MIDI control surfaces

Fauste Player can be played from MIDI controllers: pad and fader controllers, DJ-style surfaces or keyboards. Each player’s transport buttons and volume fader can be bound to a button, a key or a fader, and buttons with lights show what each player is doing.

Turning it on

Open Settings → MIDI and tick Use MIDI control surfaces. The list under Input ports shows every MIDI input the computer has and whether it is connected. Only the controllers you have bound are opened (some systems give a port to one program at a time), plus every input while you are learning a control; the program never listens to its own ports. Controllers can be plugged in or out while the program runs: every couple of seconds the ports are looked for again, and a controller that comes back is connected by its name, with its lights set again.

On Linux, MIDI goes through ALSA: your user must be allowed to open the sequencer (/dev/snd/seq, usually by being in the audio group).

Binding a control

For every player there is a row per action: Play / Next, Pause, Stop, Fade stop, Restart, Previous, CUE and Volume.

1. Click Learn on the row.
2. Press the button or move the fader you want (it says Move a control… meanwhile). A button takes a key, a pad or a button that sends a control change; Volume takes a fader or knob (a control change) or a pitch-bend fader.
3. The row shows the device and the control, for example APC mini · Note 36, channel 1.

If that control was already bound to another action, it moves to this one. Esc or clicking the button again cancels learning. Clear removes a binding.

How the controls behave

• A button acts when it is pressed (a key or pad going down, or a control change going up through the middle of its range), exactly like the player’s button on screen. A button that is dimmed on screen does nothing.
• A fader moves the volume on the same scale as the on-screen fader. To avoid jumps, it only takes over when it reaches or passes the current volume (soft takeover); if the volume is changed on screen, the fader has to catch it up again. Nothing changes until you move a control: starting the program never sends anything on air.
• A volume binding of a player whose Main output is bit-perfect does nothing: its volume is held at 100 %. Once the output is no longer bit-perfect, move the control to the top to pick the volume up again.
• Play/Next and Previous on such a player switch at once, without a crossfade. Their lights work as usual.
• With Light the buttons (LED feedback) on, bound buttons light up: Play while the player is on air, Pause blinking while paused, CUE while pre-listening, and Stop, Fade stop, Restart and Previous while they can act. The lights go to the controller’s output port of the same name; a different one can be set in config.json (midi.devices).