Hi and welcome!
There are only 8 touch sensitive knobs that are available to control plugins and as many banks as i could ever need. It also has 2 rows for display and a position indicator of current set value. I have this set up already but not in a very usable way. What I am missing is the display readout of what the knobs are mapped to on any given plugin. That portion of the AZ controller is beyond my comprehension.
I have not seen any documentation about sending something to this display. If known, I can help you to implement it. Otherwise you are forced to use AZ Display to see what is what (I assume you have used Startup preset for initial setup).
The next thing with this controller is that it has endless encoders but it only registers midi values 1-127. I still have to use it like a fixed range encoder, but Thanks to you the genius mode of "Instant" it is very usable. I am curious though, if there is a way to make this function as a true endless encoder. In the editor software for this unit, it does not give that option. It allows me to have the knobs function as absolute, relative, and relative offset, but those mode only jumps to fixed positions in any plugin.
Do you have a direct link to that editor documentation? In Machine editor docs, i see "MCU V-Pot" and "MCU Channel" modes. If something like that available for S88, it should be possible to use these knobs in endless mode, with correct indication, may be touch sensitive, and with some luck, may be it can accept MCU display commands...
Alternatively, may be it can at least accept "feedback" to set the initial value from current value of parameter in Sonar. If you attach your current preset (in SPP format, not sure you can do this in this board, but you can in "Discussion"), I can make required modification to test either that is the case (simpler for me then explain how you can do this).
next it has a seperate midi section for the transport, I am currently using this section with the act midi controller because it is simple enough for the task and I have an extra button(loop) that I use as a shift button so I then can use the transport keys with shift for other functions. two things I am missing using it this way. 1st the lights, the transport key can light up and I wouldn't mine if all the lights stayed on at the same time so I could see them in lower light conditions and because they are in an akward order unlike alphatrack and mcu pro which are stop play rec on this unit it is play rec stop and I always want to hit the wrong button. I was even considering opening the board up to see if I could move the buttons to the standard postion but nahh. 2nd, there is missing options that I would like to assign the bottons to that you have available on your program.
I suggest to setup transport in AZCtrl (in Startup preset actions are already defined). We can add "Shift"ed alternative actions and hopefully lights.
lastly the editor allows to assign buttons to program change, I have set up bank 3 to program change for the VSTi's that allow for changing patches in this manner(I wish all of them would). the problem is the encoder again only sends 1-127 and the resolution for the encoder is so fine that I can't change a patch without skipping over patches or fiddling extremely slow and careful just to get to the next patch that it is unusable in this state. I have a workaround for this but I was wondering if I could make the knobs feel just right for this task in program change mode.
Sonar Controller API does not allow "inject" MIDI from plug-ins, so that is outside of possibilities of AZCtrl.
From what I know, the "integration API" (the way other DAWs get extra functionality) is not open. "Native Kontrol Standard" is a label. The same meaning as Wodka "Russian Standard". That has nothing to do with standards in a common sense. Even "MIDI mode" part is not really specified "Kompletely" (another misleading label from NI). In fact event the label "NI" is misleading, "real" NI you can find at
www.ni.com , they was really pioneers in controlling things by computers easy way...