited and actually need to be assigned a function?  Who knows?  This is a confusing and apparently pointless feature to say the least.
 
When you’ve got things to your liking, do a file save and also transmit the map to the A-Pro.  If you didn’t get things exactly the way you wanted the first time, no worries.  Subsequent changes are easily made.
 
One thing you should consider up front though is accidentally using a MIDI CC number that’s reserved for specific purposes.  Unless you have a good reason to do otherwise, you’ll want to select undefined MIDI CC numbers and rely on the MIDI learn capabilities of your soft synths to keep things organized.
 
The following MIDI CC numbers are undefined: 3, 9, 14-15, 20-31, 85-90 and 102-120.  In addition, the following two sequences are defined as “general purpose” (whatever that means): 16-19 and 80-83.
 
A google of "MIDI CC numbers" will produce many good sources of information on the topic of MIDI CC number conventions.
 
Of course, you can assign MIDI notes to the controls instead of CC numbers.  This is of particular attraction when deciding what use to make of the Dynamic Pad keys.  Owners of the Alchemy soft synth will spot an immediate good use for these.  Alternately, assignments to favorite drum map settings will be just the thing.  You can assign note events to knobs and sliders, but it’s not clear why one would ever want to do so.  Nevertheless, the A-Pro editor offers that as an option.
 
For the four general purpose buttons (and possibly the Dynamic Pad buttons), you’ll need to decide if you want the button to be latched or unlatched.  The buttons work as follows.  When clicking on a control assigned to a CC message, a MIDI message is sent containing that controller number and the max. value.  For a note assignment, the message is a note-on with the velocity defined in the editor.  When you’ve specified the control is “unlatched”, releasing the button sends a CC or note message with a zero value.  When defined as “latched”, this message is deferred until the next time you press the button.  Buttons have a back light that turns on when the initial message is sent and off when to corresponding off message is sent.  This means that  unlatched buttons light momentarily when pressed and latched buttons light when pressed the stay lit until pressed a second time.
 
Finally, you might think it useful to make a system setting on the A-Pro itself: changing the Startup Memory assignment to Last Acc Map (as described on p. 68 of the owner’s manual).  That way, in theory, your performance map will be there when you power up.  But Sonar/ACT sometimes leaves the control map set to 19.  So, you still need to manually check and possibly reset it.  On the other hand, maybe using control map 19 gets you the best of both worlds.  Who knows … it’s explained nowhere.
 
Setting Up ACT
 
Unlike setting up a performance control map, following the included instructions is all that it takes here.  There’s a one-sheet inclusion with the documentation that leads you through the steps.
 
One possible point of confusion, however, is the initial settings in the Controller/Surface Settings dialog box.  The instructions say to set the input port to A-Pro 2.  When I went to do this, A-Pro 2 did not appear as an option in the drop down list.  Clicking MIDI Devices and enabling A-Pro 2 was all it took to make things right.
 
When ACT has been set up, Sonar will automatically enable it on the keyboard.  That means all your performance control map settings will not be pre-empted.  You can easily disable ACT by clicking the A-Pro ACT button.
 
However, when you re-enable ACT, the Sonar ACT window (which occupies a fair amount of screen real estate) opens.  While mostly intuitive, there are some far from obvious things to content with here.  This window could certainly benefit from a Help function and/or some documentation, neither of which appear to be in evidence.
 
One option you may want to check out (clicking the Options button) is Rotary/Slider behavior.  You may find Match to be a better choice than the default Jump.
 
Another option of use if you frequently switch between ACT and non-ACT mode is "Hardware ACT button opens/closes control surface plugin".  When you uncheck this, the ACT window will not open when you click ACT on the controller.  To manually get the window to open, click A-Pro 1 under Tools in the Sonar main menu.
 
You will likely not use ACT very long before you want to customize it to your own work flow.  In this, the options appear to be nearly limitless.  Every assignable control that has a little down arrow under it can be reassigned to something you find more useful than the default setting.  The Dynamic Pad buttons, in particular beg to be so used. 
 
The general purpose buttons (B1 – B4) however are not resignable.  Their dedicated labels say “tracks, effects, synth and utility” presectively.  As you click between them, you’ll note that the labels on the Dynamic Pad buttons change, hinting at what’s going on.  Another mystery (to me anyway) is the purpose of the ACT Enable and Lock buttons.  Again, a little Help information would be most welcome in cases like this.
 
When you click on a control in the window, it's full label appears in a central display box.  This is useful since the full label is often too long to be meaningful in the tiny label area alloted to each control.  Unfortunately, you get the effects of the click.  Right clicking isn't recognized.  And there's no flyover display to show a control's label.  From the looks of it, this software was written in maybe the early nineties.  No doubt it's very powerful when you've customized and mastered your setup, but it's decidely unhelpful when trying to learn how to effectively use it.
 
Transport in Non-ACT Mode
 
When in ACT mode, the keyboard (note) keys remain available to send note-on/off messages on port 1 and are not pre-empted by ACT.  Likewise, the pedals, aftertouch and the pitch/CC1 controls do their usual thing.  But what if you want to record and make use of other synth expression controls?  In ACT mode, these are not available, so you have to switch out of ACT mode to use them.
 
