Control Surface Fader "Pickup mode"

[Cambler]

Hi Gang

Does Waveform support Pickup Mode for it's mixer faders so when using a non-motorised control surface one can bring the control surface faders into position without altering Waveforms faders? I've done some searching here and through the Waveform manual and I can't seem to find anything.

Thanks for any help on this.

[Cambler]

Alternatively, is anyone using a Korg nanoKontrol Studio or nanoKontrol 2 with Waveform? If so what do you do in regards to fader positions when coming back to a project?

[GuitarPlayerinNYC]

I have an Arturia KeyLab. I haven't been successful in getting either the faders or encoder knobs to work on anything.

Strangely, in the Control Surfaces tab, I recall seeing something about a Novation controller of some kind. My pads and transport controls work.

Based on threads I've seen similar to yours, support for faders are simply lacking, or don't exist. I vaguely recall a post about a Korg controller, within the past month, but don't recall the specifics.

Hopefully Dave, the lead developer will see your post.

[Cambler]

Really appreciate your reply GuitarPlayerinNYC. I am successfully using a Korg nanoKontrol 2 and I have a nanoKontrol Studio on it's way. I'm also using a Nektar Impact LX 88 as a control surface (great keyboard with 8 faders, drum pads, transport controls and 8 parameter knobs). All are working well and it actually makes a real difference to my own experience of usability with a DAW (the wonderful Waveform in this instance!). All that is missing is the ability to use something akin to "pickup mode" that other DAWS seem to employ in order to work efficiently with non-motorised control surface faders. It may well be there but I'm still finding my way around Waveform.

[GuitarPlayerinNYC]

No problem. Just to be clear, when you say "pickup mode," do you mean when you come back to a project, or at any time, the faders and knobs exactly mirror each other? My faders and knobs only do that, when I'm within Arturia's Midi Control Center. Could be user error on my part.

I did a lot of research before settling on the Arturia, and noticed many midi keyboard/controllers will work out of the box with specific DAWs. Arturia supports Ableton and a few others; I think you have to download maps or something.

In any case, maybe you can shoot the lead developer a pm- his handle is drRowAudio : memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=295352 He's on these boards all the time, and really responsive.

I'd love to have my faders/knobs work, and I'll check out the nanoKontrol2- but I'm trying to limit redundancy with my recording gear. I have enough guitars amps and interfaces to contend with, and don't have a proper workstation yet. I'm still finding my way around Waveform myself, and since the virus lockdown, I've bought tons of plugins, and there's a learning curve for many of them too, so I can wait a bit regarding the faders, etc.

[Cambler]

I admit to not knowing what "pickup mode" was until a few weeks ago as this is first proper dabbling with control surfaces. Even after owning the Nektar for a few years I stupidly never bothered connecting up the control function to my previous DAW and I've had my nanoKontrol sitting around waiting for me to set it up. So as I understand it, "pickup mode" is where your DAW's faders will not move when you move the corresponding control surface fader until you have them both in the same position allowing you to manually set up your mix again in your control surface. It's either that or starting the mix again everytime you open the project again (assuming you've been working in something else in between) or buying a control surface with motorised faders.

I'm sure there must be a way to get your Arturia faders working. Is the Waveform Midi Learn function an option? I know that with the Nektar I had two devices in the Midi section, one for midi note information and the other for midi control. I had to enable the latter to be able to use the control features however Nektar also had a control surface file for importing into Waveform which obviously helped. Fun and games as you say, lots of other cool things to explore in the meantime

[GuitarPlayerinNYC]

AS far as motorized faders/knobs, I don't think that's supported at all, and I think a Korg device was mentioned in the same thread I mentioned earlier.

Far as "pickup" from what I could gather, it's when the controls match what's in your DAW, and you "pickup" from where you left off. In fact, I saw a demo KeyLab midi keyboard/controller being used with Ableton, as an example of how Arturia created maps for Ableton and 3 other DAWs.

Yeah, I tried midi learn. After enabling Mackie Control in the Control Surfaces settings, the pads and transport controls worked. I spent some time with Arturia support, which is great, but I had other problems with my keyboard, and was more focused on learning WF, so I've dropped that for now. I'm just glad I can do a few things with my keyboard.

I've only gotten serious about midi recording in the past 5 months. I was mostly using Tracktion to record my guitar. Midi recording is a whole new world for me, so I'm prioritizing learning the DAW, and the massive amount of plugins I've been buying. In fact, I logged in to check out the Marketplace. I bookmarked a bunch of plugins on sale lol. I've done a number of mixes and masters, and used to the virtual faders and knobs, so I don't miss not having physical faders/knobs.

[chico.co.uk]

AS far as motorized faders/knobs, I don't think that's supported at all, and I think a Korg device was mentioned in the same thread I mentioned earlier.

This isn't true, and it's not helpful to guess, if you don't know. I've been using motorised faders on a cheap behringer BCF2000 in Tracktion/Waveform for the best part of a decade.

If your device supports being set into an MCU emulation mode, you can probably get faders working. You'd want to look in the manual for the controller to work out if it supports MCU emulation or not. For instance, with the Artuia Keylab Mk2, if you put it into DAW mode, preset one is MCU mode.

Other control surfaces natively supported are the Novation Remote SL, Automap, Tranzport and the Alphatrack

To answer the original question, there's no support for what you're calling "pickup mode", in Waveform, at the moment.

