Use Midi Controller to control the mixerboard

[henkdegroot]

Hi,

I am trying to control the mixerboard in Jamulus using a Midi Controller. This seems to be working fine for the Fader, Pan and Solo.
However the Mute does not seem to pickup the midi command.

Currently I am sending Midi messages using a software/emulator (waiting for my actual midi controller to arrive).
I am using Windows with JACK.

Would appreciate if there is someone else who is using a midi controller can confirm this function (Mute) actually should work.
To be clear, I am referring to the MUTE option in the mixerboard, not the Mute Myself option.

Ideally I want to be able to quickly mute a group or individual persons while playing using my midi controller.
When I create a group in Jamulus and move a fader of one in the group, I see all are moving.
Next of course would be implementing the "group" solo/mute as these are not "group aware" yet.

Looking forward to tips/help.

[ignotus666]

Yes, mute should work (it does for me). That's cool you're using it on Windows because officially it's not supposed to even be supported - I guess JACK is what let's you do that (note to self: if so this should be documented).

Anyway, maybe you could post your --ctrlmidich command and the notes your controller is using to see what might be going on.

[pcar75]

Thanks all for taking the time to answer my questions.

I was looking at this from a purely communication point of view but I now realize Jamulus MIDI implementation decisions were probably made from what existing MIDI control hardware implementation were available.
a) Most low to mid 'control surface' have either 1, 8/9 (mostly) or 16/17 physical channel strips.
b) MIDI CC channel number can only take values in 0-15 since the other fronting 4 bits indicate the message type (ex. CC message).
c) MIDI CC channel number is set to identify one specific device.

I keep my fingers crossed for instant quantum communication, and MIDI 2.0 or HUI or Mackie Control Protocols and control automation/feedback ;-)

MIDI :
A helpful reference (but dated) I found is http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~ich/classes/mumt306/StandardMIDIfileformat.html

Questions :

1. How are bank selection implemented in a 'control surface' and in Jamulus (i.e. bank1=mixer strip 1-8, bank2=mixer strip 9-16, etc.) ? On bank2 selection, would Jamulus accordingly display channels 9 to 16 or more (my pc under Windows can show 18 channels at a time) ?

2. Can one initialize the Jamulus argument thus (the hw permitting) :
   --ctrlmidich "1;f0*32;p32*32;m64*32;s96*32"

Thanks in advance.

[henkdegroot]

Question 1:
Jamulus is not aware of the selected bank. Depending on the selected bank, the control surface will just sent out a different CC.
Here is what I have setup for my first bank:

And here is what I have for the second bank:

On my pc I can easily get 50-60 channels displayed in one screen (using Compact mode and multiple rows).

Question 2:
Yes, the argument works fine.

[pcar75]

Bonjour again and thanks for info.
@henkdegroot

On my pc I can easily get 50-60 channels displayed in one screen (using Compact mode and multiple rows).

I cannot find how "Compact mode and multiple rows" can be activated in the Jamulus mixer window (albeit servers I have seen/used so far had less than 20 users concurrently. a view left-right slider appearing at the mixer bottom whenever needed) . Is it a feature of the OS or display monitor you are using ? If so how ?
Thanks in advance.

[rdica]

In Jamulus 3.8.1, under My Profile tab;
Skin: Compact
Mixer Rows: 2 or more

I don't know if these options are available in Jamulus 3.6.2 (your JamulusOS thumb drive's version?)

[henkdegroot]

In Jamulus 3.6.2, you are limited to select 2 mixer channel rows max. In 3.8.0 support for max 8 rows has been added.
In 3.6.2 you can enable this in the Edit menu.
In settings you can select the "Compact" skin, which will allow many more clients to be shown in mixer board.

[henkdegroot]

@ignotus666
I received my midi controller today (a cheap one) but works really well. I can program it with unique CC numbers for each control.
This controller even has 4 banks, so I can select/switch between configs. Which I thought would be really nice to control all faders.
The downside is that when you switch, it does not/remember of course what level the fader was to previously.
I.e. I programed it so that the in bank 1 the first fader is CC 3 and in bank 2 it is CC 12. So the 10th client in jamulus can be controlled via bank 2 fader 1. However if the fader was set to like 75% while linked to client 1, it will start at 75% when you move it after the bank change.

