[Ardour-Users] Flying faders on BCF2k not moving w/2.2, 2.3

[Joe Hartley]

On Mon, 18 Feb 2008 18:00:33 -0500
"Thomas Vecchione" <seablaede at gmail.com> wrote:

> You need to set Ardour to access the RAW ALSA MIDI port, instead of using
> the Alsa Ports in QJackctl. 

Looks like I licked this, though not without some head-scratching.

If I change the instances of "alsa/sequencer" to "alsa/raw" as documented
on the Mackie emulation page, I get errors when starting Ardour:
[WARNING]: control protocol "Mackie" is not known.  Ignored.
[ERROR]: no MIDI port named "control" exists - generic MIDI control disabled
[ERROR]: control protocol name "Generic MIDI" could not be initialized.

I looked at the Preferences->MIDI window, and there's nothing listed
there for MIDI devices.  I cannot map a track to the BCF fader; ctl-click2
does nothing.  I created a device called raw, but that didn't change
anything.

So I restore the ardour.rc files to use alsa/sequencer, and the ports are
back, and I can again map the track to a BCF fader.  QJackCTL shows the 
seq ports connected to and from the BCF.  If I add a connection from the 
ardour control output to the BCF input, hey presto!  The BCF fader moves
when I move the track's fader!  (At this point I don't know if I need the
Ardour:seq port mapped to the BCF, but it's a moot point, as QJackCtl won't
let me disconnect it.)

I'm not out of the woods yet, though: even though the BCF fader moves nicely
when I move the track's fader in Ardour, when I start my playback with 
automation gain play enabled, Ardour crashes hard with a segfault.  If
there's a slow change, I'll get some errors:
[ERROR]: Session: cannot send quarter-frame MTC message (Bad address)

Hmmmm, MTC?  I'm not doing anything that needs MIDI time code...   I go
under the Options menu and disable the Send MTC option, and voila! The
faders fly without any crashing.

In the end, it was a lot easier than I thought it would be - just adding
the connection in QJackCtl.  The thing that was hanging me up was that 
I kept crashing before I could see that error message about MTC.

Thanks for the help, folks!
-- 
======================================================================
       Joe Hartley - UNIX/network Consultant - jh at brainiac.com
Without deviation from the norm, "progress" is not possible. - FZappa