iCON IKeyboard X with Ardour

[Edward]

I got and iCON iKeyboard X 5 - it’s a basic 61-key USB keyboard with a Mackie-compatible control surface in the end.

Getting the control surface working with Ardour was pretty straightforward - after figuring out that out of it’s 2 exposed midi ports it sends the control commands on port 1 and selecting iCon QCon Pro X as the device type almost everything works perfectly. Mute and solo buttons light up correctly and so on. I even got some customised controls in. I set the flip button to toggle between mixer and editor and reassigned FF and Rewind to jump to the next and previous marker.

One problem still remains: Pushing the record arm button crashes Ardour. The channel rec button works perfectly but the general rec causes a crash.

The problem does not replicate 100% on all sessions but it does always replicate on a session after it first happens on that session. For example I created a new empty session trying to make it happen again but it did not. On my old sessions it keeps replicating.

I also tried setting the device as iCON QCon Pro G2 with the same results.

What should I try next to get around this - or to be able to create an accurate bug report?

I am running Mac OSX 12.6.

Crash report on Pastebin: Ardour 7 iCon iKeyboard Crash - Pastebin.com

[Edward]

Oh - and I did check what the keyboard actually sends when pushing the button:

Note on 95 127 (push)
Note off 95 127 (release)

[paul (Paul Davis)]

The crash is occuring in the Integra 7 Editor plugin.

[Edward]

Yes - that is the plugin controlling the Roland Integra-7 hardware synth.

The session that did not crash did not have that plugin. I added the plugin and the crash appeared.

I tried whether it makes a difference if any midi data is being routed to the Integra but it did not matter.

I guess there is not much that can be done about this on Ardour side?

[paul (Paul Davis)]

Ardour is asking the plugin to save its state (we save a copy of the session state when you start recording). The plugin doesn’t seem to like this, and crashes. Hard to say who is at fault here - other plugins don’t have this issue, so more likely to be the Integra plugin but that’s not definitive.

[Edward]

After some more tries I found a workaround: The plugin comes in VST3 and AU formats. Only VST3 causes the crash.

I’ve preferred the VST3 version as the AU version UI appears incorrectly after loading a saved session if the plugin was open when last saving the session.

I could report these issues to Roland of course but I’m afraid they’d just go “Ardour is not on our list of supported DAWs”. Plus the Integra is already old. Not as old as it’s older siblings in the same rack but still old.

Thanks Paul - for the answers and for Ardour in general!