I’ve been using a BCF2000 to control Ardour for about a year, using LC mode and Mackie emulation (I think - settings not before my eyes right now) and its been great. So great in fact, that I’ve bought a second one to increase the number of tracks/buses I can control to 16. In the BCF2000 manual, it says you can daisy chain them together via MIDI to to appear as one USB device (page 10 in the manual - http://www.behringer.com/EN/downloads/pdf/BCF2000_P0246_M_EN.pdf) but this seems like a waste of the MIDI interfaces (always in short supply)
Does anyone have any experience of mapping two separately on individual USB interfaces? Or any idea how to start going about it?
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loading default ui configuration file /etc/ardour2/ardour2_ui_default.conf
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ardour: [INFO]: Ardour will be limited to 1024 open files
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ardour: [INFO]: No H/W specific optimizations in use
ardour: [ERROR]: LADSPA: cannot load module “/usr/lib/ladspa/csladspa.so” (/usr/lib/ladspa/csladspa.so: undefined symbol: csoundSetKillXYinCallback)
ardour: [INFO]: looking for control protocols in /home/stonge/.ardour2/surfaces/:/usr/lib/ardour2/surfaces/
powermate: Opening of powermate failed - No such file or directory
ardour: [INFO]: Control protocol powermate not usable
ardour: [INFO]: Control protocol Tranzport not usable
ardour: [INFO]: Control surface protocol discovered: “Mackie”
ardour: [INFO]: Control surface protocol discovered: “Generic MIDI”
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In short you would need to plug them both into a single RAW midi port I believe(And of course even then I am not going to guarantee that it will work, just that is the first thing I think is your problem). Most of the actual Mackie devices I think had a MIDI hub in them, or a USB to MIDI bridge, depending on what generation you have. I guess the BCF doesn’t have either of those I assume?
Your right, I don’t like it. You can connect two controllers together and have them merge their MIDI data into one stream going into the PC via USB but this creates odd feedback effects in Logic mode, I guess because each set of fader/pots/buttons are transmitting on the same channels/controllers.
What I think would be best would be if Ardour recognises a second BCF2000 and assign it to tracks/buses 8-15 (as opposed to 1-7 and the master for the first BCF2000). I’m quite happy to do some coding on this (I have some experience in this area) if someone could point me in the right direction in the source code.
The source code is in the libs/surfaces/mackie directory but I warn you that code is not exactly the simplest out there and really needs an overhaul by the time A3 gets released, something I am still hoping to do but my time is becoming more and more limited lately.
OK, well I’ve had a look through and it does seem quite complicated. Do you think you’d be able to give me some idea of process flow? Its not coming across from the code. Perhaps this conversation would be better switched to email if you’re willing to give me a little support? I would like to try and beat this into shape and I’ve got some time to spare (although not loads either)
My recommendation is to start reading through the wiimote code first, in the same /libs/surfaces directory as it is much simpler. That will get you the basics of the surfaces interface, and then the Mackie code may seem simpler. I certainly have no problem giving help, but sadly my free time for the next two to three weeks is almost nothing at the moment, so no promises. You can email me at username: seablaede (Note the extra ‘e’) at gmail.
I can tell you this may or may not work. We haven’t had any testing done on using Mackie Extenders, which I imagine is how this would work for the BCFs in the Mackie Mode is the second unit would show up as an extender. I think John programmed in support, but we never could test it if he did.
So when you put the bcf into LC mode. it prompts with EG and you can set some options…
What you want is the first controller set in U-4 (use the first rotary encoder)
Then the second one also in LC mode set to S-4 (use the first rotary encoder) and unit number 2 (unit number is selected with the 5th rotary encoder in EG mode) connected to the first with midi out to in in to out usual drill.
The Behringer manual says to set unit 2 to S3. I have done this. I also set the ID to 2.
Now both units function the same, but I need to map Unit 2 to channel 9-16. I am using Windows. I can’t see how I remap the faders to new channels. I noticed that the preset > controls the 9-16 channels, but of course, that set both BCF2000 to 9-16, whereas I only want unit 2 to select 9-16.