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.
42 <img alt="the Faderport configuration dialog"
43 src="/images/faderport_dialog.png">
46 Once you select the input and output port, Ardour will initialize
47 the Faderport and it will be ready to use. You only need do this
48 once: once these ports are connected and your session has been
49 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.
88 When pressed on its own, starts the transport moving backwards. Successive presses
89 speed up the "rewind" behaviour.
92 If pressed while also holding the Stop button, the playhead will
93 return to the zero position on the timeline.
96 If pressed while also holding the Shift button, the playhead will
97 move to the session start marker.
100 <tr><th>Fast Forward</th>
103 When pressed on its own, starts the transport moving faster than normal. Successive presses
104 speed up the "fast forward" behaviour.
107 If pressed while also holding the Shift button, the playhead
108 will move to the session end marker.
113 Stops the transport. Also used in combination with the Rewind
114 button to "return to zero".
118 Starts the transport. If pressed while the transport is
119 already rolling at normal speed, causes the playhead to jump to
120 the start of the last "roll" and continue rolling ("Poor man's
123 <tr><th>Record Enable</th>
124 <td>Toggles the global record enable setting
129 <h3>Other Global Controls</h3>
131 The Mix, Proj, Trns buttons do not obviously correspond any
132 particular functions or operations in Ardour. We have therefore
133 allowed users to choose from a carefully curated set of possible
134 actions that seem related to the button labels in some clear
135 way. This can be done via the Faderport configuration dialog
136 accessed via <code>Preferences > Control Surfaces</code>. Each
137 button has 3 possible actions associated with it:
139 <li>Plain Press: action to be taken when the button is pressed on
141 <li>Shift-Press: action to be taken when the button is pressed in
142 conjunction with the Shift button.</li>
143 <li>Long Press: action to be taken when the button is pressed on
144 its own and held down for more than 0.5 seconds.</li>
146 Click on the relevant drop-down selector to pick an action as you
150 The User button also has no obvious mapping to specific Ardour
151 functionality, so we allow users to choose from <em>any</em>
152 possible GUI action. The menu for selecting the action is somewhat
153 confusing and it can be hard to find what you're looking
154 for. However, all possible actions are there, so keep looking!
160 Possible actions include:
162 <li>Toggle Editor & Mixer visibility</li>
163 <li>Show/Hide the Editor mixer strip</li>
170 Possible actions include:
172 <li>Toggle Meterbridge visibility</li>
173 <li>Toggle Session Summary visibility</li>
174 <li>Toggle Editor Lists visibility</li>
175 <li>Zoom to session</li>
184 Possible actions include:
186 <li>Toggle Locations window visibility</li>
187 <li>Toggle Metronome</li>
188 <li>Toggle external sync</li>
189 <li>Set Playhead at current pointer position</li>
193 <tr><th>Undo/Redo</th>
195 Undo Causes the last operation carried out in the editor to be
196 undone. When pressed in conjuction with the Shift button, it
197 causes the most recent undone operation to be re-done.
202 When pressed on its own, toggles punch recording. If there is no
203 punch range set for the session, this will do nothing.
206 When pressed in conjunction with the Shift button, this moves
207 the playhead to the previous Marker
213 See above. Any and all GUI-initiated actions can be driven with
214 by pressing this button on its own, or with a "long" press.
217 When pressed in conjunction with the Shift button, this will move
218 the playhead to the next marker.
224 When pressed on its own, this toggles loop playback. If the
225 Ardour preference "Loop-is-mode" is enabled, this does nothing
226 to the current transport state. If that preference is disabled,
227 then engaging loop playback will also start the transport.
230 When pressed in conjunction with the Shift button, this will
231 create a new (unnamed) marker at the current playhead
238 <h3>Per-track Controls</h3>
243 This toggles the mute setting of the currently controlled
244 track/bus. The button will be lit if the track/bus is muted.
248 This toggles the solo (or listen) setting of the currently
249 controlled track/bus. The button will be lit if the track/bus is
250 soloed (or set to listen mode).
254 This toggles the record-enabled setting of the currently
255 controlled track/bus. The button will be lit if the track is
256 record-enabled. This button will do nothing if the Faderport is
261 The fader controls the gain applied to the currently controlled
262 track/bus. If the Faderport is powered, changing the gain in
263 Ardour's GUI or via another control surface, or via automation,
264 will result in the fader moving under its own control.
266 <tr><th>Knob/Dial/Encoder</th>
269 The knob controls 1 or 2 pan settings for the current
270 controlled track/bus. When used alone, turning the knob controls
271 the "azimuth" or "direction" (between left and right) for the
272 panner in the track/bus (if any). This is all you need when
273 controlling tracks/busses with 1 input and 2 outputs.
276 If controlling a 2 input/2 output track/bus, Ardour's panner
277 has two controls: azimuth (direction) and width. The width
278 must be reduced to less than 100% before the azimuth can be
279 changed. Pressing the "Shift" button while turning the knob
280 will alter the width setting.
283 The knob can also be turned while the "User" button is held,
284 in order to modify the input gain for the currently controlled
290 Enables playback/use of fader automation data by the controlled track/bus.
294 Puts the fader for the controlled track/bus into automation
295 write mode. While the transport is rolling, all fader changes
296 will be recorded to the fader automation lane for the relevant track/bus.
300 Puts the fader for the controlled track/bus into automation
301 touch mode. While the transport is rolling, touching the fader
302 will initiate recording all fader changes until the fader is
303 released. When the fader is not being touched, existing
304 automation data will be played/used to control the gain level.
308 This disables all automation modes for the currently controlled
309 track/bus. Existing automation data will be left unmodified by
310 any fader changes, and will not be used for controlling gain.
315 <h3>Track Selection Controls</h3>
317 You can manually change the track/bus controlled by the Faderport by
318 changing the selected track in Ardour's editor window. If you select
319 more than 1 track, the Faderport will control the first selected
320 track and <em>only</em> that track/bus.
324 <tr><th>Left (arrow)</th>
326 This causes the Ardour GUI to select the previous track/bus
327 (using the current visual order in the editor window), which
328 will in turn cause the Faderport to control that track. If there
329 is no previous track/bus, the selected track/bus is left
330 unchanged, and the Faderport continues to control it.
332 <tr><th>Right (arrow)</th>
334 This causes the Ardour GUI to select the next track/bus
335 (using the current visual order in the editor window), which
336 will in turn cause the Faderport to control that track. If there
337 is no next track/bus, the selected track/bus is left
338 unchanged, and the Faderport continues to control it.
343 Pressing the Output button causes the Faderport to control
344 the fader, pan, mute and solo settings of the Master bus. If
345 your session does not contain a Master bus, it does nothing.
346 This is a toggle button—pressing it again returns Faderport
347 to controlling whichever track/bus was selected before the
348 first press of the Output button.
351 If your session uses Ardour's monitor section, you can use
352 Shift-Output to assign it to the Faderport in the same way
353 that Output assigns the Master bus. This is also a toggle
354 setting, so the second Shift-Output will return the Faderport
355 to controlling whichever track/bus was selected before.
358 If you press Shift-Output after a single press to Output
359 (i.e. control the Monitor Section while currently controlling
360 the Master bus) or vice versa (i.e. control the Master bus
361 while currently controlling the Monitor Section), the press
362 will be ignored. This avoids getting into a tricky situation
363 where it is no longer apparent what is being controlled and
364 what will happen if you try to change it.
369 The "Bank" button is currently not used by Ardour