3 title: Using the Presonus Faderport
4 menu_title: Presonus Faderport
7 <img align="left" alt="A picture of a Presonus Faderport device" src="/images/faderport-ssmall.png">
9 Since version 4.5, Ardour has had full support for the Presonus
10 Faderport. This is a compact control surface featuring a single
11 motorized fader, a single knob (encoder) and 24 buttons with fixed
15 <h2>Connecting the Faderport</h2>
17 The Faderport comes with a single USB socket on the back. Connect a
18 suitable USB cable from there to a USB port on your computer. As of
19 the end of 2015, you should avoid USB3 ports - these cause erratic
20 behaviour with the device. This issue might get fixed by Presonus in
24 Ardour uses the Faderport in what Presonus calls "native" mode. You
25 do not need to do anything to enable this - Ardour will set the
26 device to be in the correct mode. In native mode, the Faderport
27 sends and receives ordinary MIDI messages to/from the host, and the
28 host understands the intended meaning of these messages. We note
29 this detail to avoid speculation about whether Ardour supports the
30 device via the HUI protocol - it does not.
32 The Faderport will be automatically recognized by your operating
33 system, and will appear in any of the lists of possible MIDI ports
34 in both Ardour and other similar software.
37 To connect the Faderport to Ardour, open the Preferences dialog, and
38 then click on "Control Surfaces". Click on the "Enable" button
39 in the line that says "Faderport" in order to activate Ardour's
40 Faderport support. Then double click on the line that says
41 "Faderport". A new dialog will open, containing (among other things)
42 two dropdown selectors that will allow you to identify the MIDI
43 ports where your Faderport is connected.
45 <img alt="the Faderport configuration dialog" src="foo">
47 Once you select the input and output port, Ardour will initialize
48 the Faderport and it will be ready to use. You only need do this
49 once: once these ports are connected and your session has been
50 saved, the connections will be made automatically in this and other
53 You do not need to use the power supply that comes with the
54 Faderport but without it, the fader will not be motorized. This
55 makes the overall experience of using the Faderport much less
56 satisfactory, since the fader will not move when Ardour tells it
57 to, leading to very out-of-sync conditions between the physical
58 fader position and the "fader position" inside the program.
61 <h2>Using the Faderport</h2>
63 The Faderport's controls can be divided into three groups:
65 <li>Global controls such as the transport buttons</li>
67 <li>Controls which change the settings for particular track or
70 <li>Controls which alter which track or bus is modified by the
71 per-track/bus controls.</li>
75 Because the Faderport has only a single set of per-track controls,
76 by default those controls operate on the first selected track or
77 bus. If there is no selected track or bus, the controls will do
81 <h3>Transport Buttons</h3>
83 The transport buttons all work as you would expect.
86 <dd>Starts the transport moving backwards. Successive presses
87 speed up the "rewind" behaviour.
89 If pressed while also holding the Stop button, the playhead will
90 return to the zero position on the timeline.
93 <dd>Starts the transport moving faster than normal. Successive presses
94 speed up the "fast forward" behaviour.
98 Stops the transport. Also used in combination with the Rewind
99 button to "return to zero".
103 Starts the transport. If pressed while the transport is
104 already rolling at normal speed, causes the playhead to jump to
105 the start of the last "roll" and continue rolling ("Poor man's
108 <dt>Record Enable</dt>
109 <dd>Toggles the global record enable setting
114 <h3>Other Global Controls</h3>
116 The Mix, Proj, Trns buttons have no "obvious" functionality
117 that they correspond to in Ardour. We have therefore allowed users
118 to choose from a carefully curated set of possible actions that seem
119 related to the button labels in some clear way. This can be done via
120 the Faderport configuration dialog accessed via <code>Preferences
121 > Control Surfaces</code>. Each button has 3 possible actions
124 <li>Plain Press: action to be taken when the button is pressed on
126 <li>Shift-Press: action to be taken when the button is pressed in
127 conjunction with the Shift button.</li>
128 <li>Long Press: action to be taken when the button is pressed on
129 its own and held down for more than 0.5 seconds.</li>
131 Click on the relevant drop-down selector to pick an action as you
135 The User button also has no obvious mapping to specific Ardour
136 functionality, so we allow users to choose from <em>any</em>
137 possible GUI action. The menu for selecting the action is somewhat
138 confusing and it can be hard to find what you're looking
139 for. However, all possible actions are there, so keep looking!
