I have a Nektar Pacer pedal controller, and a Novation ZeroSL, which is faders, pots and buttons. I’ve spent much of the day attempting to get these working with the Loop Pad, plugging them into the USB ports.
I’ve run the Pacer with a 9V power supply, and I’ve tried it with power from the Loop Pad. The LP just doesn’t respond at all - no values change in the Ethernet- run app.
With the ZeroSL, I was able to set up some MIDI commands (volume and feedback for 8 tracks), but in a number of cases the ZeroSL commands stop working. Sometimes they start working again, for no clear reason. I’m not trying anything at all ambitious, for instance:
Start by checking that the ZeroSL controls are working, by moving the sliders that correspond to Track Volumes. Assuming these are working, then
- Record track 1
- overdub on it
- reverse and slow scramble
- then use the ZeroSL to lower the volume - this fails half the time, and none of the ZeroSL controllers are working at this pont.
At times when the sliders are working, the App shows values changing, but the MIDI section does not display any values.
I’ve had no success with expression pedals connected to either Pacer or ZeroSL. They just are not “seen” by the Loop Pad.
I’ve seen no discussion in the Start-Up Guide or elsewhere of matching channels or restrictions on message type. Perhaps something is awry with those settings, but other than by trial and error I have no way to determine that.
Anyone have any success pairing MIDI controllers with the Loop Pad yet? See anything illogical about what I’ve written here?
Some DAW controllers have rather complicated setups. I have not looked at these controllers specifically. Sometimes it is matter of selecting a different mode on the controller. Sometimes you need to use the application for the device to program to only send program change, CC and note messages. I’ll take a look to see if there is sufficient documentation for those devices, but I don’t have the devices to test with.
If you are able to capture the MIDI messages sent when adjusting a controller via a MIDI monitoring application, that can help me determine what is going on.
Configuration of the Zero SL is interesting according to the documentation. It appears to use multiple subdevices and relative mode of the knobs is not supported in the LoopPad. You would need to configure it to use absolute mode for the knobs.
Looks like the Nektar Pacer also supports relative or absolute CC messages. The LoopPad only supports absolute.
DAW mode on either controller will cause problems as the LoopPad doesn’t speak Ableton or Cubase, but simply operates on standard MIDI messages. I can change the LoopPad to listen on multiple subdevices for the Zero SL, but the other incompatibilities appear to be configuration settings in the Zero SL and the Pacer.
Very useful. I suspect others will encounter this issue. Please consider a tutorial.
That said, I’m aware of the several types of messages that these can send, and will take another stab at getting them working. I’m not using any presets for DAWs - that was clearly not a good idea. For the Pacer there is a very good online editor; I’ll try that later this week.
Thanks, Bob
FWIW, it was very easy to use Cubase to capture the Pacer messages that are sent by the Pacer preset I made a while ago, “LP-1”. They are notes. Cubase includes a column “Main Value”, about which Google says:
“In Cubase’s MIDI monitor, Main Value refers to the primary intensity parameter of the MIDI event, which for a note message is the note velocity (how hard you stepped on the Pacer switch).”
This preset works fine with LP-1.