d8bridge working with AUDIO on the console!!

[elperroromel]

@elperroromel,

I'm kind of envious of the time you have to devote to this project. It's very exciting to see some progress after such a dry spell. Thanks for keeping us in the loop!

well for now my main job is about programming/web developing, not music production, my home studio is just a hobby so I am not making money from it, hence I have some free time to make tome tests (well mostly at nights, although some times I sleep only a few hours, and am very tired at mornings ) but I am very interested on making it work, after I have heard about d8bridge and how it can turn an old d8b to a DAW control surface (I previously had the Mackie MCU and was planning to buy the extenders, but this old d8b looked more cool and was cheaper than buying a MCU+extenders plus I would have more preamps and channels available) It would be cool too if I could make the d8b OS to work on a virtual machine,

[elperroromel]

current status: yesterday I made all the 24 faders and buttons(rec/solo/mute/select) work with Reaper thru 3 Midi Ports (only send, not receive yet) And made my program read and save the faders values from/to a file (both DAW Mode and d8b Mode values) and Read the ports from the command line example: "d8b.exe -p 12 13 14" assigns serial ports 12,13,14 to be d8bcontrolsurface,d8bCPU and VirtualSerialPort,respectively, also the "d8b_2_daw.exe" translator program, to read from command line the midi ports and virtual serial ports so anyone can test it. example "d8b_2_daw.exe -p 4 5 6 14" assigns MIDI Ports 4 5 6 and Serial port 14 to be: MCU,Ext1,Ext2 MIDI Ports ,and Virtual Serial Port.

TODO: Read/Save also the buttons values
Read from Midi Ports and translate to d8b serial Protocol,
previous TODOs

[Old School]

Amazing progress in such a short time! Thank you for sharing this with us.

Have a Blessed Day.
Mike W.

[Casey_Pittman]

Where's the "like" button when you need one!! Could you show us how you have the physical connections going to everything? This is some really great progress in such a short amount of time.

-Casey

[elperroromel]

Where's the "like" button when you need one!! Could you show us how you have the physical connections going to everything? This is some really great progress in such a short amount of time.

-Casey

whell Is something like this:
http://pastebin.com/G9ywiTwi

sorry for my bad drawing skills
If you want to know how the custom cable is made, let me know, it's only 2 serial ports joined into a DB25 conector, I just
separated the COM1 port for the data control and the COM2 Port(the DSP control) is directly connected to the d8b desk,
while in the COM1 port I just put my laptop between the d8bCPU and d8b desk, using 2 serial/USB cables

[elperroromel]

I uploades 2 videos from my yesterday tests:

the first shows I made a "demo" Mode where it sends the faders positions to the d8b desk, or to the CPU OS, or to the virtual Serial Port, which is connected to my "mcu translator" program, and it is connected to Reaper, and show the faders movements,



in the the second I implemmented the "MIDI In" port that translates the MCU commands to d8b code, and sends back to the desk,(for now only works the first 8 faders, but only is needed to implement the other 2 extender ports, and buttons)
I'm emulating the "fader touch" function, so when I move a fader in the desk, It sends the touch fader command to prevent that DAW from moving the same fader, and programmed a timer to return the fader control to the DAW when I stop moving the desk fader, it seems to work well...

[Casey_Pittman]

If you want to know how the custom cable is made, let me know

That would be interesting info indeed.

-Casey

[bitSync]

...but only is needed to implement the other 2 extender ports, and buttons)

@elperroromel,

Very exciting progress!

Could I encourage you to think in terms of a user-configurable number of emulated XT modules (more than 2), as is allowed by the Mackie MCU/XT Pro? Those of us fortunate to have 2 d8bs could theoretically emulate 1 MCU and 5 XTs for a total of 48 concurrent tracks of MCP control.

I'd describe to you what that thought does to me but it might get censored from the forum!!

[bitSync]

@elperroromel,

I have a question about the fader position d8b serial and MCP values. Are the faders themselves producing native d8b serial messages with values in the range 2^10 - 1, or something smaller, like 2^8 - 1 or 2^7 - 1? I presume the MCP fader messages going out to the DAW software are in the range 2^10 - 1 to be in spec with the MCP? Thanks!

[elperroromel]

If you want to know how the custom cable is made, let me know

That would be interesting info indeed.

-Casey

well I will try to make a diagram later..