Author Topic: Roland VM-C7200 preset  (Read 37423 times)

Offline BJ Baylon

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Re: Roland VM-C7200 preset
« Reply #15 on: November 18, 2017, 06:07:32 PM »
Hi  :)
  Preset V202 installed. The initial tests didn´t show any problems. The updates are smooth and there aren´t unexpected changes in Sonar conditions during fast WAI changes. I Have not detected fader fighting yet. I will do many tests of normal use during this weekend to check for stability issues before adding new features. Thanks again and have a nice weekend!!!

 

Offline Cheese

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Re: Roland VM-C7200 preset
« Reply #16 on: November 19, 2017, 08:48:17 PM »
just posting to say thanks to AZ,he spends much time helping others get their unsupported gear working :)

AZ you are a star! :)

Offline azslow3

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Re: Roland VM-C7200 preset
« Reply #17 on: November 20, 2017, 06:00:43 PM »
Hi  :)
  Preset V202 installed. The initial tests didn´t show any problems. The updates are smooth and there aren´t unexpected changes in Sonar conditions during fast WAI changes. I Have not detected fader fighting yet. I will do many tests of normal use during this weekend to check for stability issues before adding new features. Thanks again and have a nice weekend!!!
I recommend to create a test project, with the first track volume all the way up, the second all the way down, the third up and so on. When you move WAI by one track, you will immediately see in case something has moved in Sonar and/or not moved on Roland.

just posting to say thanks to AZ,he spends much time helping others get their unsupported gear working :)
When something is obsolete, the community is the only way to keep it alive  ;)

Offline BJ Baylon

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Re: Roland VM-C7200 preset
« Reply #18 on: November 20, 2017, 08:17:55 PM »
Hi again  :)

  After many tests (I used the alternating patern extensively) it seems that the V201 24 channel configurastion is stable. I did an alternate preset with 24 more channels assigned to the Ch Pan function state on the console. That was more that the  console´s available bandwidth could handle. During a WAI change only channels 1 - 5 refreshed Volume data, and channels 4 - 24 actualized Pan. Individually every channel worked ok, both ways.

  I Made this preset just for testing how far we can go. A more practical development would be to add buttons to the 24 ch versión and do tests on how it will affect available headroom. Because all the logic involved, i want to ask if you could give me instruccions for adding the button Mute to ch 1? The address bytes are 00 10 53 [00 1d] off [01 1c] on.

  p.s. I can´t remember how many times I had read in posts saying that there was no way that the Roland VM-C7200 could be used to control Sonar because it wasn´t designed to do it. Thanks for everything!!! 

   
 
« Last Edit: November 20, 2017, 08:19:36 PM by BJ Baylon »

Offline azslow3

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Re: Roland VM-C7200 preset
« Reply #19 on: November 20, 2017, 09:43:46 PM »
At this stage I want to mention some ideas and consequences about using VMC as a Control Surface. It is the same for all Digital Mixers.

"Native" Control Surfaces are just physical controls which send a signal to the DAW when operated and sometime provide feedback (lit LEDs, move faders, show something on display). Important is that each control send exactly one signal. There is no "hardware modes" for controls, all "different layers" are programmed in software.

Digital Mixers (in native mode, some have "DAW controlling" mode where they behave as Control Surfaces) see things from another perspective. Hardware controls are not sending signals to outside, they somehow operated Mixer internal parameters. And these mixer parameters are exposed to the outside world. While that sounds almost the same as with Control Surfaces, the result is significantly different:
1) when controls are switched to another layer, they start to modify another set of parameters. The control is still the same, but the signal from it from the DAW perspective is different.
2) when DAW is changing some parameter, the mixer "broadcast" the change. Not only to the controls (if it happened they control these parameters in current layout), but also back to the DAW. This you have already observed and we had to implement a workaround.

Brute force approach can be as simple as mapping existing Mixer parameters with DAW parameters and keep them in sync. In that case it does not matter which parameters are currently exposed to hardware controls. Unfortunately, that does not work well, at least with Sonar:
a) to load all settings, mixers use some special bulk mode. In assumption that does not happened often, no problem it takes quite some time, the whole information is transfered every time. That does not match DAW controller schema: when you change WAI, select different plug-in, etc. you do want update a big part of the configuration. But not the whole configuration, as for example at the project loading. That can delay reaction on WAI movement, to transfer the whole set of parameters, even when physical controls at the moment are in different layout.
b) monitoring a huge number of parameters does not come for free inside Sonar. Surface plug-in (AZ Controller) pools 13 times per second for each such parameter.

And so general approach is try to LIMIT which parameters are monitored and synced with the mixer to the set of parameters currently assigned to the hardware controls. F.e. when faders control Volume, monitor and sync volume. When they control send volume, monitor and sync send volume (but no longer monitor/sync track volume!). There are 2 approaches to achieve that, the availability depends from the mixer and so you will have to decide:
1) Much simpler to program. Let hardware controls control always the same mixer parameters. F.e. let faders always bound to the (Mixer!) channel volumes. To still allow control something else in Sonar (send volumes, plug-in parameters, etc.), the software need ANY signal to switch the mode. So any button which does not switch what faders are controlling, but modify some (mixer) parameter and so inform the DAW it is pressed. F.e. HPF enable on channel 14... Really the parameter inside Mixer make absolutely no sense for the DAW. Unfortunately, that is not aways possible. F.e. there is no such buttons and/or selecting particular channel also select it inside the mixer, and so some knobs control different parameters (like in Yamaha mixer I have configured before). So the option number:
2) Much tricky then the first one... If Mixer report about control layout switch (Yamaha does), the DAW can detect hardware controls are going to send/react on different messages and adopt.

You have experience with your device, I think you can find what is possible in your case much faster then me (reading I must admit rather bad written documentation).

