M7CL MIDI Control Change- Mute Masters 1-4 and Chs 37-40, Knobs

[Jason Wagner]

I found out something interesting during my last show. Maybe it's a known thing:

I setup an M7CL to hit GOs, Panic, Previous Cue (Up), Next Cue (Down) commands with MIDI. I used mute Masters 1-4 on User Assign Buttons.

The first show went fine, then in the second show, I go to adjust a mix send, and QLab Panics. The dancer was a trooper and did her dance without music.

After that, I didn't adjust anything! Then, at the end of the show, I turned on our Booth Talk-back on Ch 40. and I noticed QLab highlighted the next cue.

Long story short, I found that Mute Groups 1-4 send the same byte info that Chs. 37-40's ON button does. Plus, a couple of the fader knobs when adjusting mix sends do some inconsistent GOs, Panics, and selections.

Switched to Mute Masters 5-8 and it works fine.

Anyone else ever experience this? Is this already a known issue?

Wags

[Sam Kusnetz]

Jason

I've had this problem, and the answer is odd: the M7CL allows you to customize which MIDI message is sent by each button or function on the console. All you need to do is go into the console settings and assign a different message to the conflicting controls.

Sam

Jason Wagner

December 9, 2015 at 1:17 PM

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[Jason Wagner]

All you need to do is go into the console settings and assign a different message to the conflicting controls.

Can you be more specific? I can't seem to find anywhere to change the assignments.

Thanks

Wags

[Sam Kusnetz]

Jason Wagner wrote:
> Can you be more specific? I can't seem to find anywhere to change the
> assignments.

I'm afraid I cannot at the moment as I'm not near a console and haven't
used one in a while. It's somewhere amongst MIDI settings...

Sam

[Jason Wagner]

No problem. I'll keep looking. I may be missing something, but I can't find anything to change.

[Vinny Osborne]

Yes Ive had that problem in the past.  Yamaha use 2 modes of midi.  You need to use TABLE mode, so only the controls you choose will be active.  In the other mode, even knob etc on the console will transmit midi & you can have various controls transmit the same midi message.  See my attached photos, its an LS 9 but the parameter is the same on a M7.

[Vinny Osborne]

[Rusty Wandall]

The midi tab on the M7 looks a bit different, but close enough to the pictures Vinny posted.  There is a 2nd tab on the Midi screen that lets you change the control change settings.  On the M7, there are a default number of midi control changes already established when in table mode. I normally go to the very end of the list to control change 117, 118 etc. and change those to be the mute masters I'm using as my Qlab buttons.  I've found for a lot of shows that effects bypass 5-8 are also helpful to use for straight plays where I'm not using the effects in the console (just make sure some type of effect is in your effects rack before using the effect bypasses).  I find leaving the midi control changes alone for the channel level and ON settings helpful for being able to console channels from Qlab.

Rusty

[Jason Wagner]

Yes! Thank you. That's what I didn't understand. I will give it a go tomorrow.

Thanks guys.

Wags

[rbing...@sbcglobal.net]

To be more precise....

The M7's default mode uses what are called NRPN (Non Registered Parameter Numbers) MIDI messages.  What those are is actually 3 consecutive MIDI commands that allow for full control of much of the console via MIDI.  You just have to know which 3 messages and in what order to control almost anything in that console.  The hard part if finding out what those are and what makes it worse is that if you send multiple messages to the console at one time... they need to be sent in order or the data gets all screwed up.  The advantage to that of course is that one MIDI channel can a lot of different parameters since I think two messages are used to identify the control and the third is the settings.  When dealing with faders it's sometimes more messages I believe since there is a course and fine value sent which allows for greater resolution than the 128 steps MIDI typically allows.  This is essentially what Studio Manager sends and receives from the console when it's connected to the desk.

Long story long...  for the kind of work we do, this mode isn't all that useful.  As others have pointed out, you want to be in Table mode and then make sure you set up the parameters you want in that custom table.  The downside is that limits the number of things you can control in the desk via MIDI, which I always found frustrating about the M7.  If you look carefully you'll notice that you can only use one MIDI channel's worth of continuous controllers on the desk and it doesn't even allow you to use all 128 MIDI CC controllers.  Some are reserved (used by the NRPN commands).  

What is really problematic as you've found out is that NRPN messages are actually MIDI CC messages.  As I said it's a series of at least 3 separate MIDI CC commands.  This is why when you press various knobs and if you were to tell QLab to capture a single MIDI command (like you would commonly do to assign a GO button)  it will grab that first command.  But that exact same message could easily be the same 1st MIDI CC command for several functions.

Hope all that makes sense and clear up why you ran into that problem.  There is a reason why that desk does that.  It's just not all that useful for most theatre types.  Or anyone really... at least not anyone that wants to control the desk via MIDI or have it send out MIDI commands to control other things.

Richard

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From: Jason Wagner <wag...@gmail.com>
To: QLab <ql...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 9, 2015 10:54 PM
Subject: [QLab] Re: M7CL MIDI Control Change- Mute Masters 1-4 and Chs 37-40, Knobs

[Jason Wagner]

Thanks guys. I got it to work correctly. The table makes sense. That's for the details, Richard.