Oxygen 49 Keyboard Manual

[Faith Lienhard]

YesI have installed the driver, even though the support page of M-Audio states keyboard being "Class Compliant and not requiring a driver". Do you think I should be able to actually see the M-Audio Oxygen 49 -option in the Preferences/Control Surfaces/Setup -window provided the correct driver is in place and keyboard is connected? This is what I am uncertain of.

Additional info: I have tried selecting M-Audio Oxygen 25 and iControl (because they are available and closest I could get). With those selected the keyboard almost works. Meaning it plays all the notes and sometimes I succeed to assingn some knob or fader.

I even managed once to the the transport buttons to work when I had selected iControl from the Control Surfaces settings. I have studied the manual about how to make Logic lean commands from Oxygen 49 and how to form zones & modes & assignments, but the messages from Oxygen 49 seem to somehow confuse Logic.

As a reply to Atlas007: I have used Logic only in 32-bit mode, I learned that the selection between 64bit and 32bit modes is made by selecting Logic Pro in the Applications folder and pressing command + i, there is a checkbox selected.

About installing the driver... I double checked M-Audio support page and noticed that I had installed a driver for Oxygen 49 (blue), which is suppose is newer version of the same (silver) product that I have. The driver has something to do with technology called DirectLink that is meant to improve the interface of Oxygen 49 and (Logic/Garage Band). I have learned from this forum, that the Direct Link technology is not at all necessary if the user is inclined to assing the controls manually (which is what I would like to do).

Your MIDI controller does not require you install a driver for it to function with Logic. It is, however, a regular (dumb) MIDI controller so there's nothing for you to do in the Control Surfaces setup window.

- DUMB controller produces exactly the same MIDI codes as any other MIDI device, you just have to tell Logic which MIDI msg is used for each function. Learning procedure is simple and well explainend in the Quick Guide (see link in previous post by JORDITO).

- When a fader or knob is succesfully assigned to a specific task, it is automatically saved in Logic. That means, when you close project 1 where you assigned a knob to a task, it will function the same way when you open project 2 or start a new project.

I get the impression that M-Audio Direct Link does not support 64 bit. I just bought an Oxygen 88. After much scrambling about I realised it's not going to work until they release updated software. I can't find out approximately when that will be.

This forum is dedicated to Cakewalk, a DAW that runs exclusively on Windows. I suggest you will get better answers if you ask on a forum dedicated to Reason, and/or the hardware in question, both of which are more likely to have people using it on Mac/OSX.

For anyone puzzling over whether an Oxygen Pro will work with Cakewalk, or wondering how to set it up as a controller in Cakewalk, I want to share a few resources and tidbits that helped me out with mine (49-key). In short, it's a great keyboard/controller with extensive customization possibilities. I have it controlling transport and track volume/panning with no problem, and I've set up custom mappings for a bunch of buttons to do exactly what I want. Almost all controls are set up using Cakewalk's ACT plugin. I still don't fully understand what I've done, and am sure I've only scratched the surface.

If you want to learn the M-Audio preset editor software (highly recommended for tuning any button/slider/rotary to your liking), M-Audio hides the manual for this on their website. Looking up Oxygen Pro won't reveal the preset editor manual. However, if you go to the following page and search for "Keyboard Controllers" > "Hammer 88 Pro", you'll see the Preset Editor manual in the results. As far as I can tell, it's the exact same editor offered to Oxygen Pro owners.

The below 13-min video was helpful to understand how the preset editor works at a high level. Also, the guy tells you how to find the software in the first place, which is not obvious (gotta enable advanced options in the M-Audio Software Manger, wtf):

This part may be obvious to some/most, but Cakewalk does not process MIDI data unless you have a project open. I beat my head against a wall for a short time trying to MIDI-learn controls in the ACT plugin without a project open. Further, if you wanna map your 8 sliders and rotaries using ACT, you should have 8 or more tracks in your open project. Knowing that in advance would have saved me some time.

