[QLab] Help on Yamaha LS9 Control Change for fader levels?

[John Leonard]

Can someone with an LS9 let me in on the secret of controlling individual fader levels and/or channel-on/off with CC messages from QLab? I have MIDI set up and working perfectly for program changes and all that's fine. I've checked that the interface is sending the correct MIDI messages, but the LS9 does nothing but sit there and look smug. I suspect that I have something wrong in the MIDI set-up page, or possibly the control change mapping (for instance, what do the designations Fader H and Fader L mean?) The manual is not particularly helpful on this matter and I'm getting nowhere fast. Correction - I'm getting nowhere slowly.

The interface is a simple M-Audio Uno, for which I have the latest drivers.

Baffled - not for the first time and surely not for the last,

John
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[Andy Dolph]

Fader H is the course resolution
Fader L is the fine resolution (IE each increase of +1 in the Fader L
setting adds 1/128th to the Fader H setting)

I'm not sure about the LS9, but if it's like the 01v96 there's a setup
screen where you set which midi commands you want it to respond to,
and program changes are separate from CC messages.

I've been beating my head against this with my 01v96v2 last week to
set up iPad control of it (via touch osc on the iPad and Pure Data on
the mac) which is working great, finally ;)

Hope that helps!

Andy

[Rasmus Kreiner]

Just a quick idea: Did you set the LS9 to accept control change? You can do that under the misc setup tap. Highlight RX.

Otherwise try to fiddle around with the table or NRPN setting. I think that i will only work if you set it table mode.

Best,
Rasmus

[Jeremy Lee]

Oh boy- I did this once for Talk Radio, but that was a long time ago. I think that the Fader H/L thing is more like a coarse/ fine thing. You definitely need to set up the MIDI controllers in the ls9 to listen to the proper channels/ controllers for whatever commands you want to control. It's not universal, and it has nothing to do with the global Midi Channel parameter (what you use for program changes).

And I did this on the M7, which usually works exactly the same. But who knows!

I did make this little cheat sheet that helped me translate dB into CC. Maybe this will help.

[Andy Dolph]

yes - NRPN is a whole different way of doing it.

On Sun, Aug 22, 2010 at 10:06 AM, Rasmus Kreiner
<rasmus....@gmail.com> wrote:
> Otherwise try to fiddle around with the table or NRPN setting. I think that i will only work if you set it table mode.

[Richard B. Ingraham]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: qlab-b...@lists.figure53.com [mailto:qlab-
> bou...@lists.figure53.com] On Behalf Of John Leonard
> Sent: Sunday, August 22, 2010 9:44 AM
> To: Discussion and support for QLab users.
> Subject: [QLab] Help on Yamaha LS9 Control Change for fader levels?
>
> Can someone with an LS9 let me in on the secret of controlling
> individual fader levels and/or channel-on/off with CC messages from
> QLab? I have MIDI set up and working perfectly for program changes and
> all that's fine. I've checked that the interface is sending the correct
> MIDI messages, but the LS9 does nothing but sit there and look smug. I
> suspect that I have something wrong in the MIDI set-up page, or
> possibly the control change mapping (for instance, what do the
> designations Fader H and Fader L mean?) The manual is not particularly
> helpful on this matter and I'm getting nowhere fast. Correction - I'm
> getting nowhere slowly.
>

John,

The LS9 has a few different ways of working. There is a NRPN mode, which
will use Non-Registered Parameter Numbers (if memory serves that is what
that stands for, but don't quote me). I typically use this mode as you then
don't have to deal with assigning functions to MIDI CC numbers. The down
side then is that every button push and fader move will have 3 or more
various MIDI CC messages, so the number of MIDI commands grows very quickly.
The other downside is that I have found that if I send multiple commands
simultaneously, it's easy for the LS9 or M7 (they both work the same way
FYI) to get confused, since part of what those 3 messages send is which
control you are trying to wiggle via remote. This has worked OK for me most
days and keeps the set ups in the LS9 as simple as possible. But I
obviously also use SFX most days and we can capture messages in SFX, so it
makes it a tad easier. (Forgive me if QLab has this feature now, not trying
to cause a flame war) So you could capture the commands for the various
controls you like and then put them into QLab by hand. You would just need
to build several individual commands when moving multiple parameters at once
and then use an Auto Continue in Qlab to link them together. You can send
them to the console very fast, just not simultaneously.

The other mode, which it sounds like you are trying to use requires that you
tell the LS9 to use the MIDI CC map or table as they call it. In the basic
MIDI set up page, you'll need to set it to Table rather than NRPN, under
Control Change. Then once you do that you can use that table to set which
parameter you want to control. Just keep in mind that Yamaha has several of
the MIDI CC numbers blocked out (I suspect for the NRPN routing) so you
don't even get 128 MIDI controls this way. It's a hassle to say the least.

The Fader H and Fader L part is because they allow you to use two MIDI CC to
control a fader for greater than 8 bit resolution. I'm not entirely sure
what the resolution is that it allows, I suspect it's probably 12 bits, but
that's purely a guess. I think (again, don't quote me, as I rarely if ever
use this mode) if you send the console just a Fader H command, it will
respond. H is for High and L is for Low, or think of it more like the MSB
and LSB MIDI commands of days past. High and Low resolution I think.

I would set up the mapping the way you want it and then try to use something
to capture some of the commands that the console is spitting out. That will
probably let you see what it needs to receive in order for it to work.

Hope that helps.

Richard B. Ingraham
RBI Computers and Audio
http://www.rbicompaudio.20m.com

[John Leonard]

Rasmus,

Thanks,

Yes, I'm using Table mode - should have mentioned that!

Regards,