Mackie Control

Support

Built-in

Provided schemes

DAW

Introduction

Although the term "Mackie Control" refers to a real controller device, it’s nowadays most famous as a protocol standard for DAW controllers. This particular ReaLearn controller preset supports large parts of this standard. You can think of this standard as …

1. an agreement which buttons/faders/encoders/LCDs/etc. a proper DAW controller should have,

2. which MIDI messages they send and receive

3. and which effect the control elements should have on the DAW.

It’s not magic, it’s mostly just an agreement on which MIDI messages to use - which is very useful because this agreement is what makes it possible that different DAW controllers of all kinds of manufacturers can instantly work with any DAW that supports the Mackie Control protocol.

If you have a (DAW) controller device which supports the Mackie Control standard, you don’t necessarily need to find a specific preset for your controller or craft your own one, you can just use the "Mackie Control Universal" preset.

Note

Because this is a controller preset, this preset is only about: Virtual control element naming and mapping of MIDI messages to those virtual control elements! It’s not about the effect, e.g. letting the fader control your track volume! In order to get an effect, you need to choose a suitable main preset or build some main custom mappings yourself (it’s very easy because that’s what ReaLearn is all about!). There’s one main preset called DAW control in the Helgoboss ReaPack repository which makes extensive usage of the capabilities of the Mackie Control preset. If you need inspiration or help how to build main presets for the Mackie Control preset, have a look at it!

In addition to getting descriptive control element naming (e.g. play or stop), using this preset should give you instant compatibility with some main presets available on the Helgoboss ReaPack repository.

When you create main mappings using this controller preset, you can - as always - use the "Learn" function. However, Mackie-compatible controllers often have displays, which you can of course not learn because they are not control elements. They can only display things, so they only support the feedback direction. You can make use of them by choosing the corresponding virtual source (Multi):

Virtual control element ID	Display	Description
lcd/assignment	7-segment assignment display	Allows you to display a number between 00 and 99. Use an arbitrary feedback-enabled target to make it display the value as percentage. As with all kind of numeric feedback (also motorized faders and LEDs), you can use e.g. the mapping’s Source/Target Min/Max settings to adjust the displayed value range. This display also supports text feedback but that’s not very useful with only 2 letters.
lcd/timecode	7-segment timecode display	Allows you to display digits but also rudimentary text. It’s typically used to display a time, e.g. the time of the current play position. For this use case, simply combine it with the target Project: Seek target, choose Textual feedback in the Glue section and enter one of the *.mcu placeholders in the text expression field, for example {{target.position.project_default.mcu}}. You can project arbitrary text on this display but because it’s just a 7-segment display, some letters are not very readable.
ch*/lcd/line1	First line of a channel display	This display supports all latin characters. You can use it with all kinds of targets with both numeric and textual feedback. You need to replace the asterisk with the desired channel number (a number between 1 and 8), e.g. ch1/lcd/line1.
ch*/lcd/line2	Second line of a channel display	Same as above, just the second line. If you want to target both lines at once because your text is quite long, you can do that by using the MIDI Display source and setting Line to <Multiline>. But keep in mind that this will tie your main preset to Mackie Displays. The advantage of making it work with a virtual control element is that it will be compatible with non-Mackie controllers that use the same virtual control element naming.

Presets

Use the corresponding factory controller preset!