[ardour-users] [ANN] Mackie MCU, BCF2000 and Tranzport testers wanted

[John Anderson]

Hi everyone

We've just merged code for Mackie MCU surfaces and new Tranzport code
into the trunk for ardour2. It's available on svn right now, and will be
in beta-12.

Tranzport
---------

The tranzport control surface driver now has increased modularity and
slightly more advanced support for metering. For detailed instructions:

http://www.ardour.org/files/manual/sn-frontier-design-tranzport.html


Mackie & BCF2000
----------------

If you're a BCF2000 user and you're wondering if this is worthwhile,
here's the answer: no clicking on GUI controls and doing the midi-map
thing; bank switching for as many tracks as you have in your session; no
futzing with custom presets (apologies to all those who have, with great
success, engaged in said futzing).

To enable support for the Mackie and the BCF2000 in Logic Control
emulation, add the following line to ardour.rc:

	<MIDI-port tag="mcu" device="/dev/snd/midiC2D0" type="alsa/raw" mode="duplex"/>

obviously your device= may be different. Alternatively you may have
success with an alsa/sequencer port, but I haven't tried that lately.
Note that the driver looks for a port with tag="mcu".

And of course you'll need to put your bcf into Logic Control emulation
mode:

http://www.behringerdownload.de/BCF2000/BCF2000_Emulation_modes.pdf

The code was developed using a Behringer BCF2000 in Logic Control
emulation. So it has a 7-channel mode for the bcf, where the right-hand
strip acts as master channel, and there are some changes to the button
mappings. To enable bcf mode, add the following line to ardour.rc,
inside the <Config> tag:

	<Option name="mackie-emulation" value="bcf"/>

The Mackie MCU should work "out of the box", except that:

- certain buttons (the ones not on a BCF ;-) aren't yet implemented

- the shuttle wheel has only preliminary support (because in bcf mode
the master channel pot aspires to be a shuttle wheel)

- The displays aren't yet implemented.

If you own an MCU, and are willing to recompile ardour from svn, we
could really use your help with getting these implemented.

Known Issues
------------

- for non-mono tracks and busses, pan pots don't work

- surface doesn't activate when a session is closed and another is
loaded. Shut down and start up ardour to work around this.

- busses lose their remote ids across a save and reload

- shuttle wheel with transport rolling doesn't work properly

bye
John