• Registered: 2012-10-14
  • Posts: 2

Topic: Controlling Total Mix with Akai APC40?

Hi all,
I perform electronic music live and use ablteon and a controller, thinking of upgrading my soundcard to a rme ucx and am intrigued about the possibilities of using totalmix. I've used a mixer on stage and find it useful to eq the basic channels realtime, the main stereo mix from ableton as well as an extra channel of bass (I use a drum machine separately to all of that). So Ideally I would like to be able to control total fx's eq section in realtime during the performance as well. I've read that totalmix supports mackie controllers but I'm not to keen on lugging another large-ish bit of gear when essentially I just want to affect two channels (the stereo from Ableton and mono for bass) which I guess I could do on the laptop with mouse etc. but I do like me the feel of faders and knobs as most would agree (all you luddites!) so my question dear rme forum peeps is - is it possible to control the totalmix channels, fx and eq with the akai apc40? If so would it require some deft bomes midi programming skills? And if not whats a small (and cheap!) midi controller that would happily control totalmix?

  • bsfreq
  • S/Mux specialist
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2011-03-02
  • Posts: 244

Re: Controlling Total Mix with Akai APC40?

Hi!

Unfortunately, the eq and fx sections of TMFX are not cotrollable via simple midi, or mackie commands.
However, eq and fx controls are available using OSC. There's a touchOSC template provided by RME here: http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=14665. I think it's possible to translate midi to OSC commands by using Osculator, but personally I haven't gotten that far yet. (I'm simply using ipad and the tmfx template) You'd probably also have to use bomes to swallow the messages coming from APC40 to prevent any unwanted actions in ableton, and also turn some routings or presets on/off if you still want to be able to use your APC40 knobs for other purposes (controlling ableton) as well. But that part shouldn't be too complicated if you were already able to figure out how to use OSC. wink

As for the APC40 faders. I wouldn't use those for controlling anything in TMFX as they don't have any feedback, and big level jumps would be inevitable.

So the answer in short is: yes it's possible, but not too easy.

Fireface UFX+ | Fireface UFX | Babyface Pro | 12Mic
  • Registered: 2012-10-14
  • Posts: 2

Re: Controlling Total Mix with Akai APC40?

hey bsfreq
Thanks for that, after doing a bit more investigation it seems like what you say is correct, possible but difficult. Appreciate the advice, I'll check out OSC. Seems like the best option is using an ipad