7 The Nucleus, from Solid State Logic, is a 16 fader Mackie Control
8 device that includes many buttons, separate meters, two LCD displays
9 and other features. The device is not cheap (around US$5000 at the
10 time of writing), and has some <a href="#design">design features</a>
11 (or lack thereof) which some Ardour developers find
12 questionable. Nevertheless, it is a very flexible device, and makes
13 a nice 16 fader surface without the need to somehow attach an
14 extender to your main surface.
17 <h2>Pre-configuring the Nucleus</h2>
20 Your Nucleus comes complete with a number of "profiles" for a few
21 well-known DAWs. At the time of writing it does not include one for
22 Ardour (or related products such as Harrison Mixbus). This is
23 unfortunate because although Ardour could easily be used with any of
24 the existing profiles, one thing they all have in common is a
25 remarkably large of buttons not assigned to Mackie Control
26 functions. This means that using one of them will "waste" the
27 buttons, a resource that the Nucleus is not particularly rich in
28 (compared with some other Mackie Control devices).
31 We have prepared a profile in which as many buttons as possible send
32 Mackie Control messages, which makes the device maximally useful
33 with Ardour (and Mixbus). You can
34 download <a href="https://community.ardour.org/files/ArdourNucleusProfile.zip">profile</a>
35 and load it to your Nucleus using the <code>Edit Profiles</code>
36 button in SSL's Nucleus Remote application. Be sure to select it for
37 the active DAW layer in order to make Ardour work as well as
38 possible. <em>Note: unfortunately, the Nucleus Remote application
39 only runs on OS X or Windows, so Linux users will need access to
40 another system to load the profile. We will provide notes on the
41 profile settings at a future time.</em>
44 <h2>Connecting the Nucleus</h2>
47 Unlike most Mackie Control devices, the Nucleus uses an ethernet
48 connection to send and receive the MIDI messages that make up the
49 Mackie Control protocol. Specifically, it uses a technology called
50 "ipMIDI" which essentially "broadcasts" MIDI messages on a local
51 area network, so that any connected devices (computers, control
52 surfaces, tablets etc.) can participate.
55 All other DAWs so far that support the Nucleus have chosen to do so
56 by using a 3rd party MIDI driver called "ipMIDI", which creates a
57 number of "virtual" MIDI ports on your computer. You, the user,
58 tells the DAW which ports to connect to, and ipMIDI takes care of
62 Ardour has builtin ipMIDI support, with no need of any 3rd party
63 packages, and no need to identify the "ports" to connect to in order
64 to communicate with the Nucleus. This makes setting it up a bit
65 easier than most other systems.
68 Unless ... you already installed the ipMIDI driver in order to use
69 some other DAW with your Nucleus. If ipMIDI is configured to create
70 any "ports", it is not possible for Ardour's own ipMIDI support to
71 function. We decided to offer both methods of communicating with
72 your Nucleus. If you regularly use other DAWs, and appreciate having
73 ipMIDI permanently set up to communication with the Nucleus - that's
74 OK, you can tell Ardour to use the ipMIDI driver you already
75 have. But if you're not using other DAWs with the Nucleus (and thus
76 have not installed the ipMIDI driver), then you can ignore the
77 ipMIDI driver entirely, and let Ardour connect directly with no
81 <h3>Connecting via Ardour's own ipMIDI support</h3>
83 <p class="alert alert-info">
84 This is usable only on computers with no 3rd party ipMIDI
85 driver software installed and configured. If you have the OS X or
86 Windows ipMIDI driver from nerds.de, it <strong>MUST</strong> be
87 configured to offer <strong>ZERO</strong> ports before using this
92 Open <code>Preferences > Control Surfaces</code>. Ensure that the
93 Mackie protocol is enabled, then double-click on it to open the
94 Mackie Control setup dialog.
97 Ensure that the device selected is "SSL Nucleus". The dialog should
98 show a single numerical selector control below it, defining the
99 ipMIDI port number to use (it should almost always be left at the
100 default value of 21928).
103 Communication is automatically established with the Nucleus and you
104 need do nothing more.
107 If this does not work, then make sure your network cables are
108 properly connected, and that you are <strong>not</strong> running
109 other ipMIDI software on the computer.
