KVR Audio

kenny saunders · Post by **kenny saunders** » Fri Oct 27, 2023 3:59 pm

Is it open source or does it belong to hmm, let me guess... Mackie? It seems like it is very old and my control surface documentation and reviews of control surfaces mention how the age of the protocol is limiting what can be achieved with physical DAW controllers.

So why don't the buggers just update it?

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Fri Oct 27, 2023 5:24 pm

You mean this Mackie Control? What exactly would you want updated?

Produced in 2003. Two decades old. EOL: End Of Life.

No open source, it's propriety software. Why no update? Costs vs Profits, a simple business decision...

kenny saunders · Post by **kenny saunders** » Sat Oct 28, 2023 12:10 am

BertKoor wrote: Fri Oct 27, 2023 5:24 pm You mean this Mackie Control? What exactly would you want updated?

Produced in 2003. Two decades old. EOL: End Of Life.

No open source, it's propriety software. Why no update? Costs vs Profits, a simple business decision...

No the DAW protocol. So the programming language that something like the SSL UF8, UF1, UC1 or other daw controllers use to communicate with daws.

In 2003, the Mackie Control Universal (MCU) protocol was introduced, combining together functionality from Mackie Control, Logic Control and HUI into a single protocol. DAWs which support MCU (in addition to those which support HUI) include Ardour, Ableton Live, Studio One, Cubase, and Reason.

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Sat Oct 28, 2023 6:13 am

Thanks for clarification.

From https://github.com/NicoG60/TouchMCU/blo ... rotocol.md

the specification is proprietary and licensed to whom wants to interface their software or controller.

It's not a programming language, merely a communication protocol on top of midi (like http built on top of tcp/ip) to send data from controller to DAW and vice versa. So it is just a specification. It dictates what the midi messages mean, so all manufacturers can let DAW and controller communicate.

I don't recall there has been drastic changes in how DAWs and controllers work. So unless the protocol had design flaws, it should still be good for what it was designed for.

Protocols are typically static. For instance he HTTP specs are quite old, yet you don't hear much complaints how we can't get things done on the web because of that.

jupiter8 · Post by **jupiter8** » Sat Oct 28, 2023 9:44 am

A hypothetical example. MCU only supports 7 characters long track names. Displays nowadays are cheap. I want my controller to support longer track names. Should be easy enough to implement. However.....

My controller won't work with DAWs out of the box because they don't support my new format. Some DAWs allow you to write your own drivers for controllers (Reaper, Bitwig) but some don't (Cubase?). What then? And even for those who do it's an extra hassle for the user.

Hopefully midi 2.0 will solve all those issues for us and we'll never have to think about it again.

kenny saunders · Post by **kenny saunders** » Sat Oct 28, 2023 11:11 am

jupiter8 wrote: Sat Oct 28, 2023 9:44 am A hypothetical example. MCU only supports 7 characters long track names. Displays nowadays are cheap. I want my controller to support longer track names. Should be easy enough to implement. However.....

My controller won't work with DAWs out of the box because they don't support my new format. Some DAWs allow you to write your own drivers for controllers (Reaper, Bitwig) but some don't (Cubase?). What then? And even for those who do it's an extra hassle for the user.

Hopefully midi 2.0 will solve all those issues for us and we'll never have to think about it again.

Yeah track name lengths are a big deal for me, in Cubase with the SSL stuff there's a 6 character limit.

So what controller do you have, what is the protocol is Avid or something?

Also I had no idea MIDI 2 was in any way related to this, but thinking about, yeah of course its a communication protocol.

jupiter8 · Post by **jupiter8** » Sat Oct 28, 2023 11:49 am

kenny saunders wrote: Sat Oct 28, 2023 11:11 am So what controller do you have, what is the protocol is Avid or something?

It was a hypothetical example.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictio ... pothetical
Say i'm a controller manufacturer that wants to make a new controller, then the above scenario would happen.

kenny saunders wrote: Sat Oct 28, 2023 11:11 am Also I had no idea MIDI 2 was in any way related to this, but thinking about, yeah of course its a communication protocol.

Not 100% sure but i believe it will solve most limitations. Tons of channels, higher resolution on controllers, support for long strings ( i assume) autodetect all kinds of stuff etc.

We'll have to see when the first implementations arrive. The new Korg keyboard seems promisings though it's still early days.

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Sat Oct 28, 2023 12:38 pm

jupiter8 wrote: Sat Oct 28, 2023 9:44 am MCU only supports 7 characters long track names. Displays nowadays are cheap.

... and much higher resolution.
Yeah, that's an annoying limitation by design, but understandable.

If you allow eg 20 chars, some users will use them fully and put the number at the very end. If a controller (or DAW) has a limit of 16 chars (there always are physical limitations to how much text will fit) then these users will complain the most important part of track name will get truncated.

jupiter8 · Post by **jupiter8** » Sat Oct 28, 2023 1:27 pm

BertKoor wrote: Sat Oct 28, 2023 12:38 pm If you allow eg 20 chars, some users will use them fully and put the number at the very end. If a controller (or DAW) has a limit of 16 chars (there always are physical limitations to how much text will fit) then these users will complain the most important part of track name will get truncated.

The quick and easy fix

replicant X · Post by **replicant X** » Sat Oct 28, 2023 11:09 pm

deleted

kenny saunders · Post by **kenny saunders** » Tue Oct 31, 2023 10:13 pm

replicant X wrote: Sat Oct 28, 2023 11:09 pm How much do you know about MIDI and MCU?
You need to recognize it correctly before criticizing it.

What a dumb thing to say!

Every review you see for daw controllers mentions the limitations of mackie control. A protocol invented in 2003, thats 20 years old btw.

Your logic is cretinous: only doctors, biologists and chemists are allowed to say cancer is bad, because the average person cannot recognise cancer, not visually nor in it molecular form.

I never criticized midi, I criticise Mackie MCU because it is old and only allows for 6 characters, amongst other things. I recognise MCU, it is mackie MCU and was made in 2003, what else do you want?

Why did you bother to type that crap and make me temporarily annoyed?

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Tue Oct 31, 2023 10:41 pm

Not that I have any solid bone here, but out of curiosity I searched for "MCU old limitations" and that came up near empty. One guy with a blog complaining about the rotary controllers of the physical units, here a limitation on track names.

So... what's the concrete wish list?

replicant X · Post by **replicant X** » Wed Nov 01, 2023 8:12 am

deleted

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Wed Nov 01, 2023 10:11 am

kenny saunders wrote: Fri Oct 27, 2023 3:59 pm So why don't the buggers just update it?

Because they stopped designing new control surfaces about 15 years ago.

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Wed Nov 01, 2023 12:23 pm

BTW: 6 or 7 characters to label a channel or control seems about right.

My analog mixer is 19" wide. 16 channels, plus 4 buses and master: total 21 faders. So per channel I have about 2cm to write a label for that channel on some painters tape I've put below the faders.

I write with a Sharpie, the space is quite limited and it has to be readable in dark-ish environments.

Why does Mackie Control never get updated?