Akai MIDI MIX - Button LED's

Hi Guys n Gals,

I just bought an Akai MidiMix to use with GP and its working great. However I can’t seem to get the mute and rec/arm buttons to light up. I’ve configured the MidiMix to only send CC on all controls via their editor.
I’m using the buttons to switch in and out various fx etc, but have to look at the widgets to see what’s on and off.
It’s not a huge dealbreaker , but would be really handy when I’m using it live on stage.

Any help would be great.

Did you activate the Sync option in the MIDI tab of the widget properties for the widgets button mapped to these controls?

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I’ll give that a try and report back. But I don’t think I did ! Fingers crossed :crossed_fingers:

Did Sync work out on the Akai?

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Haven’t had chance to try yet as I’ve been gigging. I’ll post as soon as I’ve tried it out

Sync should work. There is a new widget feature called “Follow Hardware”. Not sure when that option should be picked and if there is a scenario for both options to be picked. Check the help for both options.

Follow Hardware updates a widget’s value associated with a hardware control to the current value of the hardware when you switch to a new rackspace that contains that widget.

I see. So if you have a widget that has Sync turned on but the option to set the value on rackspace activation is not checked, then “Follow Hardware” can be used to update the widget with the current state of the hardware. Is that right?

Sync is independent of this.

The Follow Hardware mechanism is a new feature in 4.5

Normally, when you switch to a new rackspace, a widget will be set to its last saved value, or to some explicitly defined value, regardless of the value of an associated hardware control.

When you enable Follow Hardware for a widget in some rackspace and you later switch to that rackspace, the widget be set automatically to the current value of the hardware control with which the widget is associated.

This means, for example, that if you have a widget in several rackspaces, associated with your volume pedal, say, then when you switch rackspaces, the widget in the new rackspace will be set to the volume pedal position,

Before this mechanism, you would have needed to have your volume widget in the global rackspace.

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If the LEDs on your controller can be lit up with midi - just enabling the sync option should work.

Haven’t had chance to try yet as I’ve been gigging.

Testing this really takes about 30sec.

Start GP, drop button widget and connect to your midi device LED , make sure that you can now switch it on/off with the controller.

Enable the sync button and press the widget on your screen. Does it lite up your hardware or not?

Please take these few seconds, test this and report back. People are trying to help you but you have to still be interested in getting an answer to your question.

Thanks!

I can confirm it doesnt work with the akai mixer after i changed all the hardware buttons to cc control. It used to work by just enabling the sync but then the buttons were configured as note on/off messages, which for certain controls are impractical.
But im definately switchibg the buttons that were working for me as note on/off back as its rather hard to not have the visual feedback.

Without having the hardware for closer testing, it is quite difficult to figure out how it works. e.g. with my control surface, whatever is the buttons are configured as CC or note messages, it need a note off with the same note # as the CC# for which the velocity is coding the button LED state (velocity 127 = light on, velocity 0 = light off). I then have to use a script to sync the LED to the widgets.

Hi everyone, I’m new here. The discussion is a bit dated but maybe my experience can help someone. I have successfully connected two Akai MidiMix to GP and everything works perfectly including the key LEDs that respond correctly. So one or more MidiMix can be done and everything works. Among other things, with some surprise because the MidiMix were in the original configuration the one foreseen for Ableto Live. So with the keys that behave like noet ON or note OFF.

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@Gianluca132 and welcome here. Does this mean you are using the “factory default” mapping of the MIDIMix units, and you have not used the AKAI utility to change the internals of the MIDIMix units?

@kevinf Yes that’s right, I’m using the default mapping, the one with which the MidiMix is sold.

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Will all buttons light or just specific ones?
Have you a demo gigfile with it working?
Cannot get mine to work

Not all buttons on the MIDIMix have a LED behind . The SOLO button and the SEND ALL button don’t have and therefore can never be illuminared. But all the others work fine and respond perfectly. The important thing is to activate Sync in the MIDI functions associated with the button you are setting up and associate that button with some function on a plugin. From that moment the MIDIMix LED will perfectly follow the status of the function of the plugin to which it is associated.

Hey thanks man

@Gianluca132 I have an old little AKAI MPK Mini Mk II. I’m making the assumption there’s some similarity in how the firmware handles the LED buttons, between the MIDIMIX and mine which may be a wrong assumption.

Does this mean there’s MIDI to the MIDIMIX possible that will discreet on/off these lit buttons (and do their normal function), or is this being done by pushing and pulling the SYSYEX table? Is this a whole area of Gig Performer my towering ignorance has hidden from me?

If anybody knows how to poll and “push” the SYSEX data that can control these things like A/B select, CC enable and PC, even 4 pad/encoder layer states, GPScripted or not, that would be SO cool.

I’m thinking the schema would be to set a controller button; ask the controller for its SYSEX in that state, change the button, (“train” if you will) get the SYSEX again, compare to find the relevant hex difference, and then include that in I guess a function that toggles or cycles through that button’s states.

Perhaps somebody here has already crushed all this, but in a generic way that applies to all possible controllers, or there’s already SYSEX functionality that does it and a half (or does the halves you would need) in GPscript and I’m just still wandering in my desert.

Any thoughts? Warnings? Prohibitions? Shots over my bow? Page references?

It seems that it worked out of the box using the SYNC option in the MIDI tab of the widget properties.

Thinks usually don’t work like that. Either there is a MIDI chat in the manual which explains this or perhaps the MIDI devices produces SysEx when pushing a button or acting on a fader, then the global GP MIDI monitor will display it and we can start something with GPScript.

However, I wouldn’t do any assumption regarding similarities between different MIDI devices in the same brand.