112 <h3>Connecting via 3rd party ipMIDI support</h3>
114 <p class="alert alert-info">
115 This is usable only on computers with 3rd party ipMIDI
116 driver software installed and configured for (at least) 2 ports.
120 Open <code>Preferences > Control Surfaces</code>. Ensure that the
121 Mackie protocol is enabled, then double-click on it to open the
122 Mackie Control setup dialog.
125 Ensure that the device selected is "SSL Nucleus (via platform MIDI)". The dialog should
126 show four combo/dropdown selectors, labelled (respectively):
129 <li><code>Main Surface receives via</code></li>
130 <li><code>Main Surface sends via</code></li>
131 <li><code>1st extender receives via</code></li>
132 <li><code>1st extender sends via</code></li>
135 You should choose "ipMIDI port 1", "ipMIDI port 1", "ipMIDI port 2"
136 and "ipMIDI port 2" for each of the 4 combo/dropdown selectors.
139 Communication should be automatically established with the Nucleus.
142 If this does not work, then make sure your network cables are
143 properly connected, and that you are running the approprate ipMIDI
144 driver and have configured it for 2 (or more) ports.
147 <h2><a name="design">Nucleus Design Discussion</a></h2>
150 You might be reading this part of the manual seeking some guidance
151 on whether the Nucleus would make a suitable control surface for
152 your workflows. We don't want to try to answer that question
153 definitively, since the real answer depends on the very specific
154 details of your workflow and situation, but we would like to point
155 out a number of design features of the Nucleus that might change
161 <dt>No Master Faster</dt>
162 <dd>It is not possible to control the level of the Master bus or
163 Monitor section. Really don't know what SSL was thinking here.</dd>
164 <dt>No dedicated rec-enable buttons</dt>
165 <dd>You have to press the "Rec" button and convert the per-strip
166 "Select" buttons into rec-enables</dd>
167 <dt>No dedicated automation buttons</dt>
168 <dd>You have to press the "Auto" button and convert the first 4
169 vpots into 4 automation-related buttons, losing your current view
171 <dt>No buttons with Mackie-defined "Marker" functionality</dt>
172 <dd>Mackie's design intentions for the interoperation of the
173 Marker, rewind and ffwd buttons requires profile editing in order
174 to function properly.
176 <dt>No "Dyn" button</dt>
177 <dd>This is hard to assign in an edited profile. To be fair, other
178 Mackie Control devices also lack this button.
184 <dt>Single cable connectivity</dt>
185 <dd>No need for multiple MIDI cables to get 16 faders</dd>
186 <dt>Broadcast connectivity</dt>
187 <dd>Connecting to multiple computers does not require recabling</dd>
188 <dt>16 faders from a single box</dt>
189 <dd>No need to figure out how to keep extenders together</dd>
190 <dt>Meters separated from displays</dt>
191 <dd>Contrast with the Mackie Control Universal Pro, where meters
192 interfere with the display
194 <dt>DAW profiles</dt>
195 <dd>Easy to flip profiles for use by different DAWs.</dd>
201 <dt>Ability to make buttons generate USB keyboard events</dt>
202 <dd>The extent to which this is useful reflects the target DAWs
203 inability to manage all of its functionality via Mackie Control
205 <dt>Sophisticated "profile" editing</dt>
206 <dd>It is nice to be able to reassign the functionality of most
207 buttons, but this is only necessary because of the relatively few
208 global buttons on the surface.
210 <dt>Builtin analog signal path</dt>
211 <dd>SSL clearly expects users to route audio back from their
212 computer via the Nucleus' own 2 channel output path, and maybe even
213 use the input path as well. They take up a significant amount of
214 surface space with the controls for this signal path, space that
215 could have been used for a master fader or more Mackie Control
216 buttons. The USB audio device requires a proprietary driver, so
217 Linux users can't use this, and OS X/Windows users will have to
218 install a device driver (very odd for a USB audio device these
219 days). The analog path also no doubt adds notable cost to the
220 Nucleus. There's nothing wrong with this feature for users that
221 don't already have a working analog/digital signal path for their
222 computers. But who is going to spend $5000 on a Nucleus that
223 doesn't have this already?</dd>