A-800PRO integration with GP

Hardware
1

This may be beyond the scope of the community, but I’m having issues getting my A-800PRO controller setup to work in GP. It may be a controller issue more than a GP issue, but I’m hoping someone can point me in the right direction to resolve my issues. Thanks in advance.

I recently purchased an A-800PRO to use with GP. I’m having issues with having both the keyboard and the controllers being recognized at the same time in GP. It seems as though some of the controllers use Port 2 and the keyboard uses Port 1.

When I try to assign controllers to Port 1 and transmit the Controller Map to the A-800, they seem to still be recognized in GP as coming in on Port 2. They show as assigned to Port 1 in the A-PRO editor.

Also, I’m not having any luck getting the pads to utilize bi-directional sync so that the pad will stay lit when it is latched on. I’ve tried setting the pad to LATCH, but still doesn’t work in GP.

Any help will be appreciated.

2

You have different custom slots for controller maps. You have to select to right slot in the editor before transmitting. And then you also select this maping slot on your keyboard.

3

For what it’s worth — I use three of these controllers with GP in a live situation. My general rule:

  1. Factory reset them
  2. Use the Rig Manager to learn everything “out of the box”

I’m not sure if it is actually possible to do bi-directional sync with those pads though.

4

No, bidirectional communication with the A800pro is unfortunately not possible. So if you change the status of a Gig Performer widget, e.g. with the mouse, this change cannot be communicated to the pads on the keyboard, for example.

5

So you don’t set up the controller with specific settings and then save them to the device?

6

I’ve tried using the editor to assign all the controllers to PORT 1. It doesn’t seem to work the way I’m expecting. I’ll keep trying.

7

That’s unfortunate. I thought that if I set the buttons to “latch” in the APRO editor, it might work with the bi-directional midi.

8

Never - with none of my controllers. I always use factory settings if feasible. Several reasons:

  1. Consider: why do you care what CC number (say) a particular knob, slider or button generates. As long as they’re unique, you just let Gig Performer learn them and then you do whatever associations you need with parameters (say) using widgets. I have absolutely no idea what CC values those things produce on my keyboards (or control surfaces for that matter)

  2. Imagine you’re on tour where the backline is being provided by the venue and you show up for sound check to discover they didn’t have the control surface your wanted or imagine you’re about to get up on stage and your keyboard fails and you need a quick replacement. You are not going to have time to learn the generally very obscure commands needed to program your replacement keyboard so that the knobs and sliders send out the same CC messages you were using with your other keyboard (if you can even remember them!). It is simply way easier to have Gig Performer just relearn the CC messages for your replacement keyboard using GP’s Rig Manager

1 Like
9

dhj - excellent insight. That’s why I came here!

10

Thanks…the real paradigm shift is moving away from configuring controllers at all and instead doing everything from GP. For example, if you want to split the keyboard, don’t do it by creating split points on the keyboard itself but instead just use multiple MidiIn blocks

1 Like
11

That I do…it’s a great way to split and layer and I do that all the time. Fortunately, I never used controllers before coming to GP, so I don’t have to unlearn that habit😉.

I think the only change I really need to make is to set the pads to latching for some instances so that I can use them as off/on indicators.

Thanks again for the insight.