Why don't hosts let you assign CC manually?

[aMUSEd]

Trying to assign my ROLI Lightpad Block to work with plugin XY controls is a pain. In both Ableton Live and Bitwig all you can do is use 'learn' but learn is fine when you have only one CC per knob, but with a touchpad it's nigh on impossible to make it separate out the X from the Y data so in practice I have to use a workaround to do this. It would be so much easier if there was an option to just enter the CC number manually. Why don't hosts allow for such a simple thing?

[jancivil]

This is both down to the controller and down to the host. I have had varying results. I had the old AKAI controller and there was nothing Cubase availed, or its own software availed, despite what the manual said, to change anything. Totally hard-wired. But Cubase ["Remote Mapping Assistant" now] doesn't expose the CC numbers in cases where a physical control is married to a CC in that kind of device. This was the first time assigning in Cubase was a necessity, except for MPE with a proper controller, EG ROLI. Given that it seems like it works, that weird use case above notwithstanding.
IDK from touchpad, sorry,

slightly OT:
I had the Arturia... I think it's called Beatport, and it was the simple matter of assigning what you want to a pad. In the device, then you tell it to report to the host, so in Cubase I just opened up the pertinent lane.

[rod_zero]

Trying to assign my ROLI Lightpad Block to work with plugin XY controls is a pain. In both Ableton Live and Bitwig all you can do is use 'learn' but learn is fine when you have only one CC per knob, but with a touchpad it's nigh on impossible to make it separate out the X from the Y data so in practice I have to use a workaround to do this. It would be so much easier if there was an option to just enter the CC number manually. Why don't hosts allow for such a simple thing?

Sorry my bad I misunderstood you question

[aMUSEd]

This is both down to the controller and down to the host. I have had varying results. I had the old AKAI controller and there was nothing Cubase availed, or its own software availed, despite what the manual said, to change anything. Totally hard-wired. But Cubase ["Remote Mapping Assistant" now] doesn't expose the CC numbers in cases where a physical control is married to a CC in that kind of device. This was the first time assigning in Cubase was a necessity, except for MPE with a proper controller, EG ROLI. Given that it seems like it works, that weird use case above notwithstanding.
IDK from touchpad, sorry,

slightly OT:
I had the Arturia... I think it's called Beatport, and it was the simple matter of assigning what you want to a pad. In the device, then you tell it to report to the host, so in Cubase I just opened up the pertinent lane.

I can give the touchpad XY (Z) any value I want with the ROLI app - the problem is just having to 'learn' the XY and Y dimensions because with it being touch based it's pretty impossible to just move in one axis without it sending some data for the other. The workaround is to give both axes the same CC number, learn that for X, then give them the other number and learn that, but it would be so much simpler if you could just enter the CC manually in the host - why don't hosts implement this? ( at least I don't have one that does)

[tapper mike]

Any chance of using a separate device linking the control to a specific CC value then on midi input select all devices?

[aMUSEd]

I guess, I just don’t see why this has to be so complicated though, it surprises me how hard this is to setup

[osiris]

I don't know if this is something that has to be done during the build because I remember making Synthedit VSTs and you could assign midi cc's (I think there were 100 of them - but that may have been SE specific)

[aMUSEd]

I don't know if this is something that has to be done during the build because I remember making Synthedit VSTs and you could assign midi cc's (I think there were 100 of them - but that may have been SE specific)

Yes many plugins let you do it, but for my purposes I need the host to do it

[Bunny_boy]

Couldn't EnergyXT do this? If you have a copy of the vst version you could wrap the instruments and effects in that

[aMUSEd]

Maybe but it doesn't run on Mac

[pljones]

MuLab Plugin? It'll either listen or let you tell it the number (so if your X and Y are adjacent, it'd save scrolling so much). You can use it as a wrapper for all your CLAP/VST2/VST3 plugins just for this purpose.

[Bunny_boy]

Maybe but it doesn't run on Mac

Ah, the decider in Mac Vs PC

[SamDi]

Trying to assign my ROLI Lightpad Block to work with plugin XY controls is a pain. In both Ableton Live and Bitwig all you can do is use 'learn' but learn is fine when you have only one CC per knob, but with a touchpad it's nigh on impossible to make it separate out the X from the Y data so in practice I have to use a workaround to do this. It would be so much easier if there was an option to just enter the CC number manually. Why don't hosts allow for such a simple thing?

I don't think setting CC in Ableton via learn function is the most elegant solution, because you do it then for a specific instrument on a specific track in a specific project.

I would follow the instructions on
https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/artic ... ace-script
instead and map the XY controls of the Lightpad onto Macro Controls in Ableton. From there you can map then these in every VST instrument as you want and save mappings as default for that instrument. Then you have it available for each project and each track permanently on the same macro controls and can map it from there for each instrument differently. And you can do different mappings for other controller also, if you have multiple.

On Bitwig in principle you can also create a script for your controller, but it's more work to dive in and not as convenient as with the prepared Ableton script. But there there is a good chance, that it might work out of the box:
I remember that the ROLI Seaboard was very well supported in Bitwig. After taking the delivered Seaboard script, it turned out, that when you loaded the first XY modulator in BW into an instrument it was automatically premapped with the XY pad on the Seaboard. From there you can map then the XY modulator to each parameter of the VST instrument.
If you follow
https://support.roli.com/support/soluti ... wig-studio
maybe for the Lightpad it's the same?

[aMUSEd]

Trying to assign my ROLI Lightpad Block to work with plugin XY controls is a pain. In both Ableton Live and Bitwig all you can do is use 'learn' but learn is fine when you have only one CC per knob, but with a touchpad it's nigh on impossible to make it separate out the X from the Y data so in practice I have to use a workaround to do this. It would be so much easier if there was an option to just enter the CC number manually. Why don't hosts allow for such a simple thing?

I don't think setting CC in Ableton via learn function is the most elegant solution, because you do it then for a specific instrument on a specific track in a specific project.

I would follow the instructions on
https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/artic ... ace-script
instead and map the XY controls of the Lightpad onto Macro Controls in Ableton. From there you can map then these in every VST instrument as you want and save mappings as default for that instrument. Then you have it available for each project and each track permanently on the same macro controls and can map it from there for each instrument differently. And you can do different mappings for other controller also, if you have multiple.

On Bitwig in principle you can also create a script for your controller, but it's more work to dive in and not as convenient as with the prepared Ableton script. But there there is a good chance, that it might work out of the box:
I remember that the ROLI Seaboard was very well supported in Bitwig. After taking the delivered Seaboard script, it turned out, that when you loaded the first XY modulator in BW into an instrument it was automatically premapped with the XY pad on the Seaboard. From there you can map then the XY modulator to each parameter of the VST instrument.
If you follow
https://support.roli.com/support/soluti ... wig-studio
maybe for the Lightpad it's the same?

Thanks that's very useful and that link also took me to a video showing how to lock the Block to send data for one axis at a time which works better

[Cyoon]

Trying to assign my ROLI Lightpad Block to work with plugin XY controls is a pain. In both Ableton Live and Bitwig all you can do is use 'learn' but learn is fine when you have only one CC per knob, but with a touchpad it's nigh on impossible to make it separate out the X from the Y data so in practice I have to use a workaround to do this. It would be so much easier if there was an option to just enter the CC number manually. Why don't hosts allow for such a simple thing?

I think I used a certain script and adjusted the hard coded cc numbers of it, so it matches the XY and Z controls. Can only review next month, as I'm not at home.