Midi control of everything that can be controlled on the surface

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This topic contains 12 replies, has 10 voices, and was last updated by Profile photo of Andy Andy 7 months, 3 weeks ago.

Viewing 13 posts - 1 through 13 (of 13 total)
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  • #105009
    Profile photo of Phil Driscoll
    Phil Driscoll
    Participant

    The control surface of the desk, and the control api for MixPad etc have access to be able to change everything users can control on the desk, however the midi implementation can only access a small subset of this. Given that the desk must already have event handler code in it for all the stuff which comes in via the MixPad api, is there any chance of allowing midi to access the same stuff?

    I’m sure that this would be useful in many areas. My own use case is for radio broadcasting. There are loads of features we are used to in radio studio and outside broadcast desks which I don’t expect the SQ to provide, but which are tantalisingly close to being possible by using an external application sending midi to the desk. For example, I have written a touchscreen Raspberry Pi application which I use to control the outputs to my loudspeaker monitors – features such as level, balance, mono on L&R, mono on L, cut L, cut R, polarity reverse, speaker selection. What could be a simple and elegant solution, is fouled up a bit by the fact that I can’t get at the channel polarity switch via midi, so I have to essentially waste an extra channel on the desk which has its polarity button pressed, send identical signals and controls to that and my main ‘monitor L’ channel, and switch between the two when the polarity button is pressed in that app.

    For all similar problems I’ve hit so far, there have been workarounds, but the workarounds always involve some bodgery which consumes more resources on the desk and makes the plumbing a bit more tortuous. A more complete midi implementation would make the desk even more attractive to those of us with specialist requirements, that we couldn’t reasonably expect A&H to include in a general purpose desk.

    I would like my ‘radio studio’ app, when complete, to be able to do LS control, comprehensive talkback control so I can speak, for example, to individual mixes or to configurable groups of mixes, and it would handle muting the speaker in the room where the mics are when a mic channel is unmuted or its fader is opened. The talkback solution I currently have, ‘wastes’ a channel on the desk, but if I had midi access to the talkback routing screen facilities, the solution would me more efficient and more understandable.

    An alternative approach, if you didn’t think that it was giving away the family jewels, would be to release the documentation for the existing API which MixPad uses, so we could use that instead, since it already does all we need. I realise this might cause hiccups on firmware changes, if you modify the API. However, the hard work coping with those, falls upon those of us developing external apps – and we can hold off on desk firmware updates until we’ve fixed our own code.

    #105052
    Profile photo of Alex
    Alex
    Participant

    +1

    And I was a bit surprised when I learn we can control more things in a QU via midi than on a sq.

    #105303
    Profile photo of jc2000
    jc2000
    Participant

    +1

    If not native MIDI support in the SQ (USB/Ethernet), than at least through the MIDI-control app.

    #105305
    Profile photo of Phil Driscoll
    Phil Driscoll
    Participant

    Native MIDI support is needed for my use case – Raspberry Pi computers running linux and making the SQs more broadcast friendly.

    #105465
    Profile photo of Philmoore174
    Philmoore174
    Participant

    +1.

    Use case – as part of a controlled system where there may or may not be a separate dsp involved, being able to adjust any and every input and output from a control system eg Crestron (just like dLive) would be REALLY useful.

    Also being able to power down the console via midi/ethernet would be of great benefit in the same scenario.

    #105472
    Profile photo of ioTon
    ioTon
    Participant

    +1

    And I was a bit surprised when I learn we can control more things in a QU via midi than on a sq.

    🙂

    at least things like “SEL” (to get the mixbus sends for that channel/mix/eg on my midi faderwing via Bomebox)
    so that i don’t have to use the faderflip on the SQ..

    greetings,
    dd

    #105517
    Profile photo of Yann
    Yann
    Participant

    There is only a certain number of midi messages available and it doesnt stretch to every parameter on every channel. Remember every single parameter is x64 (48 ch, 12 mix, 4 master/mtx)

    They cant do everything so people need to be specific with what they want to control so A&H can see what our priorities are

    #105528
    Profile photo of Phil Driscoll
    Phil Driscoll
    Participant

    I’m sure that those of us who need control of everything would be happy with sysex messages. I’m working in a relatively simple radio broadcast environment and I keep finding ‘just one more thing’ I need to have midi control of. I’m sure that those having to integrate with control systems in other areas such as video or live sound, will be finding even more reasons to need midi control than I do. The only sensible solution is, ‘if it can be controlled, let us control it’. For my own use case, I don’t really care whether we do this over midi or via the MixPad API as I’m writing the code for doing the control, however I suspect that the best solution for commercial purposes is to implement midi control so that the SQ can be used with the plethora of midi control systems already out there.

    #105538
    Profile photo of Philmoore174
    Philmoore174
    Participant

    All I want is input level, output level, scene recall and power on/standby.

    The last one may be an issue given the nature of the mains power switch 😉 but I believe d-Live does everything else using the midi protocol.

    I program Crestron systems for a number of systems integrators (in Australia) – I am seeing many school hall specs now with an SQ for performance use and a Q-Sys Core for simple presentations and audio distribution etc.

    I’d love to have a greater degree of control over the SQ than I do now (basically just scene recall). It would make turn-key systems for Churches easier too…

    Cheers
    Phil.

    #113032
    Profile photo of James
    James
    Participant

    I am +1 this feature suggestion i.e. making the midi implementation more complete so I can add either off-the-shelf midi controllers or build something from scratch that will give me more hands-on control over the SQ functions.

    My use case is music production with many hardware synths, samplers and drum machines. I monitor the hardware live, and multitrack either to DAW or USB SSD on the SQ, but do not always use the DAW for playback and mixing, so the monitor control features suggested by Phil in the original post would be most useful for me to access from a custom midi controller for when I’m not using my DAW (which has those features available and are easily mapped to midi controllers).

    I did find the document linked below that gives us the NRPN data for what is possible to control:

    https://www.allen-heath.com/media/SQ-MIDI-Protocol-Issue4.pdf

    Massive thanks to A&H for making such a great console – it does a great job for my use case, and now I’ve got the NRPN data I can build my controller mappings for most of the things I want (levels, mutes, sends etc) but the monitor controller features would be super useful to map also.

    #113041
    Profile photo of nottooloud
    nottooloud
    Participant

    You can get to most everything by MIDI via Mixing Station. This approach has the benefit of only setting up your controller once, and then it will pretty much work with any mixer David handles.

    #113251
    Profile photo of TofSonart
    TofSonart
    Participant

    +1 and +2 for adding external Midi Soft Rotaries especially on sq5 (which do not have any)

    #114041
    Profile photo of Andy
    Andy
    Participant

    +1

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