Mackie MCU Pro with Ardour 3 - can't connect

Getting Stuff Done How do I .... ?
#1

Hello to all :slight_smile:

I’m using Ardour 3.0 beta 4a (runs pretty well on my computer) on Ubuntu 12.04 and now I’m trying to connect a Mackie MCU pro device (using USB) to it.

I’ve followed these steps
http://ardour.org/a3_features_mcp
(using a2jmidid - ALSA MIDI driver didn’t work) and everything works fine… until I reach the point
“Connecting control surface and Ardour MIDI ports”.

The article says “Now that you have both control surface and Ardour MIDI ports available, cross connect the control surface MIDI ports and the two mackie [!] ports” - I guess it means I should connect “mackie control out” & “MMC in” and “MMC out” & “mackie control in”.
So I did.
But there seems to be no connection. The MCU won’t react on anything I do with ardour, and MCU won’t have any influence on ardour.
I also tried to cross connect “mackie control out/in” and “MIDI control in/out” (instead of MMC in/out), but got the same results.

On Ardour’s menu "Edit > Preferences > User interaction > “Control surfaces” I enabled “Mackie”. Later I also checked “Feedback” but got no results as well.
By the way, there is no reaction when I click “Discover Mackie devices”.

I guess it’s a connection problem with Jack?

I used Gmidimonitor to find out if the computer receives any signal from the MCU, there was nothing.

I have also tried this
http://www.ardour.org/files/manual/sn-mackie.html
both with the machine above and with another system (Ardour 2.8.12 with Linux Mint 9), but it won’t work.

Might anyone have a suggestion about what I could do?
Any help will be much appreciated :slight_smile:

Thanks a lot!
Michael

#2

@mk1967: the feedback option is not relevant for Mackie Control protocol devices - feedback is built into the protocol. The LED time display will work in beta5.

#3

Ah I understand - thank you. So I’m looking forward to beta5 :-). Yesterday I have been already enjoying to see faders fly…

Michael

#4

Thank you very much Paul :-).

Wonderful - it works! At least the important functions do.

Automation is actually much more smooth than it works with Sampitude 7 ;-). Once Ardour crashed when I pressed “Rewind” twice but maybe that has something to do not with Ardour but with my constellation of PCI sound card and Jack (I have to work on this)…

By the way, the ports for the physical connections (under a2j) are named on my system
“MCU Pro USB v3 1 [28] (capture): MCU Pro USB v3 1 MIDI 1”
“MCU Pro USB v3 1 [28] (playback): MCU Pro USB v3 1 MIDI 1”

Maybe the observations here
http://ardour.org/node/1907
are not up do date any more…? A little bit I miss the LED time display - just a little bit :-).

Or do I handle the “feedback” function for Mackie in Ardour in a wrong way…? I have tried to check that function, but Ardour seems to have a different opinion and seems to uncheck it afterwards automatically ;-).

Michael

#5

No, you got confused there somewhere.

What you need to connect are:

  • The port representing the physical connection you're using for the MC Pro to send data on and the Ardour MIDI port named "mackie control in"
  • The port representing the physical connection you're using for the MC Pro to receive data on and the Ardour MIDI port named "mackie control out"

The ports for the physical connections will probably have names somewhat like “alsa_pcm:CARDNAME/midi_capture_1” and “alsa_pcm:CARDNAME/midi_playback_1”.

The MMC ports are owned by Ardour and are where Ardour reads + writes MIDI Machine Control commands, which you are NOT using.