Knobs?

So far I've been working with a PreSonos Faderport 2, but I have not been able to sort out getting the center knob to do anything other than PAN a track. In trying to make any adjustment to virtual knobs within Logic I am at a loss as to how best to "turn" the knob via the mouse. Sometimes they turn the opposite direction only, sometimes they don't turn at all. Clicking on the surround of the virtual knob at where I want the indicator to point sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. I'm coming to Logic from analog mixing, where one just turns the high or low EQ knob on a mixer, but it seems this cannot be an easy thing to make happen with any DAW. In looking for something else to control the virtual knobs in the EQ windows and etc, I've come across the AKAI Pro MIDImix. It looks like the one row of knobs is set to control panning by default, but there are two rows of knobs that are user assignable.

SO, is it possible to have the MIDImix knobs mapped to control the settings in various plug-ins as they come up on my screen in any simple fashion? I may just wait for the nOb to be redone, but the click on this knob with the mouse, then turn the knob is nowhere near as intuitive as the old analog days and seems like a time suck over the course of a few hours, click the mouse, reach for the nOb and turn - reach for the mouse and click, reach for the nOb and turn, rather than just reaching for the knob that controls EQ/mid or EQ/high etc.

I do hope I'm just being hopelessly dumb in not understanding some basic way of working within Logic.

I have not. I am way behind the curve in understanding MIDI.

My hope is that I could set up the AKAI so that whatever plug-in window is active I could have a row of knobs in the window to correspond to a row of knobs on the controller. I somehow have it in my head that I would need a different controller available for every plug-in or re-assign the knobs for each plug-in every time I wanted to use it.

Could anyone recommend a good book that might explain MIDI to this idiot?

It's not that simple, with a generic MIDI controller. It's only really supported control surfaces that work like that.

Generic controllers you either have to manually map, or use smart controls (with some auto-mapping for supported MIDI controllers) or do some other deep nerdery which is way beyond what most people will want to do.

If you want an easy time controlling Logic without having to manually map things, the best current way is to buy a proper control surfaces that has all this handling built in, rather than try to do this yourself from the ground up using a simple dumb MIDI controller.

I have not. I am way behind the curve in understanding MIDI. (...) Could anyone recommend a good book that might explain MIDI to this idiot?

You don't need to understand MIDI, and you don't need a book to start mapping your controllers to Logic. If you follow the guide I linked to, you'll start by mapping one knob of your controller to one knob or slider in a plug-in. This is basically done in two steps:

1. Map a Smart Control knob to a knob inside a plug-in window.

2. Assign a controller knob to the Smart Control knob.

Next: Smart Controls (SC) are saved with each Patch you save. Controller <—> SC assignments are global. That means that if you assign a row of knobs on your AKAI, you'll have knobs 1 through 8 on the AKAI control Smart Control knobs 1 through 8 in Logic. Then on one patch Smart Control knob 1 may control the gain of an amp while on the next patch that same Smart Control knob 1 controls the depth of a chorus plug-in.

So it certainly is a bit time consuming but not difficult. Then from then on the sky is the limit. You could for example map a knob to slowly increase the gain of an amp while at the same time rolling off the high frequency of a filter and increasing the compression.... it can be as empowering as you want it to be. Consider for example the simple possibility of being able to increase or decrease a band of 1kHz frequency while compensating the overall volume so that you're hearing only the effect of the EQ on your vocals without changing their perceived loudness — all with a single knob.

Thank you David. I will dive into that guide, but at first glance it did seem to be over my head. Apologies for my density with this, I've never been capable with language, and find MIDI to be a language of sorts.

MIDI is a language but there's no need to know the language to do any of this, much like you don't need to know any computer coding languages to use a computer.

All you'll be doing is click "Learn" buttons: click "Learn", click a Smart Control on your screen, twist a knob on your controller. That kind of thing. That really is all there is to it. I understand your reticence but I encourage you to at least follow the linked article to assign 1 knob to 1 plug-in parameter for now. Achieve that one simple goal. Once you've done that you can determine if that really was a frustrating process or (my guess) if it was, after all, really much simpler than what you believed.

