3 Since version 4.5, Ardour has had full support for the Presonus
4 Faderport. This is a compact control surface featuring a single
5 motorized fader, a single knob (encoder) and 24 buttons with fixed
6 labels. It is a relatively low-cost device that functions very well
7 to control a single (selected) track or bus, along with a variety of
8 other "global" settings and conditions.
11 <h2>Connecting the Faderport</h2>
13 The Faderport comes with a single USB socket on the back. Connect a
14 suitable USB cable from there to a USB port on your computer. As of
15 the end of 2015, you should avoid USB3 ports—these cause erratic
16 behaviour with the device. This issue might get fixed by Presonus in
20 Ardour uses the Faderport in what Presonus calls "native" mode. You
21 do not need to do anything to enable this—Ardour will set the
22 device to be in the correct mode. In native mode, the Faderport
23 sends and receives ordinary MIDI messages to/from the host, and the
24 host understands the intended meaning of these messages. We note
25 this detail to avoid speculation about whether Ardour supports the
26 device via the HUI protocol—it does not.
28 The Faderport will be automatically recognized by your operating
29 system, and will appear in any of the lists of possible MIDI ports
30 in both Ardour and other similar software.
33 To connect the Faderport to Ardour, open the Preferences dialog, and
34 then click on "Control Surfaces". Click on the "Enable" button
35 in the line that says "Faderport" in order to activate Ardour's
36 Faderport support. Then double click on the line that says
37 "Faderport". A new dialog will open, containing (among other things)
38 two dropdown selectors that will allow you to identify the MIDI
39 ports where your Faderport is connected.
44 <img src="/images/faderport_dialog.png" alt="The Faderport configuration dialog">
46 The Faderport configuration dialog
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
58 You do not need to use the power supply that comes with the
59 Faderport but without it, the fader will not be motorized. This
60 makes the overall experience of using the Faderport much less
61 satisfactory, since the fader will not move when Ardour tells it
62 to, leading to very out-of-sync conditions between the physical
63 fader position and the "fader position" inside the program.
66 <h2>Using the Faderport</h2>
68 The Faderport's controls can be divided into three groups:
70 <li>Global controls such as the transport buttons</li>
72 <li>Controls which change the settings for particular track or
75 <li>Controls which alter which track or bus is modified by the
76 per-track/bus controls.</li>
80 Because the Faderport has only a single set of per-track controls,
81 by default those controls operate on the first selected track or
82 bus. If there is no selected track or bus, the controls will do
86 <h3>Transport Buttons</h3>
88 The transport buttons all work as you would expect.
93 When pressed on its own, starts the transport moving backwards. Successive presses
94 speed up the "rewind" behaviour.
97 If pressed while also holding the Stop button, the playhead will
98 return to the zero position on the timeline.
101 If pressed while also holding the Shift button, the playhead will
102 move to the session start marker.
105 <tr><th>Fast Forward</th>
108 When pressed on its own, starts the transport moving faster than normal. Successive presses
109 speed up the "fast forward" behaviour.
112 If pressed while also holding the Shift button, the playhead
113 will move to the session end marker.
118 Stops the transport. Also used in combination with the Rewind
119 button to "return to zero".
123 Starts the transport. If pressed while the transport is
124 already rolling at normal speed, causes the playhead to jump to
125 the start of the last "roll" and continue rolling ("Poor man's
128 <tr><th>Record Enable</th>
129 <td>Toggles the global record enable setting
134 <h3>Other Global Controls</h3>
136 The Mix, Proj, Trns buttons do not obviously correspond any
137 particular functions or operations in Ardour. We have therefore
138 allowed users to choose from a carefully curated set of possible
139 actions that seem related to the button labels in some clear
140 way. This can be done via the Faderport configuration dialog
141 accessed via <code>Preferences > Control Surfaces</code>. Each
142 button has 3 possible actions associated with it:
144 <li>Plain Press: action to be taken when the button is pressed on
146 <li>Shift-Press: action to be taken when the button is pressed in
147 conjunction with the Shift button.</li>
148 <li>Long Press: action to be taken when the button is pressed on
149 its own and held down for more than 0.5 seconds.</li>
151 Click on the relevant drop-down selector to pick an action as you
155 The User button also has no obvious mapping to specific Ardour
156 functionality, so we allow users to choose from <em>any</em>
157 possible GUI action. The menu for selecting the action is somewhat
158 confusing and it can be hard to find what you're looking
159 for. However, all possible actions are there, so keep looking!
165 Possible actions include:
167 <li>Toggle Editor & Mixer visibility</li>
168 <li>Show/Hide the Editor mixer strip</li>
175 Possible actions include:
177 <li>Toggle Meterbridge visibility</li>
178 <li>Toggle Session Summary visibility</li>
179 <li>Toggle Editor Lists visibility</li>
180 <li>Zoom to session</li>
189 Possible actions include:
191 <li>Toggle Locations window visibility</li>
192 <li>Toggle Metronome</li>
193 <li>Toggle external sync</li>
194 <li>Set Playhead at current pointer position</li>
198 <tr><th>Undo/Redo</th>
200 Undo Causes the last operation carried out in the editor to be
201 undone. When pressed in conjunction with the Shift button, it
202 causes the most recent undone operation to be re-done.
