BCF2000 - Mackie Mode & Cubase Trick
Posted: Sun Feb 04, 2007 1:53 pm
I was looking for some time into the issue of how to control my CW stuff with the BCF when it's set in Mackie emulation mode (which is *absolutely* brilliant BTW, it is much much more powerful than the standard BCF mode when working with Cubase - it takes a bit of figuring out but once you get it it's soooo coool). When in XTC mode it is reasonably trivial as demonstrated in another thread (because plugin parameters show up straight away as insert params), but it is non trivial (at least it was to me) when you're using the "normal" (Non-XTC) CW routing, since you just lost the "normal" Midi output of the BCF.
All I really needed was some way to get a VST or Insert controller mapped to a Midi CC output. After ages of looking for a free plugin of some kind, I actually ended up finding the solution within Cubase :
* Set up a Midi Track
* Assign the MIDI out & channel to the CW device you want to control
* In the MIDI Inserts, put in a MIDIControl insert (standard Cubase plugin)
* Select CCs 1 to 8 as the parameters to control
Now go to the BCF :
* Select the Midi track
* Select the "Insert" mode (Learn button on BCF)
* Select the second page for the MidiControl insert (Top right button in the Encoder Groups section)
Now you can use the top rotary buttons (or the faders if you Flip the setup) for generating the CC 1 to 8 values, and you can use the CW Learn functions for the mapping - since normal MIDI CC is now coming in. Add more MidiControl inserts if you need more parameters (but of course map them to CC9-16 and so on)
The beauty of this is that you also get free instant automation facilities - since the MidiControl parameters have an automation track which you can use. If you select the "R" and"W" modes in Cubase for it (Automation Read/Write) you can record the automation as per normal in Cubase... or draw it manually.
Also, you don't need to care about feedback to the BCF, it works out of the box since that is already set up if you have the Mackie mode configured in Cubase.
If anybody has a better way, I'm still interested ! Especially a single insert which allows you to control more parameters in one go (the 8 limit is really not enough, having to switch to a second MidiControl instance is less practical than just switching parameter pages within a single plugin).
By the way, this also means you can control your STM faders this way. Full STM control however would probably be impractical though...
Xeers
Philip
All I really needed was some way to get a VST or Insert controller mapped to a Midi CC output. After ages of looking for a free plugin of some kind, I actually ended up finding the solution within Cubase :
* Set up a Midi Track
* Assign the MIDI out & channel to the CW device you want to control
* In the MIDI Inserts, put in a MIDIControl insert (standard Cubase plugin)
* Select CCs 1 to 8 as the parameters to control
Now go to the BCF :
* Select the Midi track
* Select the "Insert" mode (Learn button on BCF)
* Select the second page for the MidiControl insert (Top right button in the Encoder Groups section)
Now you can use the top rotary buttons (or the faders if you Flip the setup) for generating the CC 1 to 8 values, and you can use the CW Learn functions for the mapping - since normal MIDI CC is now coming in. Add more MidiControl inserts if you need more parameters (but of course map them to CC9-16 and so on)
The beauty of this is that you also get free instant automation facilities - since the MidiControl parameters have an automation track which you can use. If you select the "R" and"W" modes in Cubase for it (Automation Read/Write) you can record the automation as per normal in Cubase... or draw it manually.
Also, you don't need to care about feedback to the BCF, it works out of the box since that is already set up if you have the Mackie mode configured in Cubase.
If anybody has a better way, I'm still interested ! Especially a single insert which allows you to control more parameters in one go (the 8 limit is really not enough, having to switch to a second MidiControl instance is less practical than just switching parameter pages within a single plugin).
By the way, this also means you can control your STM faders this way. Full STM control however would probably be impractical though...
Xeers
Philip