3 title: Using the Presonus Faderport
4 menu_title: Presonus Faderport
8 Since version 4.5, Ardour has had full support for the Presonus
9 Faderport. This is a compact control surface featuring a single
10 motorized fader, a single knob (encoder) and 24 buttons with fixed
11 labels. It is a relatively low-cost device that functions very well
12 to control a single (selected) track or bus, along with a variety of
13 other "global" settings and conditions.
16 <h2>Connecting the Faderport</h2>
18 The Faderport comes with a single USB socket on the back. Connect a
19 suitable USB cable from there to a USB port on your computer. As of
20 the end of 2015, you should avoid USB3 ports - these cause erratic
21 behaviour with the device. This issue might get fixed by Presonus in
25 Ardour uses the Faderport in what Presonus calls "native" mode. You
26 do not need to do anything to enable this - Ardour will set the
27 device to be in the correct mode. In native mode, the Faderport
28 sends and receives ordinary MIDI messages to/from the host, and the
29 host understands the intended meaning of these messages. We note
30 this detail to avoid speculation about whether Ardour supports the
31 device via the HUI protocol - it does not.
33 The Faderport will be automatically recognized by your operating
34 system, and will appear in any of the lists of possible MIDI ports
35 in both Ardour and other similar software.
38 To connect the Faderport to Ardour, open the Preferences dialog, and
39 then click on "Control Surfaces". Click on the "Enable" button
40 in the line that says "Faderport" in order to activate Ardour's
41 Faderport support. Then double click on the line that says
42 "Faderport". A new dialog will open, containing (among other things)
43 two dropdown selectors that will allow you to identify the MIDI
44 ports where your Faderport is connected.
47 <img alt="the Faderport configuration dialog"
48 src="/images/faderport_dialog.png">
51 Once you select the input and output port, Ardour will initialize
52 the Faderport and it will be ready to use. You only need do this
53 once: once these ports are connected and your session has been
54 saved, the connections will be made automatically in this and other
57 You do not need to use the power supply that comes with the
58 Faderport but without it, the fader will not be motorized. This
59 makes the overall experience of using the Faderport much less
60 satisfactory, since the fader will not move when Ardour tells it
61 to, leading to very out-of-sync conditions between the physical
62 fader position and the "fader position" inside the program.
65 <h2>Using the Faderport</h2>
67 The Faderport's controls can be divided into three groups:
69 <li>Global controls such as the transport buttons</li>
71 <li>Controls which change the settings for particular track or
74 <li>Controls which alter which track or bus is modified by the
75 per-track/bus controls.</li>
79 Because the Faderport has only a single set of per-track controls,
80 by default those controls operate on the first selected track or
81 bus. If there is no selected track or bus, the controls will do
85 <h3>Transport Buttons</h3>
87 The transport buttons all work as you would expect.
90 <dd>Starts the transport moving backwards. Successive presses
91 speed up the "rewind" behaviour.
93 If pressed while also holding the Stop button, the playhead will
94 return to the zero position on the timeline.
97 <dd>Starts the transport moving faster than normal. Successive presses
98 speed up the "fast forward" behaviour.
102 Stops the transport. Also used in combination with the Rewind
103 button to "return to zero".
107 Starts the transport. If pressed while the transport is
108 already rolling at normal speed, causes the playhead to jump to
109 the start of the last "roll" and continue rolling ("Poor man's
112 <dt>Record Enable</dt>
113 <dd>Toggles the global record enable setting
118 <h3>Other Global Controls</h3>
120 The Mix, Proj, Trns buttons do not obviously correspond any
121 particular functions or operations in Ardour. We have therefore
122 allowed users to choose from a carefully curated set of possible
123 actions that seem related to the button labels in some clear
124 way. This can be done via the Faderport configuration dialog
125 accessed via <code>Preferences > Control Surfaces</code>. Each
126 button has 3 possible actions associated with it:
128 <li>Plain Press: action to be taken when the button is pressed on
130 <li>Shift-Press: action to be taken when the button is pressed in
131 conjunction with the Shift button.</li>
132 <li>Long Press: action to be taken when the button is pressed on
133 its own and held down for more than 0.5 seconds.</li>
135 Click on the relevant drop-down selector to pick an action as you
139 The User button also has no obvious mapping to specific Ardour
140 functionality, so we allow users to choose from <em>any</em>
141 possible GUI action. The menu for selecting the action is somewhat
142 confusing and it can be hard to find what you're looking
143 for. However, all possible actions are there, so keep looking!
149 Possible actions include:
151 <li>Toggle Editor & Mixer visibility</li>
152 <li>Show/Hide the Editor mixer strip</li>
159 Possible actions include:
161 <li>Toggle Meterbridge visibility</li>
162 <li>Toggle Session Summary visibility</li>
163 <li>Toggle Editor Lists visibility</li>
164 <li>Zoom to session</li>
173 Possible actions include:
175 <li>Toggle Locations window visibility</li>
176 <li>Toggle Metronome</li>
177 <li>Toggle external sync</li>
178 <li>Set Playhead at current pointer position</li>
184 Undo Causes the last operation carried out in the editor to be
185 undone. When pressed in conjuction with the Shift button, it
186 causes the most recent undone operation to be re-done.
