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> and
35 load it to your Nucleus using the <code>Edit Profiles</code> button
36 in SSL's Nucleus Remote application. Be sure to select it for the
37 active DAW layer in order to make Ardour work as well as possible.
40 <h2>Connecting the Nucleus</h2>
43 Unlike most Mackie Control devices, the Nucleus uses an ethernet
44 connection to send and receive the MIDI messages that make up the
45 Mackie Control protocol. Specifically, it uses a technology called
46 "ipMIDI" which essentially "broadcasts" MIDI messages on a local
47 area network, so that any connected devices (computers, control
48 surfaces, tablets etc.) can participate.
51 All other DAWs so far that support the Nucleus have chosen to do so
52 by using a 3rd party MIDI driver called "ipMIDI", which creates a
53 number of "virtual" MIDI ports on your computer. You, the user,
54 tells the DAW which ports to connect to, and ipMIDI takes care of
58 Ardour has builtin ipMIDI support, with no need of any 3rd party
59 packages, and no need to identify the "ports" to connect to in order
60 to communicate with the Nucleus. This makes setting it up a bit
61 easier than most other systems.
64 Unless ... you already installed the ipMIDI driver in order to use
65 some other DAW with your Nucleus. If ipMIDI is configured to create
66 any "ports", it is not possible for Ardour's own ipMIDI support to
67 function. We decided to offer both methods of communicating with
68 your Nucleus. If you regularly use other DAWs, and appreciate having
69 ipMIDI permanently set up to communication with the Nucleus - that's
70 OK, you can tell Ardour to use the ipMIDI driver you already
71 have. But if you're not using other DAWs with the Nucleus (and thus
72 have not installed the ipMIDI driver), then you can ignore the
73 ipMIDI driver entirely, and let Ardour connect directly with no
77 <h3>Connecting via Ardour's own ipMIDI support</h3>
79 <p class="alert alert-info">
80 This is usable only on computers with no 3rd party ipMIDI
81 driver software installed and configured. If you have the OS X or
82 Windows ipMIDI driver from nerds.de, it <strong>MUST</strong> be
83 configured to offer <strong>ZERO</strong> ports before using this
88 Open <code>Preferences > Control Surfaces</code>. Ensure that the
89 Mackie protocol is enabled, then double-click on it to open the
90 Mackie Control setup dialog.
93 Ensure that the device selected is "SSL Nucleus". The dialog should
94 show a single numerical selector control below it, defining the
95 ipMIDI port number to use (it should almost always be left at the
96 default value of 21928).
99 Communication is automatically established with the Nucleus and you
100 need do nothing more.
103 If this does not work, then make sure your network cables are
104 properly connected, and that you are <strong>not</strong> running
105 other ipMIDI software on the computer.
108 <h3>Connecting via 3rd party ipMIDI support</h3>
110 <p class="alert alert-info">
111 This is usable only on computers with 3rd party ipMIDI
112 driver software installed and configured for (at least) 2 ports.
116 Open <code>Preferences > Control Surfaces</code>. Ensure that the
117 Mackie protocol is enabled, then double-click on it to open the
118 Mackie Control setup dialog.
121 Ensure that the device selected is "SSL Nucleus (via platform MIDI)". The dialog should
122 show four combo/dropdown selectors, labelled (respectively):
125 <li><code>Main Surface receives via</code></li>
126 <li><code>Main Surface sends via</code></li>
127 <li><code>1st extender receives via</code></li>
128 <li><code>1st extender sends via</code></li>
131 You should choose "ipMIDI port 1", "ipMIDI port 1", "ipMIDI port 2"
132 and "ipMIDI port 2" for each of the 4 combo/dropdown selectors.
135 Communication should be automatically established with the Nucleus.
138 If this does not work, then make sure your network cables are
139 properly connected, and that you are running the approprate ipMIDI
140 driver and have configured it for 2 (or more) ports.
143 <h2><a name="design">Nucleus Design Discussion</a></h2>
146 You might be reading this part of the manual seeking some guidance
147 on whether the Nucleus would make a suitable control surface for
148 your workflows. We don't want to try to answer that question
149 definitively, since the real answer depends on the very specific
150 details of your workflow and situation, but we would like to point
151 out a number of design features of the Nucleus that might change
157 <dt>No Master Faster</dt>
158 <dd>It is not possible to control the level of the Master bus or
159 Monitor section. Really don't know what SSL was thinking here.</dd>
160 <dt>No dedicated rec-enable buttons</dt>
161 <dd>You have to press the "Rec" button and convert the per-strip
162 "Select" buttons into rec-enables</dd>
163 <dt>No dedicated automation buttons</dt>
164 <dd>You have to press the "Auto" button and convert the first 4
165 vpots into 4 automation-related buttons, losing your current view
167 <dt>No buttons with Mackie-defined "Marker" functionality</dt>
168 <dd>Mackie's design intentions for the interoperation of the
169 Marker, rewind and ffwd buttons requires profile editing in order
170 to function properly.
172 <dt>No "Dyn" button</dt>
173 <dd>This is hard to assign in an edited profile. To be fair, other
174 Mackie Control devices also lack this button.
180 <dt>Single cable connectivity</dt>
181 <dd>No need for multiple MIDI cables to get 16 faders</dd>
182 <dt>Broadcast connectivity</dt>
183 <dd>Connecting to multiple computers does not require recabling</dd>
184 <dt>16 faders from a single box</dt>
185 <dd>No need to figure out how to keep extenders together</dd>
186 <dt>Meters separated from displays</dt>
187 <dd>Contrast with the Mackie Control Universal Pro, where meters
188 interfere with the display
190 <dt>DAW profiles</dt>
191 <dd>Easy to flip profiles for use by different DAWs.</dd>
197 <dt>Ability to make buttons generate USB keyboard events</dt>
198 <dd>The extent to which this is useful reflects the target DAWs
199 inability to manage all of its functionality via Mackie Control
201 <dt>Sophisticated "profile" editing</dt>
202 <dd>It is nice to be able to reassign the functionality of most
203 buttons, but this is only necessary because of the relatively few
204 global buttons on the surface.
206 <dt>Builtin analog signal path</dt>
207 <dd>SSL clearly expects users to route audio back from their
208 computer via the Nucleus' own 2 channel output path, and maybe even
209 use the input path as well. They take up a significant amount of
210 surface space with the controls for this signal path, space that
211 could have been used for a master fader or more Mackie Control
212 buttons. The USB audio device requires a proprietary driver, so
213 Linux users can't use this, and OS X/Windows users will have to
214 install a device driver (very odd for a USB audio device these
215 days). The analog path also no doubt adds notable cost to the
216 Nucleus. There's nothing wrong with this feature for users that
217 don't already have a working analog/digital signal path for their
218 computers. But who is going to spend $5000 on a Nucleus that
219 doesn't have this already?</dd>