So now thinking about buying 2 or 3 more of these controllers, so that I don't have to switch between banks and have a nice physical mixer desk for all connected clients. Would this work? I.e. using multiple controllers?

Another question, with the ctrlmidich option I can identify the channel to "listen" to. Should it be possible to use multiple devices each with it own midi channel? As I tried that but did not seem to work but I may have done/set the option incorrect.

[thetome]

@henkdegroot

So now thinking about buying 2 or 3 more of these controllers, so that I don't have to switch between banks and have a nice physical mixer desk for all connected clients. Would this work? I.e. using multiple controllers?

Hi again,

got two Korg nanoKontrol working here with Jamulus now. Well, sort of... (BTW, not nanoKontrol 2, which is much more common and still sold. But I prefer the orginal nanoKontrol due to it's 9 instead of 8 channels and more buttons than the v2).

I connected both of them via qJackctl's Graph captures successfully. Actually they both have an identical midi/CC setup, close to what you suggested in your examples, Henk. In scene/bank 1 both will move faders, knobs and pots as supposed and I can use both of them alternating or simultaneously.

So far, so good.

But switching banks in Jamuls via switching scenes within the controller doesn't work as expected on the first glance. I have the CC values set consecutive over the scenes, as you showed in the screenshots of your control editor. Was that an assumption by you, or did you test this successfully (with an additional controller emulator then, I guess) ? Here it leads to some funny behaviour: when e.g. scene/bank 2 is active, the first pan pot will toggle the mute button, solo button and slider will do nothing, and mute button will press/release solo... In further scenes/banks it seem to get even more wild.
Now, I guess that can be solved with some thinking about the CC numbers. I'll go on with that and get back here when it's working ok.

But I just wanted to let you know, that in general it is possible to connect two (or even more) hardware controllers with Jamulus.

Best

[henkdegroot]

@thetome, at first I thought I had a similar issue. However it turned out that the software I used to program my control device did not correctly save the configuration. This resulted in some knobs/buttons/faders not being updated and therefore had duplicate CC numbers assigned. Maybe this happens with your device as well? I was able to spot this because the control device software can also read the current config.
I also found that some controllers do not change when switching banks in the control device. So be sure to select those controllers that do switch. I was able to use the setup with switching banks without issues. The only downside is the fader/knobs/buttons "memory" when switching. As it keeps the state/position after switching. Example, client 0 has the fader set to level 50, client 9 has the fader set to 70. Using the control device, I move the fader for client 0 to 20. Now I switch the bank, so the fader which previously controlled client 0 is now controlling client 9. Moving the fader "up" now makes the client 9 jump to 21 and then increases. For this reason I believe that switching banks is not really helping here.

[thetome]

@henkdegroot, thanks for the hint. A short test showed that my devices are switching banks properly. Problem was on user side (again), had to correct some parameters for the Jamulus shortcut, as well as a couple of CC values.

Working perfectly now, have 18 channels with vol, pan, solo, mute and mute myself direct at hand; plus bank switching. Pretty cool :)

I'm used to the hopping faders when switching banks for some time now. Got a Zoom R16 as interface and controller with 8 passive faders in use with my DAW. I don't find it too annoying in most situations, it's worth the comfort plus for me.

Would Jamulus/Jack allow motorized faders at all?

[pljones]

There's no MIDI out currently.

[thetome]

I see, thank you. Anyway, such a great piece of software you guys are providing for free.

I'll happily stay with the current setup, and am looking very forward to the next big jam, with many people and faders...

[thetome]

Hi all and especially hello Henk,

I also have a Korg midi controller (nanoKontrol 1) that I would love to use with Jamulus in Windows. Its properly listed in device manager and works well in my DAW. I'm using the same Korg editor like you and can send and retrieve data to and from the device. Also I'm using loopMIDI in other context, if that helps.

I tried to follow your great example and tips here, but I can't get Jamulus to react to any movement from the controller so far.
I guess it's Jack where I get lost, never used it before. I'm using Jack2, and my latest attempt was to start it via qjackctl.exe -S -X winmme , which should add midi support as I understand. But all midi entries that I can find then within qjackctl is system_midi, but I never see the Korg, or the 'MIDI controllers'-window from your animated screenshot.

