[ardour-users] Ardour & BCF2000 USB control surface

[Grant Wier]

i've had similar connection problems, unrelated to midi control, using either
qjackctl or patchage to make the connections...
recently, while using patchage, i found that one instance of the connection
problem happened when one of the ports involved had changed names, and that
doing a 'refresh' in patchage updated what it saw and allowed the connection
to be made successfully. i don't know if this, or something else along these
lines, is necessarily always the culprit, but it might be worth trying the
refresh button in the connections window when its acting up.

Steve D wrote:
> Hello all--
> 
> I recently bought a Behringer BCF2000 USB control surface. It works well
> with Ardour, with one small problem that I can see--
> 
> I use Ardour on an DeMuDi/Debian system (I upgraded DeMuDi 1.2.1 to
> 1.3.0 using the program demudi-upgrade, which was installed by the
> DeMuDi package). In addition, I have installed several packages from
> a Debian "etch" (testing) repository.
> 
> If I plug the BCF2000 into a USB port on the computer I can see it in
> qjackctl, whether I plug the BCF2000 into the computer before or after I
> launch qjackctl and start jackd.
> 
> However, if I then launch Ardour and try to connect the BCF2000's
> midi-via-usb output to Ardour in qjackctl's "Connect" window, a
> graphical line representing the connection between the two appears very
> briefly, then disappears. I can't seem to connect the BCF2000 to Ardour.
> 
> But, if I quit Ardour, then turn the power off on the BCF2000 (or pull
> its USB plug from the computer), then launch Ardour and *then*
> plug-in/power-up the BCF2000, in reverse order (Ardour *before* the
> BCF2000), both Ardour and the BCF2000 appear in qjackctl's Connect pane
> and can be connected.
> 
> So, powering-up and attaching the BCF2000 before launching Ardour does
> not seem to work (Ardour is unresponsive to the control-button2click
> MIDI controller assignment, and qjackctl refuses to allow the
> connection), but launching Ardour first, and then turning on and
> plugging in the BCF2000 seems to work fine.
> 
> I just thought I would send this information to the list, for the
> archives in case others experience the same problem.
> 
> -sd