It would be nice if you could at least make use of the transport buttons, especially Record and Stop.  No problem … easily done.  We can assign keyboard bindings to MIDI events in Sonar just as we can assign bindings to computer keys.  The MIDI shortcut keys are restricted to note-on/off message.  Also, a shift key must be defined.  The MIDI bindings will not be recognized by Sonar unless shift is enabled.  The shift key may be either a note or CC message.  This information relates to Sonar 8.0.  Hopefully given the precision with which an A-Pro control can be defined, future versions of Sonar will eliminate the need for a shift key and will extend MIDI shortcuts to CC messages.  But let’s get on with it.
 
First, in the A-Pro editor, assign the transport buttons you want available to some off-the-beaten-path note values in the low range (note numbers 0-20) or high (109-127).  Give them a velocity of 1 just to be safe.
 
Identify one other A-Pro button to use as the required shift key.  Sonar requires that a shift key (which is either a note or CC message) be enabled before the note key bindings are recognized.  The shift key may be a note-value or a controller number.  Remember, the Hold key, although an obvious choice for this purpose, is not available because it cannot be overridden.  You probably want to make the shift key unlatched.  That way, you just turn it one once and thereafter the transport buttons work the same when ACT is on and when it’s not on.
 
When you’ve got the A-Pro transport buttons assigned and transmitted to the A-Pro, all that’s left is to define the key bindings in Sonar.  Do this with Options/Key Bindings as described in the Sonar documentation.  It’s fairly obvious as to how to accomplish this.
 
Remember that when you’re setting this up, the A-Pro comes on with ACT enabled.  Make sure you turn it off in order to test your non-ACT transport button bindings.
 

Yes, another great post on the same day. It's really appreciated; I'm new to sonar, new to Act, the A Pro's and I haven't done much sound-engineering. It's  posts like these and the master class videos that are moving me forwards. Thanks again.

Great stuff ! Thx a lot ! 
Of all the useless manuals I have read, the one for A-PRO may be the most useless of them all :)
It's about time they release some usefull info on these keyboards !! 

Crg


Isn't there an ACT preset for the A-Pro boards?

Don't understand the question.  The Control Map Guide doesn't mention Sonar/ACT at all in its list of control maps preconfigured for specific non-CW DAWs.
 
ACT communication happens pretty much as advertised and little needs to be done to get the basic setup working.

Crg


Perhaps I misunderstood but there should be an ACT preset you can put into your ACT presets folder and then load into ACT when using the ACT controller. Other than Dynamic Mapping and the programmed presets stored in the A-Pro. Perhaps it's more automatic than I thought. I was under the impression certain functions didn't work right out of the box.

It's not clear what's going on under the covers, but two things are worth mentioning.  First, once you've set up ACT, when you launch Sonar, the A-Pro switches to ACT mode automagically.  One can then disable/enable ACT with the ACT button on the A-Pro.  There's some evidence it uses control map 19 for this, but that's not stated in the doc.  It is very automatic, probably more so than you're anticipating.

Bump to keep recent.

The editor itself is pretty straightforward and holds few surprises. But there are some mysteries. It would appear you can set values in the editor for Hold, the two Pedal controls, after touch and the pitch/mod-wheel control. Don’t bother. Those are “hard wired” in the A-Pro. On the other hand, why do the controls like mod “wheel” show unassigned in the editor? Why make the look as if they can/should be edited and actually need to be assigned a function? Who knows? This is a confusing and apparently pointless feature to say the least.

Dmbaer, I've referred to your detailed post several times this week, my first week with the A-800 Pro.  Thanks for taking the time to lay so much out.

I admit to still having some confusion, like not understanding when I should have the ACT button engaged on the keyboard, and when not to.

But the quote I have above from your post is something I wanted to point out as inaccurate.  I have a special control map for using the Aria player, the sample playback engine for the Garritan Libraries.  When I discovered that Aftertouch on the keyboard is useless, I had to find a way to control AT in real time, since AT is often used in Garritan instruments for vibrato.  I easily assigned AT to the Mod stick using the Apro Editor-- it's not "hard wired" to CC1 as you say here. 

I'm using an Expression pedal to control volume on the Garritan instruments, since cc11 is interchangeable with cc1 volume control, the usual controller for Garritan volume.  I switch back to the regular Sonar map for other instruments that use cc1 for vibrato - and then need to draw AT data in the PRV, as I did before getting the Apro.

ANOTHER POINT - not directly related to your post.  I have Sonar X1 (another new toy this week) and have found that the regular un-editable Sonar Map ("0") doesn't behave the same as it does in Sonar 8.5.  The drum pads aren't working the same - no arm for record etc.  But if I dial up map #19, then X1 responds to all the default control settings.

Randy B.

S.Wallis


Randy, i would strongly recommend always having the act button lit on your A-PRO. after you've used it for a few weeks (maybe even months) you can then turn it off and try to follow the instruction on using the A-PRO without act. I've had my a pro for 4 months now and i still don't have a clue about using most of the features in this tutorial. I've had no need to change anything because act works perfectly for me.

