AZSlow

Recommendation for the keyboard, and especially mouse (for some reason not mentioned everywhere): keep these devices FAR away from you on the table, so almost whole hand is laying on the table. At least that has helped me when I was continuously getting problems with mouse after short time working with it. Another option, which has helped one of my (older) friends: try a trackball. Initially disappointing experience, but after short time possible to use as a mouse. Unlike touchpad/screen and mouse, there is no hand movements at all. But at least one finger should be able to work "precisely"...
Btw there are many different technologies for mouse (and keyboard) buttons, from "touch sensors" up to "hard mechanical". May be worse to find what is better for you, it may be not the same as what you think is better...

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I have not installed MorningDEW so far. It has no API and it is based on on custom private graphic framework.
Also unclear who and why finance it. For REAPER, the situation is way more transparent (it is well knows who is Justin, from where he has money, how good he can program and why he has written REAPER...).

 
In short: after about 25 years of working with a PC mouse, my fingers and hand began
to experience cramping after only a short period of use—primarily due to clicking the
left or right mouse buttons, or combinations thereof. I was therefore forced to find
alternative ways to operate the mouse...
With Touch Portal, I was able to significantly streamline my DAW interface through
custom shortcuts and assignments; this also made it possible to manage mouse-intensive
tasks, such as controlling plug-ins. And yes, I'm back in action! BTW, I'm 67 now...

Have you already heard about this new Free DAW called "MorningDEW" built in sweden?

I have not noticed you are "unpopular" on Cakewalk forum. And you are not unpopular here.

I have just tried to return the discussion into topic, controlling a synth in Cakewalk using some external devices/software. You have uploaded a short video, which demonstrate that my example preset is at least partially working, but with the description it doesn't work. That part is important for me, since I usually try to understand why something doesn't work. But instead of spending several minutes to clarify that, you have switch to discussing about possibilities in other DAWs, reposting the documentation what encoders send, etc.

I have tried to explain how the approaches you have mentioned can be used in Sonar and proposed you choose what you want for our original topic, so we can advance in making something working. But you reply "I've had enough for now...".

AZController, TouchOSC, OpenStageControl, CtrLr, OSCBot and MIDI controllers are all designed to work with music. Touch Portal is not really. I understand why people want use hardware devices not specifically designed to control DAWs, like Stem Deck or Digital Mixers. But using questionable for the purpose software is, well, questionable...
If you in practice just want make fancy configuration with tools designed for something else, fine. Nothing wrong with that, I also do many things which make little sense, just because I like doing them 

But if you at some point back to the idea to control something in Sonar, convenient and stable way, you are welcome here.

Okay, fine... I'm already quite unpopular on the Cakewalk forum and have been bullied there for years. I've had enough for now - I have plenty of other projects
 
including:

https://github.com/theprinterlightstudio-lab/MIDI-Pro/blob/main/MIDI_Pro_User_Guide.md

C U then... 

What you have shown for FL Studio is not really versatile. Studio One also has assignments for simple surfaces, but "integrations" are proprietary (the same with Cubase). Ableton and Bitwig have integration APIs, not officially documented, but community documentation exist. REAPER has the deepest API, officially documented.

Note that all APIs are for programmers, C++ / Python. So they are not for "normal" end users. AZ Controller is an attempt to create something close in versatility to API, but usable without deep programming skills.

Sorry to say, but if you want continue with AZ Controller, you have to decide if you want "Global link" like behavior, specialized support for particular synths or both. And we have to understand what is not working in my test preset (if something is really not working there). Jumping between technologies and declarations "in that DAW it is like..." is not going to help on this road.

Unless you do it using FL Studio, as that makes it possible without any significant difficulties...
I imagine other DAWs, such as Reaper, Logic or Studio One, also allow for such a versatile setup; though I'm not familiar enough with those to say for sure. 

Quote from: Astraios on October 24, 2026, 10:51:17 PMI can clearly see now why you created your own tool; setting these things up is incredibly complicated.

"ACT MIDI"/"Generic surface" are almost as easy to use as theoretically possible. They have decided to limit the number of plug-in controls to some reasonable number.
For me, both was just insufficiently flexible.

Seriously, I don't think many people ever use more then 1-2 pages of 8 encoders on NI controllers. Even so parameters are professionally pre-mapped, for most available Synths. Was it different, we could observe controllers with 100s of knobs on the market. But since hardware MIDI time is over, most have 8. That number you can remember and use live when playing, the rest is simpler and faster to do by mouse or touch screen.

Hi Alexey,

I really don't like this "Generic Surface" feature, but the setup shown here, does include 12 endless encoders, all of which work, and 4 of them also function as buttons.
I can clearly see now why you created your own tool; setting these things up is incredibly complicated.
Even adding a second "Surface" instance didn't allow for any additional VST parameters to be mapped - it caps out at 16 parameter.

I still don't know what is not working in my example preset, in fact in your video it works. If you managed to make Beatstep Pro in Encoder mode work with Generic Surface, that means the device is working fine. I am a bit confused by now...

In Cakewalk Generic Surface all just works fine on Beatstep Pro *Encoder Relative Mode #2 with Spire Synth.
Z3TA+2 seems not to work in this setup...
In your AZC setup, I'm unfortunately unable to get it to work with the Spire synth, either.

Hmm, but unfortunately, the "Generic Surface" is strictly limited to 16 parameter slots, and it's also cumbersome to use. I didn't like it even 20 years ago, but at least now, thanks to AZ CTRL, I understand how it actually works.