nucleus: more pros and cons

[ardour-manual-diverged] / _manual / 22_using-control-surfaces / 02_devices-using-mackielogic-control-protocol / 02_ssl-nucleus.html

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layout: default
title: SSL Nucleus
---

<p>
  The Nucleus, from Solid State Logic, is a 16 fader Mackie Control
  device that includes many buttons, separate meters, two LCD displays
  and other features. The device is not cheap (around US$5000 at the
  time of writing), and has some <a href="#design">design features</a>
  (or lack thereof) which some Ardour developers find
  questionable. Nevertheless, it is a very flexible device, and makes
  a nice 16 fader surface without the need to somehow attach an
  extender to your main surface.
</p>

<h2>Pre-configuring the Nucleus</h2>

<p>
  Your Nucleus comes complete with a number of "profiles" for a few
  well-known DAWs. At the time of writing it does not include one for
  Ardour (or related products such as Harrison Mixbus). This is
  unfortunate because although Ardour could easily be used with any of
  the existing profiles, one thing they all have in common is a
  remarkably large of buttons not assigned to Mackie Control
  functions. This means that using one of them will "waste" the
  buttons, a resource that the Nucleus is not particularly rich in
  (compared with some other Mackie Control devices).
</p>

<h2>Connecting the Nucleus</h2>

<p>
  Unlike most Mackie Control devices, the Nucleus uses an ethernet
  connection to send and receive the MIDI messages that make up the
  Mackie Control protocol. Specifically, it uses a technology called
  "ipMIDI" which essentially "broadcasts" MIDI messages on a local
  area network, so that any connected devices (computers, control
  surfaces, tablets etc.) can participate.
</p>
<p>
  All other DAWs so far that support the Nucleus have chosen to do so
  by using a 3rd party MIDI driver called "ipMIDI", which creates a
  number of "virtual" MIDI ports on your computer. You, the user,
  tells the DAW which ports to connect to, and ipMIDI takes care of
  the rest.
</p>
<p>
  Ardour has builtin ipMIDI support, with no need of any 3rd party
  packages, and no need to identify the "ports" to connect to in order
  to communicate with the Nucleus. This makes setting it up a bit
  easier than most other systems.
</p>
<p>
  Unless ... you already installed the ipMIDI driver in order to use
  some other DAW with your Nucleus. If ipMIDI is configured to create
  any "ports", it is not possible for Ardour's own ipMIDI support to
  function. We decided to offer both methods of communicating with
  your Nucleus. If you regularly use other DAWs, and appreciate having
  ipMIDI permanently set up to communication with the Nucleus - that's
  OK, you can tell Ardour to use the ipMIDI driver you already
  have. But if you're not using other DAWs with the Nucleus (and thus
  have not installed the ipMIDI driver), then you can ignore the
  ipMIDI driver entirely, and let Ardour connect directly with no
  configuration.
</p>

<h3>Connecting via Ardour's own ipMIDI support</h3>

<p class="alert alert-info">
  This is usable only on computers with no 3rd party ipMIDI
  driver software installed and configured. If you have the OS X or
  Windows ipMIDI driver from nerds.de, it <strong>MUST</strong> be
  configured to offer <strong>ZERO</strong> ports before using this
  method.
</p>

<p>
  Open <code>Preferences > Control Surfaces</code>. Ensure that the
  Mackie protocol is enabled, then double-click on it to open the
  Mackie Control setup dialog.
</p>
<p>
  Ensure that the device selected is "SSL Nucleus". The dialog should
  show a single numerical selector control below it, defining the
  ipMIDI port number to use (it should almost always be left at the
  default value of 21928).
</p>
<p>
  Communication is automatically established with the Nucleus and you
  need do nothing more.
</p>
<p>
  If this does not work, then make sure your network cables are
  properly connected, and that you are <strong>not</strong> running
  other ipMIDI software on the computer.
</p>

<h3>Connecting via 3rd party ipMIDI support</h3>

<p class="alert alert-info">
  This is usable only on computers with 3rd party ipMIDI
  driver software installed and configured for (at least) 2 ports.
</p>

