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
52 You do not need to use the power supply that comes with the
53 Faderport but without it, the fader will not be motorized. This
54 makes the overall experience of using the Faderport much less
55 satisfactory, since the fader will not move when Ardour tells it
56 to, leading to very out-of-sync conditions between the physical
57 fader position and the "fader position" inside the program.
60 <h2>Using the Faderport</h2>
62 The Faderport's controls can be divided into three groups:
64 <li>Global controls such as the transport buttons</li>
66 <li>Controls which change the settings for particular track or
69 <li>Controls which alter which track or bus is modified by the
70 per-track/bus controls.</li>
74 Because the Faderport has only a single set of per-track controls,
75 by default those controls operate on the first selected track or
76 bus. If there is no selected track or bus, the controls will do
80 <h3>Transport Buttons</h3>
82 The transport buttons all work as you would expect.
87 When pressed on its own, starts the transport moving backwards. Successive presses
88 speed up the "rewind" behaviour.
91 If pressed while also holding the Stop button, the playhead will
92 return to the zero position on the timeline.
95 If pressed while also holding the Shift button, the playhead will
96 move to the session start marker.
102 When pressed on its own, starts the transport moving faster than normal. Successive presses
103 speed up the "fast forward" behaviour.
106 If pressed while also holding the Shift button, the playhead
107 will move to the session end marker.
112 Stops the transport. Also used in combination with the Rewind
113 button to "return to zero".
117 Starts the transport. If pressed while the transport is
118 already rolling at normal speed, causes the playhead to jump to
119 the start of the last "roll" and continue rolling ("Poor man's
122 <dt>Record Enable</dt>
123 <dd>Toggles the global record enable setting
128 <h3>Other Global Controls</h3>
130 The Mix, Proj, Trns buttons do not obviously correspond any
131 particular functions or operations in Ardour. We have therefore
132 allowed users to choose from a carefully curated set of possible
133 actions that seem related to the button labels in some clear
134 way. This can be done via the Faderport configuration dialog
135 accessed via <code>Preferences > Control Surfaces</code>. Each
136 button has 3 possible actions associated with it:
138 <li>Plain Press: action to be taken when the button is pressed on
140 <li>Shift-Press: action to be taken when the button is pressed in
141 conjunction with the Shift button.</li>
142 <li>Long Press: action to be taken when the button is pressed on
143 its own and held down for more than 0.5 seconds.</li>
145 Click on the relevant drop-down selector to pick an action as you
149 The User button also has no obvious mapping to specific Ardour
150 functionality, so we allow users to choose from <em>any</em>
151 possible GUI action. The menu for selecting the action is somewhat
152 confusing and it can be hard to find what you're looking
153 for. However, all possible actions are there, so keep looking!
159 Possible actions include:
161 <li>Toggle Editor & Mixer visibility</li>
162 <li>Show/Hide the Editor mixer strip</li>
169 Possible actions include:
171 <li>Toggle Meterbridge visibility</li>
172 <li>Toggle Session Summary visibility</li>
173 <li>Toggle Editor Lists visibility</li>
174 <li>Zoom to session</li>
183 Possible actions include:
185 <li>Toggle Locations window visibility</li>
186 <li>Toggle Metronome</li>
187 <li>Toggle external sync</li>
188 <li>Set Playhead at current pointer position</li>
194 Undo Causes the last operation carried out in the editor to be
195 undone. When pressed in conjuction with the Shift button, it
196 causes the most recent undone operation to be re-done.
201 When pressed on its own, toggles punch recording. If there is no
202 punch range set for the session, this will do nothing.
205 When pressed in conjunction with the Shift button, this moves
206 the playhead to the previous Marker
212 See above. Any and all GUI-initiated actions can be driven with
213 by pressing this button on its own, or with a "long" press.
216 When pressed in conjunction with the Shift button, this will move
217 the playhead to the next marker.
223 When pressed on its own, this toggles loop playback. If the
224 Ardour preference "Loop-is-mode" is enabled, this does nothing
225 to the current transport state. If that preference is disabled,
226 then engaging loop playback will also start the transport.
