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.
46 <img alt="the Faderport configuration dialog" src="images/faderport_dialog.png">
48 Once you select the input and output port, Ardour will initialize
49 the Faderport and it will be ready to use. You only need do this
50 once: once these ports are connected and your session has been
51 saved, the connections will be made automatically in this and other
54 You do not need to use the power supply that comes with the
55 Faderport but without it, the fader will not be motorized. This
56 makes the overall experience of using the Faderport much less
57 satisfactory, since the fader will not move when Ardour tells it
58 to, leading to very out-of-sync conditions between the physical
59 fader position and the "fader position" inside the program.
62 <h2>Using the Faderport</h2>
64 The Faderport's controls can be divided into three groups:
66 <li>Global controls such as the transport buttons</li>
68 <li>Controls which change the settings for particular track or
71 <li>Controls which alter which track or bus is modified by the
72 per-track/bus controls.</li>
76 Because the Faderport has only a single set of per-track controls,
77 by default those controls operate on the first selected track or
78 bus. If there is no selected track or bus, the controls will do
82 <h3>Transport Buttons</h3>
84 The transport buttons all work as you would expect.
87 <dd>Starts the transport moving backwards. Successive presses
88 speed up the "rewind" behaviour.
90 If pressed while also holding the Stop button, the playhead will
91 return to the zero position on the timeline.
94 <dd>Starts the transport moving faster than normal. Successive presses
95 speed up the "fast forward" behaviour.
99 Stops the transport. Also used in combination with the Rewind
100 button to "return to zero".
104 Starts the transport. If pressed while the transport is
105 already rolling at normal speed, causes the playhead to jump to
106 the start of the last "roll" and continue rolling ("Poor man's
109 <dt>Record Enable</dt>
110 <dd>Toggles the global record enable setting
115 <h3>Other Global Controls</h3>
117 The Mix, Proj, Trns buttons have no "obvious" functionality
118 that they correspond to in Ardour. We have therefore allowed users
119 to choose from a carefully curated set of possible actions that seem
120 related to the button labels in some clear way. This can be done via
121 the Faderport configuration dialog accessed via <code>Preferences
122 > Control Surfaces</code>. Each button has 3 possible actions
125 <li>Plain Press: action to be taken when the button is pressed on
127 <li>Shift-Press: action to be taken when the button is pressed in
128 conjunction with the Shift button.</li>
129 <li>Long Press: action to be taken when the button is pressed on
130 its own and held down for more than 0.5 seconds.</li>
132 Click on the relevant drop-down selector to pick an action as you
136 The User button also has no obvious mapping to specific Ardour
137 functionality, so we allow users to choose from <em>any</em>
138 possible GUI action. The menu for selecting the action is somewhat
139 confusing and it can be hard to find what you're looking
140 for. However, all possible actions are there, so keep looking!
146 Possible actions include:
155 Possible actions include:
164 Possible actions include:
172 Undo Causes the last operation carried out in the editor to be
173 undone. When pressed in conjuction with the Shift button, it
174 causes the most recent undone operation to be re-done.
178 Toggles punch recording. If there is no punch range set for the
179 session, this will do nothing.
183 See above. Any and all GUI-initiated actions can be driven with
188 Toggles loop playback. If the Ardour preference "Loop-is-mode" is
189 enabled, this does nothing to the current transport state. If
190 that preference is disabled, then engaging loop playback will
191 also start the transport.
196 <h3>Per-track Controls</h3>
201 This toggles the mute setting of the currently controlled
202 track/bus. The button will be lit if the track/bus is muted.
206 This toggles the solo (or listen) setting of the currently
207 controlled track/bus. The button will be lit if the track/bus is
208 soloed (or set to listen mode).
212 This toggles the record-enabled setting of the currently
213 controlled track/bus. The button will be lit if the track is
214 record-enabled. This button will do nothing if the Faderport is
219 The fader controls the gain applied to the currently controlled
220 track/bus. If the Faderport is powered, changing the gain in
221 Ardour's GUI or via another control surface, or via automation,
222 will result in the fader moving under its own control.
224 <dt>Knob/Dial/Encoder</dt>
227 The knob controls 1 or 2 pan settings for the current
228 controlled track/bus. When used alone, turning the knob controls
229 the "azimuth" or "direction" (between left and right) for the
230 panner in the track/bus (if any). This is all you need when
231 controlling tracks/busses with 1 input and 2 outputs.
234 If controlling a 2 input/2 output track/bus, Ardour's panner
235 has two controls: azimuth (direction) and width. The width
236 must be reduced to less than 100% before the azimuth can be
237 changed. Pressing the "Shift" button while turning the knob
238 will alter the width setting.
241 The knob can also be turned while the "User" button is held,
242 in order to modify the input gain for the currently controlled
248 Enables playback/use of fader automation data by the controlled track/bus.
252 Puts the fader for the controlled track/bus into automation
253 write mode. While the transport is rolling, all fader changes
254 will be recorded to the fader automation lane for the relevant track/bus.
258 Puts the fader for the controlled track/bus into automation
259 touch mode. While the transport is rolling, touching the fader
260 will initiate recording all fader changes until the fader is
261 released. When the fader is not being touched, existing
262 automation data will be played/used to control the gain level.
266 This disables all automation modes for the currently controlled
267 track/bus. Existing automation data will be left unmodified by
268 any fader changes, and will not be used for controlling gain.
273 <h3>Track Selection Controls</h3>
275 You can manually change the track/bus controlled by the Faderport by
276 changing the selected track in Ardour's editor window. If you select
277 more than 1 track, the Faderport will control the first selected
278 track and <em>only</em> that track/bus.
282 <dt>Left (arrow)</dt>
284 This causes the Ardour GUI to select the previous track/bus
285 (using the current visual order in the editor window), which
286 will in turn cause the Faderport to control that track. If there
287 is no previous track/bus, the selected track/bus is left
288 unchanged, and the Faderport continues to control it.
290 <dt>Right (arrow)</dt>
292 This causes the Ardour GUI to select the next track/bus
293 (using the current visual order in the editor window), which
294 will in turn cause the Faderport to control that track. If there
295 is no next track/bus, the selected track/bus is left
296 unchanged, and the Faderport continues to control it.
301 Pressing the Output button causes the Faderport to control
302 the fader, pan, mute and solo settings of the Master bus. If
303 your session does not contain a Master bus, it does nothing.
304 This is a toggle button - pressing it again returns Faderport
305 to controlling whichever track/bus was selected before the
306 first press of the Output button.
309 If your session uses Ardour's monitor section, you can use
310 Shift-Output to assign it to the Faderport in the same way
311 that Output assigns the Master bus. This is also a toggle
312 setting, so the second Shift-Output will return the Faderport
313 to controlling whichever track/bus was selected before.
316 If you press Shift-Output after a single press to Output
317 (i.e. control the Monitor Section while currently controlling
318 the Master bus) or vice versa (i.e. control the Master bus
319 while currently controlling the Monitor Section), the press
320 will be ignored. This avoids getting into a tricky situation
321 where it is no longer apparent what is being controlled and
322 what will happen if you try to change it.
327 The "Bank" button is currently not used by Ardour