Ardour and the (new) Novation Launchkey mk4

#1

Novation announced their new LaunchKey mk4 keyboard-control surfaces today.

Thanks to a collaboation with them, we are happy to announce that support for these devices was developed before their release date, and will be available in the next nightly builds (available on August 30th). It will also be, of course, in the next release (8.7) which will likely happen in the next couple of weeks.

There will likely be some bugs and glitches because so far I (Paul) have been the only person testing the support. I look forward to working with any Ardour users who decide to purchase one of these really quite nice devices and working out the kinks.

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#2

I wouldn’t mind being a tester for you, any particular one you would recommend ?

#3

From their product page: “Launchkey offers powerful, custom integration for: Ableton Live, Logic, Cubase, Reason Studios, FL Studio, and Ardour.”

Congrats! Ardour is still gaining more and more respect! :slight_smile:

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#4

I think that the larger units are somewhat more useful than the “minis”. Of those, the right one depends on how many keys you want. I have the 49 key version, and also a 37 key “mini” which is a cheap and cheerful thing for gigs, maybe, but would not want to rely on it.

#5

Nice.

It would be cool if they shipped with a “licence” for the current version of Ardour.

Cheers,

Keith

#6

License? There is no license for Ardour.

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#7

That’s why I put it in quotes. I wasn’t sure of the appropriate term.

I mean the ability to download the current executable version.

Cheers,

Keith

#8

What does Ardour show on the small display of the device?

#9

A variety of different things depending on the mode it is in.

The device also overrides some of what the DAW tries to display when changing pad modes, which I let Novation know about.

#10

If it’s possible to use encoders in the transport mode to control playhead position, is it possible to enhance the MIDI maps related code to allow this for arbitrary encoders on whatever MIDI devices?

My use case is using an encoder on MiniLab 3 to move the playhead left and right and the Tap pad to split a region. Basically, fast cutting.

#11

I just picked one of these up. So far I am loving it. It does a lot even without integration as the chord/scale/arp functions are internal. I am just getting back into production and am new to ardour, so Im still figuring that out as well. Hoping that the new update will work on OS X 10.15.7. Very much looking forward to being able to use any of the daw controls on this thing.

#12

Where can we find additional details around the Launchkey mk4 integration with Ardour, while awaiting to receive a Launchkey 25 ?
Thanks

#13

Thanks @paul - and welcome back from your hike!
Will download and build it.

#14

There’s already info in a git branch of our manual about it, which will appear online at manual.ardour.org when we release 8.7 (this week, I think).

Meanwhile, you should just be able to use the Novation user guide - the goal is to function as it describes, more or less.

One “wrinkle” compared to some other control surfaces, Novation suggest the idea of controlling the “selected plugin” rather than navigating to it on the surface. I have followed that model for now. Selected means that you clicked on it in a mixer strip (it does not mean that the plugin GUI is visible or on top or anything like that).

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#15

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