d8b Forum

Is the transport control midi the same for all hardware and software?

I made the midi cable for the d8b to MDR. That works like a charm.

I was wondering if I could use the same controls for my DAW? Anyone else have luck with this?

It really depends on the DAW that determines how the DAW transport will react to the D8B's MMC implementation.

Example: FF & RW advance smoothly with a single tap/hold in Cubase while Logic only advances a few bars, requiring constant tapping to get some distance.

Example: The Jog & Shuttle commands don't work in Cubase unless HUI mode is active. It's the same in Logic.

The 3 main foodgroups (PLAY/STOP/REC) should run any DAWs transport that supports MMC. FF/RW usually work but how they work seem to be DAW-dependent (as noted above).

YMMV

Thanks for the information.

I will have to experiment and see what I can get working then.

You'll need to set your DAW (what is it, BTW?) to receive MMC from the D8B and transmit MTC to the D8B. This means you'll need to have MIDI In & Out cables connected to a MIDI interface that feeds your DAW's host computer.

Digital Audio Workstation. Or computer.

I have midi in and out from the computer.

So far, I can map each button on the transport. Tho, Sony Acid does not want to play nice. Reaper seems ok.

I knew I should've written: which DAW is it? I see that you're using Acid and Reaper.

And, as observed with my own collection of DAWs (Cubase, Nuendo, Logic Pro X and Studio One 2) they all behave differently when it comes to how they deal with MMC (MIDI Machine Control).

It's not the D8Bs fault, as the MMC transport sysex strings conform to the MIDI standard. It's how the DAW programmers interpret and implement them into their programs. I guess you're going to have to deal with what amount of control you have available in Acid as best as possible.

Here's a little story:

I used to be part of the development team that created the D8B. At the time, I was strictly using Cubase at home and testing the D8B with it. I discovered a couple of MTC/MMC issues regarding how the D8B dealt with Cubase and visa versa. At the time, if you looped a section in Cubase, it wouldn't loop MTC. It just kept spitting out MTC in a linear fashion. I wrote Charlie Steinberg about it and he added a preference to permit MTC to remain linear or loop if Loop was active in Cubase (a feature that remains in Cubase to this day).

Back on the D8B, we now discovered that the "Loop MTC" feature in Cubase would now "hiccup" the D8B at the loop point and throw Cubase out of Record mode. I showed this behavior to the late Bob Tudor (head of Mackie's Digital Dept. and lead programmer) and he fixed the code in about an hour.

We asked Gerhardt Lengeling of eMagic (Logic) if he could do something about making Logic fast forward and rewind smoothly (like a tape recorder) when confronted with FF or RW MMC commands. We never got a reply and to this day, Logic still behaves like a stuttering idiot while receiving FF & RW MTC commands. It all depends on who's programming the DAW.

Sorry, I miss read your question.

I am still working out the bugs on transport control. At this point, the simple stuff works, play, record, etc. The jog, and fast forward etc does not.

At this point I will probably just stick to using the MDR for recording and the d8b to control that as its wired now. When I'm done, the FTP transfer works to get the tracks into reaper or acid. Then from that point I will do in the box edit etc. I have plenty of time on my hands, so the work flow is fine with me.

On a side note. Learning everything this board does is amazing to me. At the moment I am very limited on space, and having the ability to route any channel to tape, or efx etc with a click of the mouse, or push of a button on the board. Is worth gold to me now.

I'm missing a lot of stuff in the 5.0 version. Seems stuff may have been deleted off the drive. My next task, is to swap the drive with a IDE to SD like I did in the MDR and get 5.1 up and working.

That and start getting spare parts in case I have issues. Being it is what 20 years old now?