lc xmu, microkontrol, drumracks, and native support in 7.02

muchachotron · Post by **muchachotron** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 11:12 pm

hello, i'm considering a purchase of lc xmu to use with my newly-acquired microkontrol.

i see that as of live 7.02, the microkontrol is now recognized by drum racks so you can do that thing where you move up and down along the cell banks and it automatically places focus for the mK pads on the currently visible 4x4 grid in the rack. very exciting!

my question is: how can i set up live and lc xmu so that i can use the mackie emulation that lc xmu provides and then also set live to recognize the mK as a natively supported controller? from what i understand, you need to tell live that you are using a mackie control, rather than the actual hardware controller, when using lc xmu. i know that you can bypass the lc xmu and send the mK straight in if you want, but i don't think live will recognize the mK as native unless you set it to be so in the prefs. and i don't think that you can have both the emulated mackie control (lc xmu) as well as the microkontrol as separate items in the live prefs.

are we stuck with choosing one way or the other if we want full pad support like this?

johnpitcairn, please gimme some good news!

johnpitcairn · Post by **johnpitcairn** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 3:20 am

Not having Live 7 here, I can't test this, but if Live wants the MK to be in native mode to do its thing, that will most likely conflict with LC Xmu's MK support. You'd need to bail out of native mode in LC Xmu (see the details in the "reference: controllers" section of the manual), then manually select the MK and its ports directly as your controller in Live.

muchachotron · Post by **muchachotron** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 4:00 am

ok. well, not being able to use that automatic cell bank feature with the mK while in mackie emulation mode is unfortunate, but it's not a deal breaker.

it looks like the only way to do this would be to go in and change the controller from mackie control to microkontrol in the preferences, which is not really a performance-minded sort of operation. would be reasonable for studio work, though. until ableton makes it possible to slide that focus area on the drum rack cells with a midi or keyboard control, it's not an absolutely essential feature anyway.

i think the benefits of the mackie emulation outweigh the loss of the nice native drum rack integration with the microkontrol.

poop. anyone else have any ideas? am i the only person here thinkin' about this?

muchachotron · Post by **muchachotron** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 4:06 am

johnpitcairn wrote:if Live wants the MK to be in native mode to do its thing, that will most likely conflict with LC Xmu's MK support.

i don't know if live is expecting the microkontrol to be in native mode, i just think you need to select it as one of the six available "natively supported" control slots. does that put the mK into native mode? i don't think you can have both the microkontrol and the (emulated) mackie control as controllers at the same time, unless you had more than one mK connected simulatneously.

johnpitcairn · Post by **johnpitcairn** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 4:55 am

OK ... so either:

A - If Live is putting the MK into native mode, it will change or erase the text on the LCDs, and perhaps light/unlight the pads to indicate if a clip is firing or such? If so, there will be a conflict and you won't be able to use both at once.

or

B - If Live isn't putting the MK into native mode, then it will be just using a standard MK "scene", which will be sending notes or CCs, not sysex, and communication will be one-way from MK->Live only. Does Live require a particular scene to be active on the MK?

Then it should be possible to add the LC Xmu ports as a Mackie Control, add the LC Xmu passthrough port (not the MK port) as a supported MK, and when you exit native mode from LC Xmu, Live will see the supported MK.

Slightly more complex but sexier, you can edit the LC Xmu MK module passthrough definitions, so that when LC Xmu is bypassed or controls are set to "pass through", Live will see the CCs it expects at the LC Xmu passthrough port. Then you'd be able to just use the "bypass pads" function in LC Xmu to let Live use the pads, while the rest of the MK is still emulating a Mackie Control.

muchachotron · Post by **muchachotron** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 5:33 am

cool, i will try and experiment with it this week and post some results. if the lc xmu passthrough mode allows live to see the mk as a natively supported device that would make it perhaps the best all-around controller there is for live! hope hope.

another workaround possibility is to make a custom plugin with max that transposes the mK pads up and down in sections when bypassing lc xmu, sort of emulating that cell focus feature in live (if anyone has already made such a patch i'd love to give it a go). i was thinking of doing this anyway before they added microkontrol support in 7.02. i wish i could use the octave shift buttons on the mK to do this, but i guess those are hardwired to the keyboard keys.

stutter · Post by **stutter** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 12:22 pm

I'm sure it's the second option. Live will probably want whatever scene came as default on scene 1 in the microkontrol's Factroy default scene bank. Live does not have Korg Native Mode support.

So, I guess, all you need to do is try loading the scene I suggest to see if it is correct, then copy the cc's to the lcxmu passthrough definitions.

ashtonron · Post by **ashtonron** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 11:49 am

muchachotron wrote:cool, i will try and experiment with it this week and post some results. if the lc xmu passthrough mode allows live to see the mk as a natively supported device that would make it perhaps the best all-around controller there is for live! hope hope.

Did you have any luck with this?

I have just started using LC XMU and like it so far, would be nice to have the pads mapped up automatically when bypassed.

ashtonron · Post by **ashtonron** » Wed Apr 16, 2008 8:28 am

I was able to set this up, so that the default notes sent by the controller in bypass mode, matches the default drum rack mapping. There is not automatic remapping depending on what is currently selected on the drum rack though, but it works well enough for me..

As an aside, I am really enjoying using my microKontrol as a mackie control. It took some time to learn how to use it but now I am using the mouse less and less and enjoying mixing down tunes much more. The one outstanding issue for me is being able to open a plugin using the mackie control. I am able to select it and edit the parameters, but I havent found a way to make it pop up so I can see what I am editing.