<p>
  Open <code>Preferences > Control Surfaces</code>. Ensure that the
  Mackie protocol is enabled, then double-click on it to open the
  Mackie Control setup dialog.
</p>
<p>
  Ensure that the device selected is "SSL Nucleus (via platform MIDI)". The dialog should
  show four combo/dropdown selectors, labelled (respectively):
</p>
  <ul>
    <li><code>Main Surface receives via</code></li>
    <li><code>Main Surface sends via</code></li>
    <li><code>1st extender receives via</code></li>
    <li><code>1st extender sends via</code></li>
  </ul>
<p>
  You should choose "ipMIDI port 1", "ipMIDI port 1", "ipMIDI port 2"
  and "ipMIDI port 2" for each of the 4 combo/dropdown selectors. 
</p>
<p>
  Communication should be automatically established with the Nucleus.
</p>
<p>
  If this does not work, then make sure your network cables are
  properly connected, and that you are running the approprate ipMIDI
  driver and have configured it for 2 (or more) ports.
</p>

<h2><a name="design">Nucleus Design Discussion</a></h2>

<p>
  You might be reading this part of the manual seeking some guidance
  on whether the Nucleus would make a suitable control surface for
  your workflows. We don't want to try to answer that question
  definitively, since the real answer depends on the very specific
  details of your workflow and situation, but we would like to point
  out a number of design features of the Nucleus that might change
  your opinion.
</p>

<h3>Cons</h3>
<dl>
  <dt>No Master Faster</dt>
  <dd>It is not possible to control the level of the Master bus or
  Monitor section. Really don't know what SSL was thinking here.</dd>
  <dt>No dedicated rec-enable buttons</dt>
  <dd>You have to press the "Rec" button and convert the per-strip
    "Select" buttons into rec-enables</dd>
  <dt>No dedicated automation buttons</dt>
  <dd>You have to press the "Auto" button and convert the first 4
  vpots into 4 automation-related buttons, losing your current view
    of the session.</dd>
  <dt>No buttons with Mackie-defined "Marker" functionality</dt>
  <dd>Mackie's design intentions for the interoperation of the
    Marker, rewind and ffwd buttons requires profile editing in order
    to function properly.
  </dd>
  <dt>No "Dyn" button</dt>
  <dd>This is hard to assign in an edited profile. To be fair, other
    Mackie Control devices also lack this button.
  </dd>
</dl>

<h3>Pros</h3>
<dl>
  <dt>Single cable connectivity</dt>
  <dd>No need for multiple MIDI cables to get 16 faders</dd>
  <dt>Broadcast connectivity</dt>
  <dd>Connecting to multiple computers does not require recabling</dd>
  <dt>15 faders from a single box</dt>
  <dd>No need to figure out how to keep extenders together</dd>
  <dt>Meters separated from displays</dt>
  <dd>Contrast with the Mackie Control Universal Pro, where meters
    interfere with the display
  </dd>
  <dt>DAW profiles</dt>
  <dd>Easy to flip profiles for use by different DAWs.</dd>
</dl>


<h3>Ambiguous</h3>
<dl>
  <dt>Ability to make buttons generate USB keyboard events</dt>
  <dd>The extent to which this is useful reflects the target DAWs
    inability to manage all of its functionality via Mackie Control
  </dd>
  <dt>Sophisticated "profile" editing</dt>
  <dd>It is nice to be able to reassign the functionality of most
    buttons, but this is only necessary because of the relatively few
    global buttons on the surface.
  </dd>
  <dt>Builtin analog signal path</dt>
  <dd>SSL clearly expects users to route audio back from their
  computer via the Nucleus' own 2 channel output path, and maybe even
  use the input path as well. They take up a significant amount of
  surface space with the controls for this signal path, space that
  could have been used for a master fader or more Mackie Control
  buttons. The USB audio device requires a proprietary driver, so
  Linux users can't use this, and OS X/Windows users will have to
  install a device driver (very odd for a USB audio device these
  days). The analog path also no doubt adds notable cost to the
  Nucleus. There's nothing wrong with this feature for users that
  don't already have a working analog/digital signal path for their
  computers. But who is going to spend $5000 on a Nucleus that
  doesn't have this already?</dd>
</dl>