191 When pressed on its own, toggles punch recording. If there is no
192 punch range set for the session, this will do nothing.
195 When pressed in conjunction with the Shift button, this moves
196 the playhead to the previous Marker
202 See above. Any and all GUI-initiated actions can be driven with
203 by pressing this button on its own, or with a "long" press.
206 When pressed in conjunction with the Shift button, this will move
207 the playhead to the next marker.
213 When pressed on its own, this toggles loop playback. If the
214 Ardour preference "Loop-is-mode" is enabled, this does nothing
215 to the current transport state. If that preference is disabled,
216 then engaging loop playback will also start the transport.
219 When pressed in conjunction with the Shift button, this will
220 create a new (unnamed) marker at the current playhead
227 <h3>Per-track Controls</h3>
232 This toggles the mute setting of the currently controlled
233 track/bus. The button will be lit if the track/bus is muted.
237 This toggles the solo (or listen) setting of the currently
238 controlled track/bus. The button will be lit if the track/bus is
239 soloed (or set to listen mode).
243 This toggles the record-enabled setting of the currently
244 controlled track/bus. The button will be lit if the track is
245 record-enabled. This button will do nothing if the Faderport is
250 The fader controls the gain applied to the currently controlled
251 track/bus. If the Faderport is powered, changing the gain in
252 Ardour's GUI or via another control surface, or via automation,
253 will result in the fader moving under its own control.
255 <dt>Knob/Dial/Encoder</dt>
258 The knob controls 1 or 2 pan settings for the current
259 controlled track/bus. When used alone, turning the knob controls
260 the "azimuth" or "direction" (between left and right) for the
261 panner in the track/bus (if any). This is all you need when
262 controlling tracks/busses with 1 input and 2 outputs.
265 If controlling a 2 input/2 output track/bus, Ardour's panner
266 has two controls: azimuth (direction) and width. The width
267 must be reduced to less than 100% before the azimuth can be
268 changed. Pressing the "Shift" button while turning the knob
269 will alter the width setting.
272 The knob can also be turned while the "User" button is held,
273 in order to modify the input gain for the currently controlled
279 Enables playback/use of fader automation data by the controlled track/bus.
283 Puts the fader for the controlled track/bus into automation
284 write mode. While the transport is rolling, all fader changes
285 will be recorded to the fader automation lane for the relevant track/bus.
289 Puts the fader for the controlled track/bus into automation
290 touch mode. While the transport is rolling, touching the fader
291 will initiate recording all fader changes until the fader is
292 released. When the fader is not being touched, existing
293 automation data will be played/used to control the gain level.
297 This disables all automation modes for the currently controlled
298 track/bus. Existing automation data will be left unmodified by
299 any fader changes, and will not be used for controlling gain.
304 <h3>Track Selection Controls</h3>
306 You can manually change the track/bus controlled by the Faderport by
307 changing the selected track in Ardour's editor window. If you select
308 more than 1 track, the Faderport will control the first selected
309 track and <em>only</em> that track/bus.
313 <dt>Left (arrow)</dt>
315 This causes the Ardour GUI to select the previous track/bus
316 (using the current visual order in the editor window), which
317 will in turn cause the Faderport to control that track. If there
318 is no previous track/bus, the selected track/bus is left
319 unchanged, and the Faderport continues to control it.
321 <dt>Right (arrow)</dt>
323 This causes the Ardour GUI to select the next track/bus
324 (using the current visual order in the editor window), which
325 will in turn cause the Faderport to control that track. If there
326 is no next track/bus, the selected track/bus is left
327 unchanged, and the Faderport continues to control it.
332 Pressing the Output button causes the Faderport to control
333 the fader, pan, mute and solo settings of the Master bus. If
334 your session does not contain a Master bus, it does nothing.
335 This is a toggle button - pressing it again returns Faderport
336 to controlling whichever track/bus was selected before the
337 first press of the Output button.
340 If your session uses Ardour's monitor section, you can use
341 Shift-Output to assign it to the Faderport in the same way
342 that Output assigns the Master bus. This is also a toggle
343 setting, so the second Shift-Output will return the Faderport
344 to controlling whichever track/bus was selected before.
347 If you press Shift-Output after a single press to Output
348 (i.e. control the Monitor Section while currently controlling
349 the Master bus) or vice versa (i.e. control the Master bus
350 while currently controlling the Monitor Section), the press
351 will be ignored. This avoids getting into a tricky situation
352 where it is no longer apparent what is being controlled and
353 what will happen if you try to change it.
358 The "Bank" button is currently not used by Ardour