[Ardour-Users] Using the BCF2000 MIDI ports

[Jonathan Stowe]

On Wed, 2007-09-19 at 20:14 +0000, John Anderson wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-09-18 at 12:12 +0100, Jonathan Stowe wrote:
> > I've got a BCF2000 working great in MCU mode
> 
> Glad to hear it. How do you find the button mappings?
> 

The mappings are great, I'm meaning to create a diagram based on the
ones in the Behringer emulation modes document to make it easier to
visualize but I've developed a strong hatred for every piece of software
I've tried doing that with :-) I notice that Frontier have a nice
diagram on their web site illustrating the mappings for the Tranzport,
perhaps someone should suggest to Behringer that they do similar. 

> > but it strikes me as a
> > possibility that using the raw device as described in the documentation
> > militates against using the BCFs MIDI ports (though of course I could
> > just be having a senior moment.)
> > 
> > What I would like to do in the first instance is send MTC from ardour to
> > an external drum machine ( an Ion iDM02 in this case ) via the BCFs MIDI
> > out but having tried virtually every combination of connection and
> > switches in ardour's MIDI options I'm struggling to get it to work.
> > 
> > Should this kind of setup work? And if so can someone give me a quick
> > description of how to go about it - I'm sure it's just something really
> > simple I've missed.
> 
> After futzing around quite a bit, I did the following:
> 
> - choose mcu as the MTC port in Windows/Preferences/MIDI
> 
> - Turn on trace output
> 
> - Turn on Options/Send MTC
> 
> and I see a bunch of sysex messages that don't belong to the BCF. I
> assume they're MTC messages.
> 

Right, this suggest then that you are using the alsa sequencer interface
rather than the raw interface as the mcu doesn't appear in the list in
the MIDI options page when using the raw interface (for me anyway.) I
guess this has been fixed since the documentation (which specifically
refers to the sequencer interface not working in 2.04) and I've been
tracking 2.0-ongoing so I'll give it a try.

> Hmm, I vaguely remember seeing something in the BCF manual about how to
> set up using the midi-thru port. Over to you on that one - I have no
> outboard midi gear to test with.
> 

Yes, when pressing the button to put the BCF into LC mode on power-up
keep it pressed in and EG will appear in the display (Edit Global
settings) turning the leftmost VPOT changes the MIDI mode and I think it
should be set to U3, pressing "Exit" will save this setting and return
to LC mode. "aconnect -o" should now show three sequencer ports for the
BCF 2000.

> bye
> John

Thanks for your help, I'll try this in the morning and get back with the
results.

/J\