Could you enlighten me on how to setup Jack for recognizing my controller, and then send its midi to Jamulus, please?

Thank you very much, best regards
Tom

[henkdegroot]

I can find then within qjackctl is system_midi,

That is correcct, it sounds like you are almost there. Just make sure you start Jamulus using the --ctrlmidich parameter and Jamulus should then show up in JACK with a midi input.

Just connect the system midi to Jamulus to get the midi signal from the windows system into Jamulus.

When you restart Jamulus, the "midi" connection will be lost and you need to re-connect. I believe you can save this as a preference as well, I usually forget and then get surprised that the system no longer works.
Also important, make sure the midi device is connected before you start JACK.

[henkdegroot]

Also, you can check this document: kb-midi-control-surface

[thetome]

Thank you so much much for your fast and useful help! Yesterday evening I tried to follow your advice, but suddenly I wasn't able to start the Jack server anymore for some reason (which worked the evening before, but then I tinkered around in many aspects of Jack..) Reinstalling Jack a couple of times didn't help. To get somewhere I'll try it on my wife's DAW and Jamulus PC later, it never had Jack installed so far.

And yes, your article is exactly what I am was dreaming of, should make it in the KB soon! Thanks again for all your effort.

I'll get back here once I got it somewhere...

[henkdegroot]

Note sure if that will be sufficient, i.e. does it show the "input midi"?

I checked on my system and when using the Jackrouter (asio driver) and Jamulus with ASIO (instead of JACK), you don't get the "Input midi" in the JACK graph/dialog. So according to that, you have to make use of the Jamulus with jack version to make this work.
The "prefix" 0 is shown just because the ctrlmidich parameter was include when Jamulus was started. It does not mean that midi is active.

[thetome]

Oh my, thank you guys again for this clarification(s)!

Installed Jamulus with JACK and now I see the midi input too. Actually I haven't found the fitting system_midi capture yet, my system lists 10 of them. Which may be correct, I got many keyboards and controllers connected to my DAW PC. I tried to connect all of them simultaneously to Jamulus' input but didn't get slider :0 to move from any of all the hardware faders so far. Though, maybe a matter of midi offset (or similar) too, I'll go and work through all the infos, especially your kb article, Henk.

The journey continues, and thanks to all your support I guess I see land on the horizon now...

[henkdegroot]

If needed, I found this window tool very helpful: https://mountainutilities.eu/miditools
It can show you the MIDI messages being send by the device(s) and it can also be used to "send" MIDI data as if it is a device. Really nice for testing.

[pljones]

Oooh, nice - not quite as nice as MIDI-OX but at least it's got a 64bit version and is cross-platform. Thanks!

[thetome]

Landed smoothly. A little try and error turned out it was capture_4, working fine now.

Happy :)

Hartelijk bedankt, Henk! Thank you too, pljones!

[marcoboschi-1960]

hi all ..first of all thanks for your work and support :-)

i ve configured jamuluswithjack on win10 and korg nanocontrol2 ...and i successfully control sliders ,knobs , mute myself and solo buttons (still not channel mute buttons ...dont understand why ... )

BUT...

when i tried to use it in session , i noticed that the number seems assigned based on initial positioning ...and that when someone leaves or join the session the number is simply missed...so the slider became unusable ... also sorting produces (in my experience) no effects (ex. my channel remain number 4 and controlled by 4th slider also if i select the check to move myself on first position )... i don't know if this is a problem in my installation or a normal and expected behaviour or maybe a bug ... but i suggest to try to associate the sliders in the visualized order (slide 1 on device controls the first displayed mixer Row ... at list as a selectable jamulus option...)
thanks in advance for your response / comments

[pljones]

MIDI offset is based on the Jamulus channel number - it's nothing to do with how you have the GUI display sorted. Unfortunately, despite it being requested, there's no "View -> By Channel Number" option. I don't know how reliable the sort options are in general, to be honest.

