I have just recently purchased a Mackie Control and an extender and tried the briefly. Seems to be a big step up from my old dual BCF2000 in every way.
One thing I would like to know is how to enable the led meters that was “default” in 5.12
I think I have seen a git commit mentioning “removing Led bars because they make no sense…” a while ago before I even considered purchasing my units. Is this just hard facts and the meters are no more or can they be enabled again ? (Robin ?)
A check box in Mackie Control preferences for this feature maybe ??
You might try pretending you have an X-touch. On the Mackie, the meters are just reuse of the of the text channel scribble strips. There was trouble with it switching back and forth from meter to text if I remember right. The X-touch has separate meters but uses the same signals as the mackie. So create your own device file with meters turned on.
Seems like I have to mess around quite a bit to get the meters back then.
I have a Mackie Controller and an extender and there are no X-touch profiles with extenders…
I will try this but my real concern is whether this move to omit the meters is inevitable and the best thing to do. I filed a mantis ticket too to make sure this is reviewed again.
In 5.12 the Mackie Control have it’s meters working and there are also working signal leds indicating signal. Totally useful and gives a nice interaction with the control surface.
In git head, both these features are gone. I do not understand the reasoning behind the decision but I have not been active on IRC so I have probably missed the debate if there has been one.
The signal LEDs was necessary IMHO so could they be reestablished ?
(As a fresh owner of my Mackie devices I feel like I jumped a train that is heading for the scrap yard re. Mackie Control unless I go for really fresh X-touch or other modern hardware. Is that necessary to have the best user experience, the I have to reconsider my way of thinking and reuse old but fully working hardware. Which in part is usually a great thing with using Linux and rely on kernel drivers and a community that is not removing supported stuff unless there is a technically strong motivation)
Did some testing and made a new mc.device file called mc_with-meters.device
Changed one line from HasMeters value=yes
to HasSeparateMeters value=yes
and now both Signal LEDs and meters works the same way the used to.
I still think this is a hassle for new Ardour users that has no idea why there is limited visual feedback from the Control surface so I would like to know why this is changed and why one has to hack the device file to get this valuable feature.
I am not complaining or bashing anyone but rather making sure new Ardour users get the best value of their investment/choice.
Ok, the best mix (!) would be of course if the Control surface woud show Meters until changing the Pan for a channel where only that channel would display Pan values until user stopped altering Panning. Or if the Pan values would display whenever no Signal is present or if there was a selection on the surface to toggle between Pan value and Meters without the need of selecting a new .device file.
I guess this might be te reason for why the default behavior have changed but could we keep the Signal Led in the new Behavior and skip the meters if it is possible ?
6.0 is pre-alpha and should only be used when you’re developing Ardour. It isn’t ready for testing, the session-format is not frozen and sessions you create with it may or may not load in the future.
I know 6.0 is dev only and I am certainly just testing.
My brief testing is due to just receiving my Mackie units and as a follower of git commits I remembered seeing something about ditching the meters so that’s what brought me here.
I will keep quiet and hope that MCP for classic devices will not fade away and vanish.