In Sonar 8.5, in the control surface properties page there's an option to use drum pads as buttons (for undo, etc...) or notes, C,D,E,F etc... Maybe that's switched to 'use pads as notes' (i think it says notes anyway - i'm not at my DAW.

Also, control map 19 seems to be a custom control for Sonar, whilst control map 0 is the default map. I saw no difference what so ever between the 2, apart from the fact that you can set them up differently (for example on control map 0 you could have the drum pads control things like undo, loop, punch record, bounce to track, etc... and then on control map 19 you could have them control different things such as, mute, solo, arm, write enable, etc...

That's for 8.5 though, where you have drop down menus underneath the drum pads on the control surface properties page. From what i've read above, it seems that the drop down menus have gone on X1.

Wallis!  You're being so helpful on several threads - Thanks!

I'm glad to know you think I should just leave the ACT button on - That's what I've been doing, but then got to wondering if it was the right thing to do, because of the details in dmbaer's post.

The thing about Map 19 - it's the only one that's working totally for me in Sonar X1.  Map 0, the default Sonar map, doesn't have the drum pads connected for some reason, while in Map 19, X1 reacts the way Sonar 8.5 reacts to Map 0. -- ?  THere ya go.

Randy B.

I'd say dmbaer's tutorial is more 'professional' than mine in that it deals with altering midi cc message, and other advanced features that i don't know about. It's certainly not something i'd recommend trying untill you have ACT up and running and you play with the controller first to get to grips with it.

Even then i don't see the point of not using act on this controller. (I'm sorry, dmbaer, i don't mean to sound offensive, i just mean that it's all a bit above me at the minute. ACT works for me, so why wouldn't i use it?) But i know i'm missing something that i will have to learn eventually, so i really appreciate this tutorial!

dmbaer

Randy,
 
My writeup was based on experimentation ... and there was a lot of things to juggle.  It's quite possible that I got signals crossed at some point.  But I'm pretty certain this particular issue is something I tried and reported correctly in my attempts to sort out the mysteries.  I will certainly go back and try again ... but it's going to be a while before I have a chance.  I've got a new computer to move into to, and I haven't even had a chance to download and install X1 yet.  But as soon as I get a chance, I'll review this, report back, and correct my post if I find I was mistaken.
 
Thanks.

Hi, dmbaer, thanks for the reply.

I could see from your detailed post that it was basically a report of your earliest findings, and you had more exploring to do.  Still, you covered so much! - It's great, and I have a PDF of your post for handy reference.

I had need of having Aftertouch available for my Garritan instruments.  The AT on Apro is pretty much non-functional, even with the most sensitive response curve.  So I was determined to rig up Something so I could record AT in real time.

Using the Apro editor, there was no difficulty in clicking on the Mod stick, and from the menu, choosing AT.  I then transmitted that edited map (the rest of it was basically the same as the #19 pre-set)--sent it to the #1 slot, since that's a Cubase map I don't need.

Works perfectly - I dial up map 1 when I'm using a Garritan instrument, and the Mod stick is sending out Aftertouch, not CC1.

So, that saves you some work.  You'll want to experiment with it, but I'm sitting here with the Mod stick re-assigned--proving it's not "hard wired."  - That will probably expand your arsenal of weapons when you have a chance to work with the keyboard some more.

Watch out though - ACT isn't working right in X1.  They've screwed it up with half the options gone, and some of the options in there are repeated---it's a mess.

Randy B.

dmbaer



I am encouraged by CW's reports that much of the ACT issues will be addressed in the service pack, though.

Yes!  Just today, after I wrote on this thread about the problems with ACT in Sonar X1, Cakewalk announced on the X1 Forum that they've already caught the mistake and it's been fixed in the upcoming update.  That's supposed to be released before the end of the month.  Good deal!

Randy B.

dmbaer


OK, I tested again and you absolutely right.  These controllers can be assigned and my statement to the contrary was in error.  I have no idea why I got this result in my earlier experimentation.  I do have a theory, though.  I tested using control map 1.  When you start Sonar with the APro configured as your control surface, it automatically switches the APro to control map 19.  Unfortunately, when you close Sonar, it doesn't have the good manner to leave things as it found it.  The control map stays at 19 and you must remember to reset it to the one you use outside of Sonar.
 
And while we're speaking of "gotchas", I came across another one today that's all too easy to encouter.  I thought I was changing the control map, but accidentally changed the value of it's next door neighbor, velocity.  Set the velocity to 1 (which means it's always 1 irrespective of how the key is pressed).  Took a little hair pulling before I figured out why my softsynth was barely audible.

Hiya, I knew you'd see this when you had some time to look around some more.  My theory is that earlier you were using the properties window for Apro in Sonar.  For some reason, it doesn't have the Mod/Pitch Stick available for reprogramming.

Velocity--Same thing happened to me!  I suddenly had this wimpy, obviously low level velocity, and it was constant.  Then, like you, saw that I'd accidentally changed the response from "Touch" to one of those constant settings.

Randy B.