So in the MIDI Learn page of the Ardour manual it explicitly says that trying to do a CTRL+Middle Click in a Plugin GUI is useless and will not have any affect. It says that in order to actually bind something with MIDI the selected parameter has to be clicked on from the Mixer area where the individual parameters are visible outside of the plugin GUI. That much I am on the same page with so far.
However, in the plugin called Cardinal Synth (fork of VCV Rack), there are very little parameters to select from in regards to MIDI learn. For instance, when you use this plugin for those who are unfamiliar, you are building a modular synthesizer from the ground up so you are continually adding modules and connecting them together.
If there is anyone who has knowledge of how to get individual modules within Cardinal to show their MIDI parameters for mapping that would greatly be appreciated.
I think a plugin cannot add parameters during runtime to the host, so cardinal (and VCV I think) exposes 24 parameters that you can use via the “Host Params” module. You can automate the value from ardour and connect the value from the module to other ports in Cardinal.
The “Host MIDI CC” module works similar, it receives a CC from the host and converts it to a CV port in Cardinal (and the other way round). “Host MIDI” is a bit specialized, it converts notes from a keyboard to V/Oct, Gate, Retrigger and Velocity, with polyphony built in. The “Host MIDI CC Map” is even more advanced, you can map MIDI CCs directly to a knob of a module without using cables and CVs.
To be clear, Cardinal does not expose the parameters of individual modules, only the 24 parameters it makes visible, which then have to be mapped inside Cardinal.
