Logic & Lemur (BiDirectional...) ?

Hello,

hopefully someone here can help me. I am trying to connect my iPad, running Lemur, with Logic X to create Bidirectional Connection. So I can create custom controller templates for Retrosynth... . Is it possible? I searched the web and found only pretty old posts regarding this issue. It would be wonderful but I fear it is still not possible... . If anyone got it to work, I would deeply appreciate any help.

ps - I managed to get Lemur to work as a Midi Controller (without BiDirectional Feedback from Logic...)

Regards,

Sebastian

Hi, 

I guess the lack of response, is a kind of answer . So may I ask a more general question, regarding midi-controller.

Is there a supported Midi-Controller for Logic X, which works bi-directional (feedback, motor-fader and/or LED...) and you can freely assign the controller knobs, make custom assignments... . So not just a basic Mackie-Controller-Mode... .

Anyone? Any tip deeply appreciated.

Best,

Seb.

ps - I managed to get Lemur to work as a Midi Controller (without BiDirectional Feedback from Logic...)

Had a quick look, and got bi-directional feedback between Retrosynth and Lemur, using Logic's Controller Assignments and AudioMIDISetup/ Network Session* on my Mac, and in Lemur on my iPhone, choosing Network Session in Settings/MIDI Targets (for both To and From)

* Lemur's own MIDI driver/network Daemon should work too. A lower latency option would be Bluetooth MIDI, or best of all, in my experience, MIDI over USB (see http://www.s-r-n.de/midile/ for free MIDI over Bluetooth and USB app)

Thanks! This is really encouraging to know. I have only a few hours left before I have to leave my studio for a week, but I will check it out and hopefully I get it to work. 

(And if anyone knows if a bi-directional compatible midi-controller (freely assignable) with LEDs and Knobs... I would love to know it.)

Best,

Seb

Had a quick look, and got bi-directional feedback between Retrosynth and Lemur, using Logic's Controller Assignments and AudioMIDISetup/ Network Session* on my Mac, and in Lemur on my iPhone, choosing Network Session in Settings/MIDI Targets (for both To and From)

Really ?   You got Bidirectional communication between Logic and Lemur? 

I've been stumbling with this for days now.   I was lost in trying IAC routing and Mackie controller ideas.      I'll try this.  Thank you very much!

FWIW  : OP was asking about a good surface controller for Logic.  

I use the Nektar Panorama P1.  It is exceptional.  

They have TIGHLY integrated it with Logic (10.1 or greater)

No silly AutoMap or VST wrappers.  Seemless.  

bit ...  I'm still stumped.   Logic is not sending/updating data to the iPad Lemur .  

I'm determined to solve this.  I've put too many hours in to let this go unresolved. 

As far as I can tell it's not possible to get any feedback in the Controller Assignments window without using one of the existing controller models.

There is an SDK which allows you to write Midi Controller plugins but it's not something that Apple give out (I came pretty close to getting hold of it once, but got denied at the last minute!)

If you just want to remote-control one instance of the synth, you can change the MIDI controller messages to Fader messages in the Environment and feed the channel strip directly.

Is that really true? There is a not-publically-available SDK for creating controller surface modules?

I do think that is the key to getting lemur working bi-directionally somehow with LogicPro.

In particularly I think the difficult task to accomplish is to detect track selection in LogicPro and send some command to Lemur in order to automatically change the lemur page based on the current live track in LogicPro.

I was talking with a chap at Apple back in 2012 about it. At the time I was mixing pretty frequently and was really into using an SSL channel plugin (on every channel). I thought I would try something new and build a hardware replica of the channel with moving pots. so I would never have to touch the computer.

I needed bi-directional communication for this and the HUI protocol didn't have enough resolution in its feedback (it's meant for encoders and LED rings). I thought about using OSC or writing my own .bundle (MIDI control surface plugin) files. I came across this post and got in touch with the guy, he sent me a NDA to sign and return, and then someone else in Apple killed it at the last minute. They said that the SDK included tech support and didn't want to be liable to support non-commercial projects. It sounded like BS to me. I told them that I didn't need any support, they said no again, end of story.

Along the way I did confirm that this SDK was indeed not part of the public Apple Developer docs, and you need to be someone like Presonus/SSL/Soundcraft to get it. I'm not sure if this is still the case. It really seemed like they didn't want just anyone (i.e. "hobbyists") messing around in there.

Yea I get it. It’s probably not a very good sdk and requires a lot of hand holding to use it with internal access.

Osculator includes a control support bundle so if you are using osc, that might be a way to make a custom solution.

For midi based solutions there is also a completely undocumented lua script engine in logicpro which could easily be opened up for people but I can’t find any documentation about that either

Yes, you're probably right. I remember trying to get a Presonus Faderport working properly using these .bundle plugins. It was a nightmare and I gave up eventually. l guess even with the support of Apple, it's difficult to get it right!