[marcoboschi-1960]

Peter ... thanks for your kind reply ... I was mistakenly assuming it was possible to do some sort of offset channel translation by editing the message on the fly following some sort of client side mapping ...
thanks again for the wonderful work you are doing :-)

[marcoboschi-1960]

just to clarify ..it seems that the gui knows both the assigned channel number (is displayed under the slider) and obviously the order .of positioning... so i was assuming that the client could do the magic modifying the midi message on the fly ...

[marcoboschi-1960]

if inside the defined cc range ...

[pljones]

Using ctrlmidich for MIDI controllers
I'm sure you've read the above...

The "channel number" mentioned there is the MIDI channel number - it doesn't affect the MIDI CC numbers in use, just which MIDI channel Jamulus will listen on for the MIDI CC messages.

You might also want to use your MIDI controller for other things... Allocating a MIDI channel just for Jamulus is probably a good idea.

Now, there are five different things to control, only four of them are per Jamulus channel. Those 128 MIDI CC messages need distributing. So --ctrlmidich '9;o0;f1*31;p32*31;s64*31;m96*31' is about the most you can control: 31 Jamulus channels, plus server bypass.

Some servers may have more Jamulus channels than this. So you could find a server having been full of 50 people later on only has 10 -- and none on those first 31 Jamulus channels. Sorting solves nothing, of course - "4 x" would sort after all the "3x x" channels.

Getting back to the point here, then.

Are you saying that a channel that displays as in the range of the MIDI CC numbering you've assigned is not being correctly controlled?

You'll need to provide:

• the --ctrlmidich parameter you used
• the nanoKontrol2 settings and ideally a log of the values being sent (e.g. from a DAW's MIDI event trace) to see that it's working as expected
• a screen shot of a server you're connected to where it works as expected (if there are such cases), including the server genre and name
• a screen shot of a server you're connected to where it does not work as expected, including the server genre and name

Thanks!

[marcoboschi-1960]

Peter thanks again for reply ... and i don't want to waste yout time having not enought knoledge of the code ....
i totally agree with you that the number of possible "controller numbers parameter" values for the
"1011nnnn | 0ccccccc 0vvvvvvv Control Change midi message" is limited and that we simply can't control more then, 32 mixing channel . on other hand i've to say that the majority of the session i've seen in real life has 10-20 people max ..and that usually the controllers used by home musician tipically hat 8-9 sliders lines ...
having said that ... my guess was that we could tell the jamulus client to modifiy the midi message on the fly accondingly with the displayed order .. (maybe in the future a custom ordering could also be an option letting the user to decide which channels move to the left to allow the control surface to control them)

but as i said before .. i simply not had read and understood the jamulus code before asking ... so i only assumed that was possible... seeing that the control channel is displyed on the mixer sliders (so jumulus knows it ) and jamulus for sure knows the config that i passed on the command line ...

I obviusly understand that also assuming that is possible , there is an effort for the coding and that the suggestion / implementation requests must be ordered and accepted based on number of affected users and effot for the development...
.....so again thanks for the effort all you are doing to mantain and to evolve this great software :-)

[henkdegroot]

Sounds like the my fader first does not help here indeed.

[AndersGoran]

I did a little hack just to see if I could pull it off: I have extended the code that parses --ctrlmidich to accept a "z" controller. This one works like a fader level, but is always hard-coded to adjust the level of iMyChannelID.

This works fine, I now have a custom client that I can start with --ctrlmidich "0;z100*1" and CC 100 will always affect only my own fader.

[pljones]

Have you got a patch? That sounds like it might be useful to others.

[AndersGoran]

I'm pretty lousy at pull requests and such stuff, but here's a somewhat cleaned-up patch: new-ctrlmidich-z.zip

[pljones]

And here's the pull request: #3394

[marcoboschi-1960]

sorry "control number" not channel :-)

[softins]

Just for anyone interested, Windows native MIDI support has recently been added to Jamulus, and will appear in the next release (probably 3.12.0). It will no longer be necessary to use the JACK version on Windows to get MIDI support.

[pljones]

Yep - we're hoping to cut an early dev release shortly, soon, as there's other stuff we'd like to get to more people to test -- so watch for an announcement 😄.

[thetome]

Great news, thank you very much.