MIDI confusion...

[chriskorff]

Hello all!

I'm sitting here with a brand new Behringer BCF2000, and so far, I think it's great. The reason I got it is to control my STM2448 mixer, which it seems to be doing rather well - with one or two small exceptions... Now, I think the main problem is probably my limited understanding of MIDI. Here's what I want to do, but don't seem able to...

1) I'd like to get each of the push-button encoders to select the channel it represents in the Master page of the STM mixer. If I right click on one of the STM buttons (labelled 'Ch01', Ch02', etc...), the usual dialogue pops up, which I then try and use to 'listen' to the BCF and assign the pushy-downy button. It seems to find the CC number alright, but doesn't have an associated control, and when I click on the CC number in the list it just says 'Please select a controller'.

If I were to venture some kind of answer to this, it would be that it's not possible because these buttons are basically Note On/Off buttons, and are meant to have two fuctions (like Mute or Solo), not just one. Is that right?

2) Another problem I'm having is with the BCF controller presets... I've assigned Preset 1 to control the fader, pan, mute and solo of the first eight channels, and then Preset 2 to control the same things for channels 9-16. Fine... except, if I'm in Preset 1 (controlling channels 1-8) and I change the position of, say, channel 12's fader, when I next select Preset 2 on the BCF, all the faders jump to wherever they were BEFORE I changed anything in that bank of faders. I can see why this happens, of course - Scope doesn't know to send the positional data just because I changed a preset on an external device (the BCF), and this makes sense to me... but is there a way I can make this happen somehow?

I normally use Sonar as well as Scope, but at the moment I'm on my internet boot just playing around with the MIDI side of things (using MIDI-OX to chuck MIDI data from the USB connection to Sequencer MIDI sources and dests in Scope). I haven't actually tried using it in conjunction with Sonar yet (like I said, it's brand new this afternoon!), but would the Mackie HUI emulation help with this? I read a couple of threads about using Mackie controllers with Scope, but they seemed really rather more complicated than I needed (eg. I don't need the displays to show me what parameters I'm editing, because the BCF doesn't have them!)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers!

Chris

[chriskorff]

And to further add to my stupidity, I haven't downloaded the software yet... D/Ling now! Is this likely to solve all of my problems?

[bassdude]

Can't help you but I would be interested in how you get on with the BCF. I'd like to get a controller but I've stayed away from the BCF because of no fader readout (I don't want to have to think about what the fader is controlling).

[dawman]

I am sure that you will enjoy using a surface of anykind w/ Scope. It is the most user friendly, customizable app. for MIDI IMO.

Once you get to know the mixer lay outs, you can apply the same knowledge to synths, effects, etc.

My only advice is to use one of those little machines for 30 bucks that prints out sticky labels so you can have a visual refernevce of what knobs do what. You can add additional layovers later, and eventually eliminate them after you start memorizing your particular layouts.

Your'e going to have lots of fun.

[sharc]

1) I'd like to get each of the push-button encoders to select the channel it represents in the Master page of the STM mixer.

If you assign a controller to the channel selector on the master page, that should work. You could set this up on the buttons by having all the buttons sending the appropriate values on the same CC.

2) Another problem I'm having is with the BCF controller presets... I've assigned Preset 1 to control the fader, pan, mute and solo of the first eight channels, and then Preset 2 to control the same things for channels 9-16. Fine... except, if I'm in Preset 1 (controlling channels 1-8) and I change the position of, say, channel 12's fader, when I next select Preset 2 on the BCF, all the faders jump to wherever they were BEFORE I changed anything in that bank of faders. I can see why this happens, of course - Scope doesn't know to send the positional data just because I changed a preset on an external device (the BCF), and this makes sense to me... but is there a way I can make this happen somehow?

Not sure on this one. You should (in theory) be able to use the midi controller presets on the STM so that when you switch presets on the BCF, a progam change will be sent to switch the midi controller preset and I think that might give you an update on the positional data.

As far as software editors go for the Behringer controllers, I've found some of the 3rd party efforts are much better than the java one supplied by Behringer. More info here