APC40 Knob Light Ring Mode Trick

[Semuta]

I've been working on a Bome's preset for my APC40 and I accidentally discovered the way to change the way the LED rings work. In order to change how the light ring displays, you send the following message for each light ring you want to manipulate.

Channel - Knob CC# +8 - (value of 0 = off) (value of 1 = single) (value of 2 = solid) (value of 3 = centered, solid)

so...
to get the top left encoder to display in solid, you would send a value of 2 for CC#56 on channel 1. The cc that this knob transmits on is 48.

When the APC is in Ableton native mode, all of the encoders transmit only on Channel 1. If you are using it in generic mode where the lower knobs are in 9 banks, you need to send a message for each knob in each bank (channel 1-9).

I decided to build my own control surface logic for the APC since I've gotten tired of how lame the custom mapping is for my purposes. If you do this trick while using the APC in native mode, then you'll need to set up rules in Bome's or whatever you're using to stop Ableton from changing the display mode.

On another note, I find that Ableton is vastly more stable and uses far less cpu on my machine if I don't use the APC in native mode.

I posted this as I've never seen any documentation anywhere for how to do this...

Hope it helps!

S

[aeon_flux]

that feature is documented here: http://www.akaipro.com/extras/product/a ... _rev_1.pdf

and many other stuff - you may find it useful.

[Semuta]

Ahhh, dammit. I had the doc, and was using it to play with the various APC modes via sysex. I didn't notice the bits about the light rings though and therefore felt very clever for figuring it out the hard way...
:oops:

Thanks!!

S

[aeon_flux]

one question for you, if you remaping some functions with bomes you have to create whole setup from the scratch?

i use it mostly in native mode, but with few custom tweaks. i like that apc can keep 90% original mappings and 10% of mine. can it work with bomes the same?

can you tell more about your bomes cusomizations?

[Semuta]

I have done it both ways, but ultimately I find that running the apc in native mode with Bome's mods makes Ableton unstable. I get way more glitches, pops, and cpu spikes with the APC configured as a control surface. I believe it has to do with all of the midi traffic, particularly with Bome's creating yet more traffic in response.

I also don't like the automapping in Ableton as I can't have any buttons automapping; only knobs. I know that I can custom assign buttons to things, but they don't automap, so then I only have one set of buttons. I like using buttons for stuff across several racks as I can enable/disable rack devices in order to create eq and fx kills and to save on the number of plugins running at one time.

I like having the APC set up so that I can have two groups of knobs/buttons that can have any two of the nine channels assigned to a control group. For me, it's more like a dj style of dealing with things. Of the sources I'm playing I can be tweaking knobs/buttons on any two at a time.

In practice so far, each of channels 1-4 are pointed to a rack in a group channel in Ableton. I can select the rack for the lower set of controls with the channel select buttons, and I can select a rack with the clip stop buttons for the upper set of knobs. Channel 9 is pointed to a rack in the master channel. Channels 7 and 8 on the APC are pointed to racks in two send channels in Ableton.

Channels 5 and 6 on the apc are pointed to two additional channels in Ableton set up with racks more or less like 1-4, but I tend to use those channels for remix-y sort of activities where I can take one of my playing clips and drag it over into one of those channels to make one shots and stuff.

The session buttons I have configured as clip stop, start, rack focus and clip focus buttons for channels 1-4.

If you want to look at what I've done in Bome's I'll be happy to email you the bmtp file.

The ultimate upshot is that I get nine panels worth of unique midi controls, and I can use any two panels at a time. There is no automapping, but that's ok with me. Everything has to be manually assigned, and the controls are explicit.

In terms of attaching this to Ableton, I only need two virtual midi ports for "remote". I set up the virtual midi out from Ableton as a track midi out as well so that I can send midi clips to the APC's lights to make a visual metronome on the scene launch buttons with a midi clip running on a midi channel.

If you look at the Bome's preset, it may seem complex, but it's really simple compared to what I was doing to try to get this behavior out of the apc whilst keeping the control surface functionality.

S

[JuanSOLO]

On another note, I find that Ableton is vastly more stable and uses far less cpu on my machine if I don't use the APC in native mode.

Do you still find this to be true???

Sometimes I believe so, but I am not certian of it. How did you come to this conclusion?

[Semuta]

So far, yes. I'm hoping that after the super duper bug fix edition comes out, I can go back to using the clip matrix, but otherwise, I like my template better.

There are two things that I observe to be different when the APC is not running in native mode. One is that my cpu utilization for a given project is much lower and much more stable with less hopping about and so forth when the transport is running. When transport is idle there's no observable difference.

The second thing is that when the APC is in native mode, when I shut down Ableton, Ableton's process will not kill itself. I have to open task manager and manually kill it before starting a new instance. When it's not in native mode, Ableton gracefully shuts down every time.

The first issue is a subjective thing since I haven't done any scientific testing with baseline measurements and such, and the second could well be something to do with my particular setup, so I don't want to knock the Abes over this. I'm happy with how I have things set up and am really looking forward to an even better Ableton in the future.

S

[S4racen]

So your not actually using the clip matrix for red box stuff? What have you got the buttons mapped to? (trolling for ideas!)

Cheers
D

[Semuta]

Clip start
Clip stop
Still deciding. Maybe a bass kill per channel for dj'ing...
Ch Clip view
Ch Rack view

Ch select for upper knobs/buttons (using bome's to remember all of the params and flash them on ch change)

Ch select for lower knobs/buttons (default function in apc generic mode)

I'm considering setting up pages for these buttons, but I haven't come up with a need for that many buttons so far.

I manually assigned the up/down arrows to the scene up/down to scroll through, so get one line of clip matrix functionality on the clip start buttons (not that it makes much difference). I still have to pay more attention to the screen, but overall it's worth it. I still spend a lot of time looking at the screen even with the clip matrix/red box...

[S4racen]

Sounds like i set up my second scene on bomes then, i was used to one button for launchin and like to go back to that on occasions, i have one button that launches trigger style and one that does a gate version (note on = launch note off = stop)

I might try and rebuild that element within my max patch when i get a chance....

Not that that'll be for a while with what JuanSOLO sent me last night with his mod to my control surface patch taking things to a whole new level of configuarability!!

Cheers
D

[Semuta]

Yes, it looks pretty freakin cool! I was in the beta circle for M4L, but when it was all said and done, I couldn't come up with enough NEED to pay for it. I'm poor.

One day though, you and lots of other smart people will come up with stuff that I MUST HAVE, and then I'll get it! Maybe your template will be the that thing...

Thanks for all your hard work for the community!

S