207 When pressed on its own, toggles punch recording. If there is no
208 punch range set for the session, this will do nothing.
211 When pressed in conjunction with the Shift button, this moves
212 the playhead to the previous Marker
218 See above. Any and all GUI-initiated actions can be driven with
219 by pressing this button on its own, or with a "long" press.
222 When pressed in conjunction with the Shift button, this will move
223 the playhead to the next marker.
229 When pressed on its own, this toggles loop playback. If the
230 Ardour preference "Loop-is-mode" is enabled, this does nothing
231 to the current transport state. If that preference is disabled,
232 then engaging loop playback will also start the transport.
235 When pressed in conjunction with the Shift button, this will
236 create a new (unnamed) marker at the current playhead
243 <h3>Per-track Controls</h3>
248 This toggles the mute setting of the currently controlled
249 track/bus. The button will be lit if the track/bus is muted.
253 This toggles the solo (or listen) setting of the currently
254 controlled track/bus. The button will be lit if the track/bus is
255 soloed (or set to listen mode).
259 This toggles the record-enabled setting of the currently
260 controlled track/bus. The button will be lit if the track is
261 record-enabled. This button will do nothing if the Faderport is
266 The fader controls the gain applied to the currently controlled
267 track/bus. If the Faderport is powered, changing the gain in
268 Ardour's GUI or via another control surface, or via automation,
269 will result in the fader moving under its own control.
271 <tr><th>Knob/Dial/Encoder</th>
274 The knob controls 1 or 2 pan settings for the current
275 controlled track/bus. When used alone, turning the knob controls
276 the "azimuth" or "direction" (between left and right) for the
277 panner in the track/bus (if any). This is all you need when
278 controlling tracks/busses with 1 input and 2 outputs.
281 If controlling a 2 input/2 output track/bus, Ardour's panner
282 has two controls: azimuth (direction) and width. The width
283 must be reduced to less than 100% before the azimuth can be
284 changed. Pressing the "Shift" button while turning the knob
285 will alter the width setting.
288 The knob can also be turned while the "User" button is held,
289 in order to modify the input gain for the currently controlled
295 Enables playback/use of fader automation data by the controlled track/bus.
299 Puts the fader for the controlled track/bus into automation
300 write mode. While the transport is rolling, all fader changes
301 will be recorded to the fader automation lane for the relevant track/bus.
305 Puts the fader for the controlled track/bus into automation
306 touch mode. While the transport is rolling, touching the fader
307 will initiate recording all fader changes until the fader is
308 released. When the fader is not being touched, existing
309 automation data will be played/used to control the gain level.
313 This disables all automation modes for the currently controlled
314 track/bus. Existing automation data will be left unmodified by
315 any fader changes, and will not be used for controlling gain.
320 <h3>Track Selection Controls</h3>
322 You can manually change the track/bus controlled by the Faderport by
323 changing the selected track in Ardour's editor window. If you select
324 more than 1 track, the Faderport will control the first selected
325 track and <em>only</em> that track/bus.
329 <tr><th>Left (arrow)</th>
331 This causes the Ardour GUI to select the previous track/bus
332 (using the current visual order in the editor window), which
333 will in turn cause the Faderport to control that track. If there
334 is no previous track/bus, the selected track/bus is left
335 unchanged, and the Faderport continues to control it.
337 <tr><th>Right (arrow)</th>
339 This causes the Ardour GUI to select the next track/bus
340 (using the current visual order in the editor window), which
341 will in turn cause the Faderport to control that track. If there
342 is no next track/bus, the selected track/bus is left
343 unchanged, and the Faderport continues to control it.
348 Pressing the Output button causes the Faderport to control
349 the fader, pan, mute and solo settings of the Master bus. If
350 your session does not contain a Master bus, it does nothing.
351 This is a toggle button—pressing it again returns Faderport
352 to controlling whichever track/bus was selected before the
353 first press of the Output button.
356 If your session uses Ardour's monitor section, you can use
357 Shift-Output to assign it to the Faderport in the same way
358 that Output assigns the Master bus. This is also a toggle
359 setting, so the second Shift-Output will return the Faderport
360 to controlling whichever track/bus was selected before.
363 If you press Shift-Output after a single press to Output
364 (i.e. control the Monitor Section while currently controlling
365 the Master bus) or vice versa (i.e. control the Master bus
366 while currently controlling the Monitor Section), the press
367 will be ignored. This avoids getting into a tricky situation
368 where it is no longer apparent what is being controlled and
369 what will happen if you try to change it.
374 The "Bank" button is currently not used by Ardour