Another Dm1k question and perhaps a digital mixer question in general. However, I don't know if this is a MTP question or not. In the DM1k you can program the faders, buttons, and pots to send any kind of midi message you want. (So it could potentially be a 384+ control midi controller!)
I want to tap into this potential but I found out that if I switch banks (in the 'User Defined' mixer layer) it does not revert back to the previous bank's controller positions (ie. if you move the fader in one bank it will also move it in another bank.) It does not 'remember' or it does not have a recall message to put everything back where it was. So what happens is that if I switch banks and move a controller, the position 'jumps' from where it previously was to the new location when it was moved which is not desireable.
Basically i want it to be like in a mackie control when you press the 'bank' button it changes the faders and pots to where they are in the DAW. As I understand it, in HUI there is a call and response communication every 1-2 seconds beween computer and devices which makes sense since it needs to know where the faders are at at any given moment.
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Back to the DM1k...
When I switch banks, the DM1k sends a midi message out.
What I want (or at least one way that i can think of) is that when I switch banks, I want that midi message (from DM1k) to go to my DAW and make my/look at my DAW to tell me the location of all my controls that are in that bank (each bank can have 48 controls). Is that something that MTP can help me do?
In Digital Performer there is a 'Console' environment where you can 'build' your own custom workspace and specify what each element controls using any kind of MIDI code. The controls in the 'Console' environment reflect the position of the element that it is controlling in the software (ie. faders, plugins, etc. Basically all the 'midi learned' elements), so there is a numerical value that can be sent back to the DM1k.
How can I send a signal out and 'echo' these specific values back like a dolphin with sonar?
If you are looking at feedback from the DAW as you move controls and capture that feedback in global variables then you can \"remember\" the state of a given bank and send MIDI back to your controller to put things in the right position when returning to that bank. Some DAWs do this automatically but not all.
Typically you just capture feedback from the DAW for each bank (Bome Preset) and then by moving banks, you change presets. You set an action on preset activation to iterate through all of the variables for that bank sending back MIDI messages to your controller. Of course if you are changing someting on your DAW on a different bank at the same time, you still need to capture the values in global variables so that when you switch to that bank (preset) your controls are updated. You just do not update your controller until you swith banks.
Since there are 360 global variables, I try to use bit mapping to conserve variable usage. For instance for buttons with on/off state, I can use 1 global variable for 32 buttons (since Bome variables are 32 bit signed integers). For fader values I can track 4 faders with a single variable (4 x 7 = 28 bits with 4 unused bits to spare. 384 is a lot of controls, however my guess is that most of these can be bit mapped.
Again the process is to track from the DAW all possible variables at all times but only update the controller within a preset when switching to that preset.
I hope this helps!
Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care
Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz
There are a few bit mapping examples here. I'm not sure if the incoming trigger is on activation of preset but if not, that would be the only change needed. Upon activation, the translator would trigger the repeating timer in your case.