229 When pressed in conjunction with the Shift button, this will
230 create a new (unnamed) marker at the current playhead
237 <h3>Per-track Controls</h3>
242 This toggles the mute setting of the currently controlled
243 track/bus. The button will be lit if the track/bus is muted.
247 This toggles the solo (or listen) setting of the currently
248 controlled track/bus. The button will be lit if the track/bus is
249 soloed (or set to listen mode).
253 This toggles the record-enabled setting of the currently
254 controlled track/bus. The button will be lit if the track is
255 record-enabled. This button will do nothing if the Faderport is
260 The fader controls the gain applied to the currently controlled
261 track/bus. If the Faderport is powered, changing the gain in
262 Ardour's GUI or via another control surface, or via automation,
263 will result in the fader moving under its own control.
265 <dt>Knob/Dial/Encoder</dt>
268 The knob controls 1 or 2 pan settings for the current
269 controlled track/bus. When used alone, turning the knob controls
270 the "azimuth" or "direction" (between left and right) for the
271 panner in the track/bus (if any). This is all you need when
272 controlling tracks/busses with 1 input and 2 outputs.
275 If controlling a 2 input/2 output track/bus, Ardour's panner
276 has two controls: azimuth (direction) and width. The width
277 must be reduced to less than 100% before the azimuth can be
278 changed. Pressing the "Shift" button while turning the knob
279 will alter the width setting.
282 The knob can also be turned while the "User" button is held,
283 in order to modify the input gain for the currently controlled
289 Enables playback/use of fader automation data by the controlled track/bus.
293 Puts the fader for the controlled track/bus into automation
294 write mode. While the transport is rolling, all fader changes
295 will be recorded to the fader automation lane for the relevant track/bus.
299 Puts the fader for the controlled track/bus into automation
300 touch mode. While the transport is rolling, touching the fader
301 will initiate recording all fader changes until the fader is
302 released. When the fader is not being touched, existing
303 automation data will be played/used to control the gain level.
307 This disables all automation modes for the currently controlled
308 track/bus. Existing automation data will be left unmodified by
309 any fader changes, and will not be used for controlling gain.
314 <h3>Track Selection Controls</h3>
316 You can manually change the track/bus controlled by the Faderport by
317 changing the selected track in Ardour's editor window. If you select
318 more than 1 track, the Faderport will control the first selected
319 track and <em>only</em> that track/bus.
323 <dt>Left (arrow)</dt>
325 This causes the Ardour GUI to select the previous track/bus
326 (using the current visual order in the editor window), which
327 will in turn cause the Faderport to control that track. If there
328 is no previous track/bus, the selected track/bus is left
329 unchanged, and the Faderport continues to control it.
331 <dt>Right (arrow)</dt>
333 This causes the Ardour GUI to select the next track/bus
334 (using the current visual order in the editor window), which
335 will in turn cause the Faderport to control that track. If there
336 is no next track/bus, the selected track/bus is left
337 unchanged, and the Faderport continues to control it.
342 Pressing the Output button causes the Faderport to control
343 the fader, pan, mute and solo settings of the Master bus. If
344 your session does not contain a Master bus, it does nothing.
345 This is a toggle button—pressing it again returns Faderport
346 to controlling whichever track/bus was selected before the
347 first press of the Output button.
350 If your session uses Ardour's monitor section, you can use
351 Shift-Output to assign it to the Faderport in the same way
352 that Output assigns the Master bus. This is also a toggle
353 setting, so the second Shift-Output will return the Faderport
354 to controlling whichever track/bus was selected before.
357 If you press Shift-Output after a single press to Output
358 (i.e. control the Monitor Section while currently controlling
359 the Master bus) or vice versa (i.e. control the Master bus
360 while currently controlling the Monitor Section), the press
361 will be ignored. This avoids getting into a tricky situation
362 where it is no longer apparent what is being controlled and
363 what will happen if you try to change it.
368 The "Bank" button is currently not used by Ardour