----------------

I will try to find some time tomorrow (I am not at home these weeks) to write an example with mute. But we will hit the same problem as with pan if I do that strait (simple). You can notice that volume and mute (and other parameters) for the same channel have similarities... I will have to compose the feedback for faders, mute, pan (?), etc. into one SysEx.

BTW. Are all "channel buttons" on the device have LEDs? I mean do we need the feedback for all of them? Also since you already know the answer: how you control pan? I do not see any per strip encoders on picture (I know that I can look into documentation... but)

Offline BJ Baylon

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Re: Roland VM-C7200 preset
« Reply #20 on: November 20, 2017, 10:45:39 PM »
Hi  :)

  From your last post:

"2) Much tricky then the first one... If Mixer report about control layout switch (Yamaha does), the DAW can detect hardware controls are going to send/react on different messages and adopt."

 
I did a check on this and no, the mixer didn´t transmit any messages when you change layout. So I think option 1 it´s more adecuate at this time.

"BTW. Are all "channel buttons" on the device have LEDs? I mean do we need the feedback for all of them? Also since you already know the answer: how you control pan? I do not see any per strip encoders on picture (I know that I can look into documentation... but)"

  Each channel has 1 status Switch/Led combination. There are 4 Main Mode Select switches : Mute, Solo, Audio and Auto-mix. If you select Mute, for example, when you press the status Switch on a channel the Led turns Red (with Mute On). With the Solo function the color is Yellow and with Audio function the color is Green (each with it´s respective message transmited). Auto-mix have 2 colors : Green at first press, and Red the second (so it could be useful as an automation Read or Write or nothing selector). If could be usefull to have this functions asigned for each channel, but only if they not interfere with the faders bandwidth. Otherwise, we could use some of them to switch modes.

  I choosed Ch Pan because it´s somewhat paired with Ch Level on the VM-C7200. It´s the same screen for both. For example, when you select Ch Level, you could use the 6 rotary encoders under the screen to change Pan in 6 channels groups. The same for Ch levels if you select Ch Pan.

Offline azslow3

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Re: Roland VM-C7200 preset
« Reply #21 on: November 20, 2017, 11:37:49 PM »
Ok, I will check tomorrow what is in the same block with faders. I guess the mixer should be able to process traffic as long as the number of messages is the same.
The feedback needs timeouts in transmission otherwise, that will require quite some addition in AZ Controller MIDI processing engine. Till Sonar settings I have mentioned before also affect Surface manages. Using your Fader + Pan version, which does not update everything right, can you try to modify parameters in the INI file to see either that works ?

Offline azslow3

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Re: Roland VM-C7200 preset
« Reply #22 on: November 21, 2017, 04:04:29 PM »
I am still in "strategic planing". Can you send me exact messages, let say fro Ch 1, for:
* pan
* solo
* "audio" mode button
* "auto-mix" mode button (in both its modes)

It seems like it will be impossible to aggregate all of them in one sysex and I will need to implement own "quantization on sending" in case INI trick is not working...

Offline BJ Baylon

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Re: Roland VM-C7200 preset
« Reply #23 on: November 21, 2017, 07:54:38 PM »
Hi  :)

  I did try the INI modifications (SysxDelayAfterF7=1, SysxSendDelayMsecs=80 and later with 120) but they seem to have no noticeable effect. Here are the values for Ch 1:

Input Ch 1 Mute Switch

<41> 11 00 1e 12 00 10 53 [00 1d] off [01 1c] on

Input Ch1 Solo Switch

<41> 11 00 1e 12 00 48 62 [00 56] off [01 55] on

Input Ch1 Audio Switch

<41> 11 00 1e 12 00 10 55 [00 1b] off [01 1a] 0n

Input Ch1 Auto-mix Switch do not transmit data (sad! it could have been a good controller!)

  I am taking time to recheck the manual for posible layouts and doing some "normal work" (if there is something like "normal work"?).

  Thanks for all your time and attentions!!!

 

Offline azslow3

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Re: Roland VM-C7200 preset
« Reply #24 on: November 21, 2017, 08:08:09 PM »
Have you seen the sad news about Cakewalk? So, the end of Sonar...

Offline BJ Baylon

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Re: Roland VM-C7200 preset
« Reply #25 on: November 22, 2017, 12:25:32 AM »
I didn´t now, it´s very sad! :-X

Offline azslow3

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Re: Roland VM-C7200 preset
« Reply #26 on: November 22, 2017, 04:49:41 PM »
Well.. I am really PO by this news... My project is almost "obsolete" now, and not by me.

But lets try to support obsolete device in obsolete DAW by obsolete plug-in  :)

From the messages and the documentation, it is clear I need 2 build-in things in AZ Controller:
1) quantization/delay for SysEx (up to 20ms, specified in the documentation)
2) build-in MIDI echo cancellation (what we do now in the preset)
Can take some time.

Offline BJ Baylon

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Re: Roland VM-C7200 preset
« Reply #27 on: November 22, 2017, 05:47:21 PM »
Thanks AZ!

Offline BJ Baylon

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Re: Roland VM-C7200 preset
« Reply #28 on: November 22, 2017, 06:27:56 PM »
  Could it be that the problem is not in the time between messages but in the number of messages transmitted over a certain period of time(Midi buffer overflow)?

 Let me do some tests in bacward order (from 48ch to 47ch ... etc) before starting the coding

Offline azslow3

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Re: Roland VM-C7200 preset
« Reply #29 on: November 22, 2017, 08:04:55 PM »
I am almost sure that is the "buffer overflow", on the device side.
I am going to implement configurable delay, so "Wait at least X ms after sending Y SysEx packets". Then you can test what works better, 1x20ms, 24x100ms, etc.