145 Possible actions include:
154 Possible actions include:
163 Possible actions include:
171 Undo Causes the last operation carried out in the editor to be
172 undone. When pressed in conjuction with the Shift button, it
173 causes the most recent undone operation to be re-done.
177 Toggles punch recording. If there is no punch range set for the
178 session, this will do nothing.
182 See above. Any and all GUI-initiated actions can be driven with
187 Toggles loop playback. If the Ardour preference "Loop-is-mode" is
188 enabled, this does nothing to the current transport state. If
189 that preference is disabled, then engaging loop playback will
190 also start the transport.
195 <h3>Per-track Controls</h3>
200 This toggles the mute setting of the currently controlled
201 track/bus. The button will be lit if the track/bus is muted.
205 This toggles the solo (or listen) setting of the currently
206 controlled track/bus. The button will be lit if the track/bus is
207 soloed (or set to listen mode).
211 This toggles the record-enabled setting of the currently
212 controlled track/bus. The button will be lit if the track is
213 record-enabled. This button will do nothing if the Faderport is
218 The fader controls the gain applied to the currently controlled
219 track/bus. If the Faderport is powered, changing the gain in
220 Ardour's GUI or via another control surface, or via automation,
221 will result in the fader moving under its own control.
223 <dt>Knob/Dial/Encoder</dt>
226 The knob controls 1 or 2 pan settings for the current
227 controlled track/bus. When used alone, turning the knob controls
228 the "azimuth" or "direction" (between left and right) for the
229 panner in the track/bus (if any). This is all you need when
230 controlling tracks/busses with 1 input and 2 outputs.
233 If controlling a 2 input/2 output track/bus, Ardour's panner
234 has two controls: azimuth (direction) and width. The width
235 must be reduced to less than 100% before the azimuth can be
236 changed. Pressing the "Shift" button while turning the knob
237 will alter the width setting.
240 The knob can also be turned while the "User" button is held,
241 in order to modify the input gain for the currently controlled
247 Enables playback/use of fader automation data by the controlled track/bus.
251 Puts the fader for the controlled track/bus into automation
252 write mode. While the transport is rolling, all fader changes
253 will be recorded to the fader automation lane for the relevant track/bus.
257 Puts the fader for the controlled track/bus into automation
258 touch mode. While the transport is rolling, touching the fader
259 will initiate recording all fader changes until the fader is
260 released. When the fader is not being touched, existing
261 automation data will be played/used to control the gain level.
265 This disables all automation modes for the currently controlled
266 track/bus. Existing automation data will be left unmodified by
267 any fader changes, and will not be used for controlling gain.
272 <h3>Track Selection Controls</h3>
274 You can manually change the track/bus controlled by the Faderport by
275 changing the selected track in Ardour's editor window. If you select
276 more than 1 track, the Faderport will control the first selected
277 track and <em>only</em> that track/bus.
281 <dt>Left (arrow)</dt>
283 This causes the Ardour GUI to select the previous track/bus
284 (using the current visual order in the editor window), which
285 will in turn cause the Faderport to control that track. If there
286 is no previous track/bus, the selected track/bus is left
287 unchanged, and the Faderport continues to control it.
289 <dt>Right (arrow)</dt>
291 This causes the Ardour GUI to select the next track/bus
292 (using the current visual order in the editor window), which
293 will in turn cause the Faderport to control that track. If there
294 is no next track/bus, the selected track/bus is left
295 unchanged, and the Faderport continues to control it.
300 Pressing the Output button causes the Faderport to control
301 the fader, pan, mute and solo settings of the Master bus. If
302 your session does not contain a Master bus, it does nothing.
303 This is a toggle button - pressing it again returns Faderport
304 to controlling whichever track/bus was selected before the
305 first press of the Output button.
308 If your session uses Ardour's monitor section, you can use
309 Shift-Output to assign it to the Faderport in the same way
310 that Output assigns the Master bus. This is also a toggle
311 setting, so the second Shift-Output will return the Faderport
312 to controlling whichever track/bus was selected before.
315 If you press Shift-Output after a single press to Output
316 (i.e. control the Monitor Section while currently controlling
317 the Master bus) or vice versa (i.e. control the Master bus
318 while currently controlling the Monitor Section), the press
319 will be ignored. This avoids getting into a tricky situation
320 where it is no longer apparent what is being controlled and
321 what will happen if you try to change it.
326 The "Bank" button is currently not used by Ardour