Finally, the below forum post was so incredibly informative about the quirks of setting up an ACT controller in Cakewalk. There are some great details in there that don't seem to be well documented anywhere else. If you're feeling fuzzy about ACT, read this post in full. It's fantastic.

The Oxygen Pro has a couple modes - DAW and Preset. Each of these modes can serve as a completely separate controller in Cakewalk if you want to multiply your knobs and buttons (knowing of course that you'd have to switch between Oxygen modes to use them all). Out of caution, I used the M-Audio Preset Editor to make sure I wasn't repeating MIDI CC values between the two modes. I'm not sure if that's totally necessary, since the modes' commands are sent over different MIDI inputs. Just part of my ongoing learning!

Also good to know, according to the Oxygen Pro manual and experience, DAW mode commands (both Mackie/HUI and CC) are sent over the MIDIIN3 input. Preset mode commands are sent over the "Oxygen Pro 49" input (the first one). So that may help with your controller setup if you want to use both DAW and Preset mode to control Cakewalk. For my setup, I decided to reserve DAW mode controls to Cakewalk only (not follow to plugins) and switch over to preset mode when I want to control plugins (and not Cakewalk). That division of labor seems to work OK.

While I'm mostly using ACT to configure the Oxygen Pro, I'm also using Mackie Control for a few things, including the encoder knob that I couldn't quite figure out with MIDI/ACT. The bottom line is, with the M-Audio Preset Editor, you can define, per individual slider/rotary/button, whether you want its message to be sent as MIDI CC or Mackie/HUI. That's pretty awesome.

I bought my M-Audio Oxygen Pro 49 a couple days ago and almost went insane trying to get it to work with Cakewalk. This thread in particular was very helpful in getting me on the right track; I've spent a lot of time trying different options and making notes on what worked and what didn't.

One important note that might be helpful: the problem some guys here are having with the pan knobs (2% or 98%) is solved by setting the DAW mode on the keyboard to MPC or Ableton or Reason. Setting the DAW type to anything else (PT or Studio1 or Reaper or FL etc.) will cause this issue.

Also, as others here have mentioned, when setting the ACT on CbB you must have a project open; make sure the project has a decent number of tracks because you can only assign a control to a track if there's an active track open. I started with a small project with only 7 tracks and couldn't assign a fader to track 8 until I opened a larger project.

And, as mentioned above, the Oxygen Pro uses MIDI inputs 1 and 3 (Oxygen Pro 49 and MIDIIN3) for presets and DAW, respectively. If you leave MIDIIN2 and MIDIIN4 checked as MIDI devices, problems can develop so only enable 1 and 3.

Mike Z and 6foot5..... THANK YOU SO MUCH! I'm totally new to midi-commands, and this is exactly the kind of step-by-step handholding that I needed. I was debating between controllers and hoping to find one that would work with CBB, and having your posts on this thread gave me confidence to go with the Oxy Pro 49. Followed the steps above and things certainly seem to be responding. Thanks again!

Glad you got yours working. It's a great keyboard and I was frustrated that I couldn't find step-by-step instructions like this. I tried it with Cubase and it worked immediately but CbB was a little more complicated.

If you mean setting the DAW type on the keyboard to Bitwig, I believe the only fix is to change it to MPC or Reason or Ableton. Any other DAW types I tried had various odd issues (especially when panning).

I find myself trying to find a MIDI Controller that will actually work - I've had to send back an Alesis model and now I've just sent back the Arturia Keylab Mk2. The keyboards themselves work, but unless I connected them via MIDI cable, I just couldn't get them operational just using the USB connection. When connected via MIDI cables, I could trigger softsynths with the keys, but none of the transport controls would work at all and none of the accompanying software to edit where things are mapped, velocity, etc etc would work at all.

My knowledge of this kind of stuff is very small - I've always had a Roland Edirol PCR 500 - it just plugged in a worked, simple as. But since buying a new PC very recently, this controller no longer seems to be able to connect at all. It won't show up in Cakewalk Prefs as a controller, where it always used to.

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