ctrlr as a vst in your DAW of choice

[msepsis]

So I’ve gotten some feedback from users downloading the microwaveXT ctrlr I built, and there seems to be confusion from some users which as ended up leaving me a little confused as well. I may be dealing with some PEBCAK issues, but wanted to be sure, so I have a few questions to help manage expectations and help these ppl out a bit

Generally speaking does using ctrlr as a vst require multiple tracks/instruments within the DAW? I honestly have been using ctrlr more in standalone mode than as a vst in a DAW, simply for using the microwave for sound design as with the panel you can easily access hundreds of buried parameters.

i have tinkered with the ctrlr panel within renoise and gained success by using two instruments – a standard midi instrument where the notes are triggered from and a seccondary vst instrument to tweak the parameters.
With FLstudio I have had a varying degree of success simply by loading the panel as a ctrlr vst channel and going from there.
Reaper on the other hand also seems to require two tracks – one a standard midi track, the other a vst track with the ctrlr panel loaded.

So my question is what is the intended procedure for utilizing a ctrlr panel within your DAW, and using the panel to trigger notes as well as automate real-time parameter tweaks? I have been immensely pressed for time as of late so I haven’t had as much time to experiment with all the DAWs out there which people are using ctrlr with.

Thanks

Monstrum Media | Music, Sound & Software Design, Chicago / San Francisco listen

[atom]

Well that might depend on the DAW, i don’t see the need for two tracks BUT some DAWs have the approach taken from Cubase (where each instrument is an audio track and you need to ‘attach’ MIDI tracks)
Ctrlr needs to be treated as what people call a VSTi, that is Ctrlr receives MIDI on it’s VST MIDI Input and that MIDI input can be used in any way (either to just be passed thru to the device connected to Ctrlr, or to control parameters of Ctrlr).

The ideal, perfect way that i wanted Ctrlr to work was for it to use only VST MIDI IN/OUT, letting the DAW handle the MIDI Device (open/close/send/receive), but it seems most of the DAWs out there are crippled in that sense and can send only a small fraction of MIDI, so Ctrlr is really not usable this way.

That’s why Ctrlr handles MIDI Devices directly to skip the DAWs device handling and talk directly to the device on the other end. That creates a hole bunch of problems that we all know about.

I guess it’s up to you how will you handle this, in general One MIDI track is enough, Audio tracks are not needed (yet, that might change in the future), if your DAW knows how to deliver MIDI to VST effects, Ctrlr can be loaded on a mixer track as long as it gets the MIDI data it needs and is able to send the data it generates.

[sawan]

in ableton i use a rack with an external instrument and ctrlr, only needs one track. very handy.

[Author]

Posts