[chico.co.uk]

Is pickup mode definitely not a property on the controller, rather than in the DAW? As in, the controller doesn't send a value, until you move the fader back to where it was previously, when you last used it?

Again, using the Arturia Keylab Mk2, there are two fader settings in the controller itself, one for Jump, the other for Pickup, and you choose in the controller software which one you want to use. It then sends messages as above, rather than the DAW ignoring messages the controller is sending.

[fde101]

Is pickup mode definitely not a property on the controller, rather than in the DAW?

It can't be unless the controller knows where the value is set in the DAW, which the DAW is unlikely to be telling a generic MIDI controller.

A "pickup" mode basically means that when the value in the DAW changes for some reason other than the user moving a control on the controller, they are treated as being out of sync. The DAW remembers that they are out of sync, and when the controller sends two different value changes to the DAW it checks to see if they equal the value in the DAW or if the change includes that value - in other words, it watches for the value to move TO or THROUGH the value currently set in the DAW. After that it functions as normal, until then the values have no effect.

This mode of operation is useful primarily in live applications rather than studio ones, and is mostly for the benefit of users who are changing among preset sounds when playing a keyboard or other instrument. The benefit is that the values don't suddenly "jump" when the user manipulates a control that was not in sync with the value in the preset/DAW, as that could be quite undesirable in a live setting.

I'm not sure how much value this would have in a studio situation. I would generally expect to see this implemented more in DAWs that cater to live performance situations (Ableton Live, MainStage, etc.), as well as being implemented on some keyboards to account for changes in the presets on the keyboards (Korg Kronos can be configured to behave this way for example).

[GuitarPlayerinNYC]

AS far as motorized faders/knobs, I don't think that's supported at all, and I think a Korg device was mentioned in the same thread I mentioned earlier.

This isn't true, and it's not helpful to guess, if you don't know.

I wasn't asserting a truth, hence the qualifier, "I don't think..." and linking Dave's profile in a prior post.

[chico.co.uk]

Like I said, there is a setting in the software for the Arturia Keylab Mk2, you can set the faders on that controller to pickup mode, or jump mode, and the fader then sends a message or not, depending on whether you've got it back to where the equivalent fader is set in the DAW (in pickup mode). You can set this in its software, or on the front panel of the controller.

In terms of the DAW being unlikely to send it to a generic MIDI controller, the Keylab supports MCU and HUI mode, which support the DAW telling the controller what the values are, and has templates for most other "major" DAWs, eg, your Cubase, Logic etc, which will use MCU emulation in the background, for the messaging. If the controller doesn't support that, or a similar bi-directional messaging system, then no, the controller can't know. But if they do, then they can.

Why is this useful in a studio? Well, if the faders map to faders 1-8, but aren't motorised, and you change down to a different section, and the faders now map to faders 9-16, in the DAW, you potentially don't want those faders to jump, till you get to the point they're in sync with what's in the DAW (but they're not motorised, so you have to manually move them)

With motorised faders, from experience, using MCU emulation, the faders do jump to where they should be, when the DAW tells them you've moved to the next bank, so (physical) fader one should now be at volume 100, because it's mapping to (software) fader 9 in the DAW, and no longer mapping to volume 45, which (software) fader 1 was set to, in the DAW.

It would also be useful for times when you worked on something, closed the project, rebooted the laptop, moved the faders, then opened it again to work on it the next day. Or worked on a different song, between times. So you didn't ruin your mix, messing with faders.

[GuitarPlayerinNYC]

Is pickup mode definitely not a property on the controller, rather than in the DAW?

It can't be unless the controller knows where the value is set in the DAW, which the DAW is unlikely to be telling a generic MIDI controller.

Can you please clarify, in simple terms? Is "pickup mode" when the controller mirrors the DAW (or vice versa) as soon as you fire up Waveform?

I knew when I bought my Arturia KeyLab that it wasn't supported (the faders/knobs), and Arturia support tried to get me going for a week, but it wasn't that important to me, in the end. I'm thinking how I want to approach recording in the future, and may use Waveform for recording, and another DAW for mastering, where external controls may help, for easier workflow.

Hopefully, this isn't a hijack of the OP's thread, and we'll both learn something. I'm still learning WF 10 &11, and it's been mostly very solid for me; a few plugin crashes, but it recovers really well, and I've never lost any work thus far. Thanks.

[Cambler]

Really appreciate all the input above. That's a real bummer and I hope something the devs will look at to bring it in line with many of the other contemporary DAWS. Control surfaces with motorised faders are obviously ideal however there are some great and inexpensive non-motorised usb control surfaces out there.

The use case that Chico outlined above for studio use is exactly why I'm trying to achieve this. I usually work on a few projects at once so having to manually set up the mix again without aid is not ideal. Regardless I'll find a workflow in the meantime. Loving not having to touch a mouse to do basic mixer and control tasks!

[fde101]

Can you please clarify, in simple terms? Is "pickup mode" when the controller mirrors the DAW (or vice versa) as soon as you fire up Waveform?

If you have a controller with motorized faders and/or rotory encoders that are supported by the DAW, then you don't need a pickup mode.

A pickup mode is used when the hardware cannot be matched to the DAW. When the settings on the DAW change without using the controller, the DAW waits until it receives a message from the controller for a particular control which indicates that the control has moved to or through the value that the DAW was set to - meaning it waits for the user to match the controller to the value already set in the DAW before it accepts any input from that control.

Here is a video I found which demonstrates it: