How to prevent external MIDI controller from changing mixer

[tomgindenver]

Hi,
I've been using DP for many years, but only recently added an external MIDI controller, the behringer XTouch Compact, to improve my mixing experience. One issue that I'm having is the way track selection works in DP in response to banking or scrolling via the XTouch. For example, when I have the entire track list showing in DP's mixer (in this case, about 45 tracks), as soon as I bank or scroll via the Xtouch, the majority of tracks will disappear from DP's mixing board, leaving only 8 channel strips remaining (the 8 either banked or scrolled to).
How can I either disable or learn to work with this unique behavior of DP?
If possible, I'd like to keep the whole list of tracks visible in the mixing board and have banking/scrolling not repeatedly limit my view there.
Any advice/workarounds would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Tom

[James Steele]

Just a shot in the dark, but in the Mixing Board window there's a little mini menu at the upper right. There's an option in that menu to automatically re-size the mixing board. See if that's checked and if it is, turn it off. Don't know if that will work, but might we worth a try.

[tomgindenver]

Hi James,

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, it didn't work. (By the way, I used to have the same issue with an Avid Artist Series controller, and that kind of kept me from mixing in DP as often as I would have liked.)

More recently, I've searched the DP9 pdf manual but haven't found anything about this. This behavior is quite unusual in comparison to other DAWs. In other DAWs you can set which tracks you wish to show or hide, and those settings remain - they don't change dynamically in response to external control. It seems that in DP, one can't ever maintain a certain mixer view when using an external controller. It would seem that deselecting "auto resize" as you've suggested, or using the save/load board layout command would somehow set or fix the status of the mixing board, but they don't. As a result, you have to repeatedly re-select the tracks that you wish to view.

I love DP, but this seems to be a flaw or or perhaps bug in MOTU's implementation of control protocols like Mackie Control and Eucon.

If you have any other suggestions for a solution or workaround, I'd greatly appreciate your input.

Thanks,

Tom

[James Steele]

Don't know. I've never really used a controller like that. I'm hoping some other people notice the activity in this topic and chime in. What about the toggle in the same menu to lock track order to the Track Overview Window? I'm just guessing now. Not in front of DP at the moment.

[Dark Goob]

Hi,
I've been using DP for many years, but only recently added an external MIDI controller, the behringer XTouch Compact, to improve my mixing experience. One issue that I'm having is the way track selection works in DP in response to banking or scrolling via the XTouch. For example, when I have the entire track list showing in DP's mixer (in this case, about 45 tracks), as soon as I bank or scroll via the Xtouch, the majority of tracks will disappear from DP's mixing board, leaving only 8 channel strips remaining (the 8 either banked or scrolled to).
How can I either disable or learn to work with this unique behavior of DP?
If possible, I'd like to keep the whole list of tracks visible in the mixing board and have banking/scrolling not repeatedly limit my view there.
Any advice/workarounds would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Tom

I’m having the same exact problem on DP8 with my Mackie MCU Pro. Whenever I use Bank < > or Channel < > to change what channels are on the Mackie’s 8 faders, the Track Selector automatically hides all the tracks that are not mapped to a fader!

This is supremely annoying, since if the Sequence tab is currently active, it hides all but 8 of my tracks from the Sequence view but does not change the Mixer at all. So if the Mixer was the active view last time I changed banks, but now I change banks while Sequence is the active view, now my Mixer will be showing all tracks that ARE NOT mapped to the faders! What the heck?

I just want to TURN OFF the ability for bank/channel buttons to alter my Track Selector window! But how? I looked all through the manuals and all through the Commands window and Preferences screen, but there seems to be literally no way to change any control mappings of the Mackie unit, let alone deactivate the ability of this thing to change what’s selected in the Track Selector.

This is very surprising to me, especially considering how for everything else, DP’s just about the most configurable DAW around, letting you change literally any keyboard command to your heart’s desire.

Has anyone figured out a solution for this?

So far the only workaround I have found is to make the Chunks pane active before using Bank or Channel select buttons on the Mackie. Since the track-hiding behavior only affects the active window, and Chunks has no tracks, then if Chunks is active, no tracks will get hidden. But man, this is not a good workaround for several reasons, first among which is that if you forget to do the workaround or mess up and make Sequence active etc., then it’s back to square one.

[Maxxy]

FWIW

Not sure if this directly gets to this issue ….just checking …. I had a similar frustration with Artist Mix until I heard that you can over-ride the TO and SE track order by deselecting ‘Lock Layout to Track Order’ in the Mixing Window mini menu at top right. With this option de-selected you can now drag your critical channels in the Mixing Window to the far left and they should then come up in that order in the Artist Mix…from Left to Right... without hidden/un-enabled/unimportant tracks taking up valuable Controller channel spaces….. hopefully this works for Mackie MCU Pro also

This is a quick and easy way to re-order the main tracks you want fader control of … without having to re-arrange the TO/SE windows…

Hiding tracks in TO doesn’t prevent them from being seen by the Artist Mix…

You could re-arrange the TO window … but for me that is a …errrr… drag. Easier to keep your TO as originally created to avoid confusion… then just unlock the Mixer Window and drag left to suit

Did you try this? Apologies if off the mark

[Maxxy]

Actually James already pointed to what I just said ... good luck ( :