Getting Parameter Feedback from Reaper to EN16 encoder

The Lounge
1

Hi,

I’m Daniel, a swedish live sound engineer. I just bought a EN16 and waiting for a couple of more units. My main use is to control a couple of effect plug-ins during shows.

I’m on a Mac, and the DAW is Reaper.

I’ve been fairly happy with the default setting of the EN16, and have mostly just been fiddling with the colors and the ranges to have better visual feedback from the EN16. I have a couple of things I would love to develop further, but since I SUCK at midi most instructions seem to fly above me head. I would be very grateful for any tips and tricks:

  1. I’ve been using the encoders in “Absolute” mode, and I would like to keep doing that, mostly for the visual feed-back part of the LED. I am however stuck in the problem someone else wrote about on this forum that I can’t get the parameter feedback from the DAW to the EN16 to work. That’s ok for the most part since I can just fetch the value after starting up the DAW. However, I would love to program the encoder-button to send a “default value” so that after doing some far out eg Reverbtimes, I can easily get back to a normal value without wasting time watching the screen or LED. I’ve managed to program the button with “self:encoder_value(xx)” however the value on the plug-in stays in the previous value until I also turn the encoder one notch. THEN the value goes to the default.

As far as I can tell a part of this could be that I need to get the feedback from the plug-in parameter back to the EN16, and I can’t seem to get that to work. In the reaper settings I have set the grid for Midi-output. I’ve been trying to find more ways to make the feedback work with the “Parameter modulation/Midi link” but nothing seems to be working. When I go to the Reaper-settings and press “Reset all devices” I can see in the Grid Midi Monitor that it is receiving midi from Reaper. But I can’t see any other received values in Midi-monitor when changing the value of the parameter in the plug-in instead of on the encoder.

Am I trying this the stupid way? It feels like there’s several issues here. The feedback for one thing, but also there’s probably a better way to make the button send the default value?

  1. I’ve been working with the coloring of the encoders with the “Simple Color”-tool and it’s working great. I’m wondering two things:

2a: Is there a way to have the “Middle Color” come at a specific value instead of just in the middle between Min and Max. Say for example that I have a parameter where I have a default value that’s on a 0-127 scale would be 90. It would be useful to make the led go eg black when it hits 90.

2b: If I get the midi-feedback working, is it possible to have a similar coloring with “Relative” encoder mode as I now have with the “Absolute” mode. That is 3 colors ranging from the parameters min to max?

Thanks a ton!

/Daniel

2

Hi Daniel!

I would suggest trying out a profile called 16 Encoder + 16 Toggle with MIDIRX for Ableton which is basically the same as what you’re asking for in your post. Absolute encoders, with LED and value feedback for mapped parameters.

For your second question, Simple Color is indeed the place to look for such settings. Currently redifining the midpoint would be hard to do yourself, but if it’s something you would only want to do once and have a clear idea where the new midpoint value should be, then we could help you sort this out with some custom code.

Even if you used Relative mode, you can have an Absolute-like coloring scheme as the DAW can still tell the Absolute values for those parameters and that will be the one defining the colors on your module.

Hope I could answer at least some of your questions!