Ok. Got started with this mapping. The MIDIMIX is hooked up and I can get the knobs to work certain things, but I've got knobs sometimes not doing what I tell them to do, so clearly I'm not doing something correctly. And it seems I will have to do this mapping for every different effect/plug-in?

Is there a regular old channel strip view with a set of EQ knobs like I would find on an old analog desk or mixer? All the EQ interfaces I've found thus far all seem to have just a waveform in the smart control window which I don't seem to be able to control except with the mouse.

It is, but really it's not that complicated - it was invented in 1983, and computers back then were ZX81 level, so you couldn't really do much with digital interfacing...

I was already in my twenties by 83, and my only real use of computers previously is for graphics and photography, where adjustments were designed for manipulating with a mouse. It really seems like all DAW software is designed to look like the analog environment even tho nobody's come up with a control surface that can function like an analog mixer, and I'm confused why this is such a unwanted item.

And it seems I will have to do this mapping for every different effect/plug-in?

I know, I don't find David's solution workable for me - Logic is not that great at easily handling generic MIDI controllers, unfortunately. It's a thing I'm very opinionated about for a whole bunch of reasons.

Without going deeply nerdy, there's isn't (currently) a good way for regular folks to use a generic simple MIDI controller to do "complicated" things - eg automatically control various plugins without mapping. The only (current) way to do this in a more comfortable way without having to configure everything manually is to buy a more sophisticated control surface that has plugin control built in.

Is there a regular old channel strip view with a set of EQ knobs like I would find on an old analog desk or mixer? All the EQ interfaces I've found thus far all seem to have just a waveform in the smart control window which I don't seem to be able to control except with the mouse.

No...

It really seems like all DAW software is designed to look like the analog environment even tho nobody's come up with a control surface that can function like an analog mixer, and I'm confused why this is such a unwanted item.

No, there are plenty of DAWs that don't really look/work like an analog environment - Ableton Live, Bitwig, Numerolgy, FruityLoops - there's plenty of them. However, there are reasons most "conventional" DAWs follow tried and tested concepts and layouts that have worked for half a century or more - because they are useful and familiar to most people, at least until the new generation of kids growing up never having recorded to tape or used an analog mixer etc.

And there are indeed a range of control surfaces across the board, to suit various requirements and budgets. Here's the Digidesign Icon DAW controller for ProTools, as an extreme example:

...Without going deeply nerdy, there's isn't (currently) a good way for regular folks to use a generic simple MIDI controller to do "complicated" things - eg automatically control various plugins without mapping. The only (current) way to do this in a more comfortable way without having to configure everything manually is to buy a more sophisticated control surface that has plugin control built in.

I've just come up with a plan to use one EQ, one compressor and one reverb which should be a manageable number of knobs to program so I can just label this thing and get to work. I was wondering about some interface that could send 12 or 16 tracks out – I can't imagine I'd ever get past twelve – to a digital mixer with EQ and reverb, etc. and then record that into Logic on a second machine - just to use the EQ in the mixer. I come at this stuff sorta backwards I know, but it's how my head sees these things.

You might get on with something like this:

https://www.softube.com/console1

One controller / plugin combo with hard mapped controls that you can use for all EQ and compressor needs, no manual mapping etc.

...I am at a loss as to how best to "turn" the knob via the mouse. Sometimes they turn the opposite direction only, sometimes they don't turn at all. Clicking on the surround of the virtual knob at where I want the indicator to point sometimes works, sometimes doesn't....

You grab the knob by leftclick-holding the knob and drag up for increased values, down to decrease...

...I am at a loss as to how best to "turn" the knob via the mouse. Sometimes they turn the opposite direction only, sometimes they don't turn at all. Clicking on the surround of the virtual knob at where I want the indicator to point sometimes works, sometimes doesn't....

 

You grab the knob by leftclick-holding the knob and drag up for increased values, down to decrease...

Thanks, finally a simple answer for this ridiculous idiot. I may just bag the effing MIDIMIX, today the knobs do nothing, except for one which used to control attack, now makes the song start at the beginning again. So damn annoying to have nothing work reliably.