Following up on the earlier discussion about MIDI control on the CQ-18T — I’m curious if anyone in the community has actually landed on a solid, working setup for controlling channel faders/mutes with a physical control surface (motorized faders or otherwise), rather than the touchscreen alone.
I know MIDI Control was added in firmware and there’s a Bome MIDI Translator route people have used, but I’m looking for real-world experience:
**•** Has anyone gotten a motorized fader controller (e.g. Behringer X-Touch, X-Touch Mini, Icon Platform, Akai MIDImix, etc.) to reliably control CQ channel levels/mutes with proper two-way feedback (fader position syncing back from the mixer)?
**•** If so, what controller did you use, and how did you set up the mapping? Any Bome translator files or MIDI maps you’d be willing to share?
**•** Does it hold up reliably in a live gig situation, or does it feel fragile/laggy for something you’d trust mid-performance?
I run a hybrid setup (solo DJ + occasional live band for weddings) and having a physical fader I can grab instantly for emergency mutes/level drops is a big deal for me. Would love to hear if anyone has cracked this in practice rather than just in theory.
Thanks in advance for any real-world tips!
Using the third party app, Mixing Station, is how most people are going to accomplish this. Mixing Station natively supports Midi controllers and handles all of the conversion/communication with the console.
The difference between this solution and a Bome box is the fact that the Bome box is a stand alone hardware device that once programmed just works without any interaction.
The Mixing Station solution is a software that has to be run on a computer (or mobile device) that has to be booted, the software opened, connected to the console, etc before it will work. Mixing Station will also become your “user interface” for the system, meaning you won’t need to use the A&H apps anymore, your primary interface with the console will be through the Mixing Station app.
Honestly this is not a “problem” at all. The Mixing Station app is superior to the OEM apps in many different ways. I would be using the Mixing Station app over the OEM apps even if I didn’t want to use a Midi device.
I’ve personally used several Midi controllers with Mixing Station. Using both computers and Android tablets as my Mixing Station host and connected to several different consoles (X32, A&H iLive, Avantis & Dlive) over time. For Midi controllers, I’ve used the Behringer X-Touch Extender (the most compact option), the Waves Fit Controller (the best option IMHO) and the X-Touch Universal Control Surface (my current device). Everything worked just fine. I had no trouble with the different Midi controllers, or the different hosts (even the Android tablets were “plug and play”, or with any of the different consoles. The developer of Mixing Station has done a great job ensuring that everything integrates seamlessly.
You will need to purchase a valid Mixing Station license for your console before the Midi features will be active (that particular feature is not available in the “trial mode”), but it’s less than $10 and well worth the cost.
Colour me intrigued. Is it a sort of one way control, which I would expect is the case. But say you have the x-touch loaded up with mixingstation with a fader assigned to a specific channel, if you had another instance of mixpad or mixing station on a seperate device controlling that channel, would you see that change on the controller, perhaps with a touch of lag, like you might expect to experience using remote mixingstation controlling an x32/m32? Or is the control, as said, just one way? Because if mixingstation had made their implementation that savvy and the x touch is that good then I think getting one of those is a must for my cq20b.
I’m sorry that I missed this post before. There absolutely is “two way” communication between the MIDI devices/Mixing Station software and the console.
This means that if you use a MIDI controller with motorized faders, then yes the faders will change in real time with any changes made to the consoles’ “faders” whether this be through the console’s touch screen, A&H’s OEM software, Mixing Station software, etc. In the same way, adjusting the fader levels (or any other setting) on the MIDI device will also change it in the console. There is no perceivable lag with the system either.
Not a problem thanks for getting back to me
That’s extremely encouraging to hear. I’m admittedly unfamiliar with protocol used for mackie control mode, but needless to say I’m not used to such savvy midi implementation. Sysex midi dumps are about as advanced as I get. I’ve also done custom controller mappings with JS editing in the past (for DJ control surfaces for example).
Even with just connection from the x touch to the mix via mixing station, does it actually communicate the scribble strip screens? Have you mapped the jog wheel to any specific functions?
Have you made or looked into custom overlays?
Yes, the scribble strips work out of the box. I don’t think I have anything set for the jog wheel, but it would be simple to make it change something like the Main LR volume etc.
To give a little more detail about how this all works, the developer of Mixing Station has preprogrammed MIDI functionality for many of the most commonly used Midi controllers (including the Behringer X-Touch devices). This means that the vast majority of buttons, screens, encoders, faders, etc all work as “expected” when you plug the midi device into the Mixing Station host. However you also have the ability to edit the functionality of all of the buttons, encoders, screens, faders, etc in Mixing Station should you want to change the “default” Midi command. All of this is very easy to accomplish. The end user does not need to understand Midi or anything technical to make changes. You simply select the “thing” (button, encoder, fader, etc) you want to change, and then select the desired functionality using drop down menus. Pretty much every function is available to be programmed in the Midi environment.
Long story short, it sounds like you really just need to download the Mixing Station software and try it out yourself. The license is less than $10 (which is needed for Midi functionality), so even if you try it and hate it, you really aren’t out that much.
Just thought I’d update this topic and give some kudos to @Brian-1 for sharing that the Behringer X-Touch motorized faders can work with the CQ-20B through Mixing Station.
I exported my mapping and successfully imported and tested it on both Android and iOS devices, specifically my Samsung Tab A9+ and iPad Air 3. Unfortunately, the exported settings wouldn’t load properly on my iPad Air 2, since it can no longer be updated to Mixing Station 3.1.4 and is currently stuck on version 2.5.1.
As a side note, I’ve seen some reports claiming that the X-Touch’s jog wheel doesn’t work with Mixing Station. It actually does work, but you have to manually add it as a rotary knob in the MIDI mapping. Unlike the other knobs and faders, it doesn’t automatically show up when configuring the controller.