I did have some success a few years later for another project by sniffing the Logic Remote ipad app. You can get feedback on faders, transport, meters, and some other basic stuff. I don't think you could access plugin parameters at the time, that might have changed since. Maybe you could get at them through Smart Controls. IIRC the protocol is OSC, but you do need to impersonate the ipad app a little bit. There is some handshaking involved, and you have to publish a certain type of service via mDNS or Logic won't respond.

Thanks for the info. Lua would be nice. Logic is seriously behind the times in this world where you can program just about anything. I started working with Max/Live and that opened up a world of possibilities. Logic is still OK for audio editing.

Right well what I meant is that osculator itself includes a control surface bundle of its own. They must have gotten the sdk and made one. But their bundle is a very generic open ended one that simply passes osc commands between osculator and Logic Pro, disguised as a generic control surface. So theoretically you could use this to configure a logicpro control surface setup that can drive lemur, touchosc or lots of other things, whatever osculator is capable of.

I mainly just want to use lemur to provide keyswitch buttons for my sample libraries and maybe a few faders, but I want it to automatically switch pages whenever I change tracks in lpx. My understanding is I might be able to do that with this combo though it will take a lot of effort to setup and also it only works if the tracks are named properly apparently.

I found reference to the OSCulator plugin but the link was broken. It doesn't seem to be part of the download either. Do you have the .bundle file?

For your application, you might be able to fake a control surface with only one channel (Faderport?). Generally Logic will report the selected channel number via MIDI to the controller. IF you can control keyswitches via MIDI, Lemur could fire those into Logic, now knowing that the right track is selected and the keyswitches will be routed to the instrument plugin.

I took another brief look at the Logic Remote protocol and it includes pretty much everything you'd want, including plugin parameters. It resembles OSC but is packaged somewhat differently, so would require some reverse engineering.

The link works if you sign in to the forum. You might have to own OSCulator in order to join the forum, I'm not sure. I should not share the bundle at this time, just go join the forum and download it there.

I intend to build a Lemur interface, or possibly use TouchOSC or one of the others....at this point I am just poking around at what is out there...Lots of people saying you can't have Logic change the iPad pages with these...but...i found one guy that apparently did it with OSCulator and this bundle... So that's the path I will likely go down. Plus OSCulator itself can be scripted and automated in various ways...providing an additional level of control...once I get into it. I have a lot to learn about it...

Ah, OK. I signed up (with the demo) and got it working. It looks like you can monitor the addresses /logic/track/id, /logic/track/name and /logic/track/instrument/name (amongst others) to get info about the currently selected track. Not bad!

You might need some app sitting between the OSCulator plugin and the ipad to decipher it. Or maybe Lemur has enough "scriptability" to handle it..

They have one thing in there that says something about a dictionary of all known OSC commands from that bundle, so you can study it and learn what is possible. It may be a while before I can get deep into this, but anyway, I think there is a lot o potential here.

They also have an OSCulator setup file that is already preconfigured to work with TouchOSC on the iPad... as an example. But it sounds like the actual dictionary supported by the bundle is perhaps even larger and more generic than that...

They have one thing in there that says something about a dictionary of all known OSC commands from that bundle, so you can study it and learn what is possible. It may be a while before I can get deep into this, but anyway, I think there is a lot o potential here.

 

They also have an OSCulator setup file that is already preconfigured to work with TouchOSC on the iPad... as an example. But it sounds like the actual dictionary supported by the bundle is perhaps even larger and more generic than that...

Have you had any go ahead with this dewdman? Really love to get this happening, I don't know how to convert what I have seen with Cubase into something workable in logic.

Yes, you're probably right. I remember trying to get a Presonus Faderport working properly using these .bundle plugins. It was a nightmare and I gave up eventually. l guess even with the support of Apple, it's difficult to get it right!

 

I did have some success a few years later for another project by sniffing the Logic Remote ipad app. You can get feedback on faders, transport, meters, and some other basic stuff. I don't think you could access plugin parameters at the time, that might have changed since. Maybe you could get at them through Smart Controls. IIRC the protocol is OSC, but you do need to impersonate the ipad app a little bit. There is some handshaking involved, and you have to publish a certain type of service via mDNS or Logic won't respond.

 

Thanks for the info. Lua would be nice. Logic is seriously behind the times in this world where you can program just about anything. I started working with Max/Live and that opened up a world of possibilities. Logic is still OK for audio editing.

Hey,

do you have any leftovers from that Logic Remote endeavor? I am trying to get info from Logic through OSC (especially about the Plugin Inserts) and currently look at the data streams in Wireshark between Logic and the Remote App. The handshake isn't quite clear to me yet, any info you have would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Normen