Does Hapax have an equivalent to Hermod’s “Active Track” setting?
I have a number of MIDI synths with their own keyboards, like my CP-73, Sub 37 and Matriarch, along with some eurorack synth voices that I control over MIDI with an Expert Sleepers FH-2.
With Hermod, I had my synths set up so that each I could play each synth with its own keyboard, regardless of which track was active (eg. even if the Sub 37 track was active, I could play the Matriarch keyboard and hear the Matriarch) but I also had the CP-73 set up with the “Active Track” setting, so that if the CP-73 track was active, I could play the CP-73 and hear the CP-73, but if the Sub 37 track was active and I played the CP-73, I’d hear the Sub 37 (and the same for every other synth).
I haven’t seen any mention of a feature like this in the manual. I’m looking at the “all active” track input setting, but while that would seemingly allow me to play the CP-73 to control whichever track was active, it wouldn’t allow me to simultaneously play the Sub 37 keyboard and hear the Sub 37.
I’m hoping this is in there, because it’s something I’d consider to be table stakes for a device like this, but I can’t find it. Help?
it can either be set explicitly , so MID A, ch1 (or even MIDI A 1-16)
or to ALL active - so listens to all inputs, but only when track is active.
so you could set track 1-4 , say as active input
and track 5-8 as MIDI A channel 5-6
what id need to test, and I think is part of your question is:
if track 1 (active track) is active, and I play on midi A channel 5… does track 1 automatically ignore this because its being used on a specific track?
( I guess this might be logical?)
but honestly, the way I set things up is rather one way or another…
so I either just use ‘active’ track OR set tracks with specific midi inputs
(really depends if I want to switch track control via my keyboard or hapax)
… I’ll give it a go now, as coincidentally, I need to re-record my bit on controller support for the hapax… as yesterday , I forgot to hit record for the audio (doh! )
TL;DR: There need to be a way for each synth to control its own track and also have one of those synths (or a separate controller) control whichever track is active, without impacting each synth’s control of its own track.
I will raise a feature request, but note that this functionality has been in Hermod for years, and is going to be an issue as soon as someone tries to both have a single MIDI controller like the Keystep set up to control the active track via “all active” but also has a synth connected that happens to have an LFO that generates any kind of MIDI CC messages.
Also, it sounds like you don’t quite understand what I’m asking for, since I’m not asking for PYRAMIDI (although external control of the device is something I will certainly ask for) but simply how to make sure tracks respond to MIDI note and CC data from a shared controller vs from per-track synths in a reliable way.
as I said in first reply, there is not active channel…
there is ALL active input … that cannot be filtered down any more than that
apart from that we have specific midi inputs.
im familiar with the pyramid/hermod and I don’t see any major difference.
esp, since pyramid only had the omni mode which was basically fixing channel->mapping
I guess one area, is something like automation, or for example fx cc modulation (via matrix) …
I believe that is currently fixed to the track input.
(honestly, I can’t remember if pyramid is allow learn across channels…)
Id need to test, but I don’t think you can say fix the track input to say DIN ch1 , then modulate the CC via usb ch5… as I think that would have to be very explicit in the UI (and its not) since otherwise in most (not all!) cases this is not what users would expect.
Look at the Hermod “Active Track” setting. It does this. Also, for example in Akai Force, you can set a MIDI device/channel to “Master” and it will do this. Both are a way to specify that a certain MIDI source will always send to the active track, without having to send all MIDI data to the active track, which is a bit heavy handed.
yes, I know this is how it works on the hermod.
it’s not how it works on hapax, as I said at the beginning, its done per track.
there is no concept of an active channel, which gets routed directly to the active track, regardless of its input filter.
could it be changed, Im sure it could… but its not how its working now.
going back to my earlier point…
it appears that ALL active does NOT filter out input sources that are allocated to other tracks… it simply accepts ALL input.
(so its not particular useful to mix using this active input and specific inputs)
I just want to have one controller plugged so that when I choose a track on the Hapax, the controller plays the synth assigned to that track. Perhaps this means having a choice in the MIDI In quadrant called “Active Track” and then that track only respond to the MIDI controller when it is the active track. Pyramid does this I am pretty sure.
The way that it works now is that I have to change the midi track on my controller every time I need to switch tracks (or only use the Hapax for note entry which isn’t velocity sensitive). The use case for using All Active inputs seems very small - like how often do I want to play the same thing across multiple tracks?
Active Track support was added in HapaxOS V1.12, so you can control whichever track is active by a dedicated controller. See the ACTIVE-TR PORT and ACTIVE-TR CH settings.