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Using the Softube Console1

Ardour has a good support for the Softube Console1 controller.

Connecting the Console1

Console1 comes with a single USB Socket on the back. Connect a suitable USB cable from there to a USB port on your computer.

Ardour uses the Console1 as a generic MIDI controller. You do not need to do anything to enable this—The Console1 sends and receives ordinary MIDI controller messages to/from the host, and the host understands the intended meaning of these messages. We note this detail to avoid speculation about whether Ardour supports the native mode, which sends MIDI Sysex Messages—it does not.

The Console1 will be automatically recognized by your operating system, and will appear in any of the lists of possible MIDI ports in both Ardour and other similar software.

To connect the Console1 to Ardour, open the Preferences dialog, and then click on "Control Surfaces". Click on the "Enable" button in the line that says "Console1" in order to activate Ardour's Console1 support. Then double click on the line that says "Console1". A new dialog will open, containing two dropdown selectors that will allow you to identify the MIDI ports where your Console1 is connected.

Once you select the input and output port, Ardour will initialize the Console1 and it will be ready to use. You only need do this once: once these ports are connected and your session has been saved, the connections will be made automatically in this and other future sessions.

Checkboxes

The checkbox "Swap Solo and Mute" does exactly that. In Ardour and Mixbus, these buttons are arranged exactly the other way round than in Console1. Since this can be irritating, the assignment can be reversed here.

Work in Progress
The checkbox "Create Plugin Mapping Stubs" automatically creates mapping files for external plugins - if they does not already exists. See the last section "External Plugins" for further information.

Harrison Mixbus & Mixbus 32c

A lot of functionality is developed to be used with Harrison Mixbus and Harrison Mixbus32c, therefore the assignment of the controls might sometimes feels a little arbitrary. However, in the future it might be possible, to control plugins with this surface.
Controls only used by Harrison Mixbus (32c) are marked with [Mixbus]
Controls inside a Mixbus only section which are working in Ardour as well marked with [Ardour]

Using the Console1

The Fine Adjust / Shift button unfortunately does not work in the generic MIDI mode. Therefore the Preset / Save Preset button is used as a shift button. In the following this will be simply referred to as the Shift button

The controls

General

Shape-Section [Mixbus]

Equalizer Section [Mixbus]

All encoders in the EQ section are working as sends if the shift button is activated. See the bus send section.

Compressor Section [Mixbus]

Sends

External Plugins

All other assignements needs to be done with the mapping files. A stub of such a mapping file can be automatically created when the checkbox "Create Plugin Mapping Stubs" in the "Control Protocol Settings" dialog is enabled.

The mapping files are created in a subdirectory "c1mappings" of the Ardour/Mixbus settings directory

This is the example of a mapping file for the a-compressor. The file name is created from the unique URL of the plugin. In this case its urn:ardour:a-comp.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<c1plugin-mapping 
        ID="urn:ardour:a-comp" 
        NAME="ACE Compressor">
        <param-mapping id="0">
                <name>Attack</name>
                <mapping shift="false">COMP_ATTACK</mapping>
        </param-mapping>

        <param-mapping id="1">
                <name>Release</name>
                <mapping shift="false">COMP_RELEASE</mapping>
        </param-mapping>

        <param-mapping id="2">
                <name>Knee</name>
                <mapping shift="false"></mapping>
        </param-mapping>

        <param-mapping id="3">
                <name>Ratio</name>
                <mapping shift="false">COMP_RATIO</mapping>
        </param-mapping>

        <param-mapping id="4">
                <name>Threshold</name>
                <mapping shift="false">COMP_THRESH</mapping>
        </param-mapping>

        <param-mapping id="5">
                <name>Makeup</name>
                <mapping shift="false">COMP_PAR</mapping>
        </param-mapping>

        <param-mapping id="6">
                <name>Sidechain</name>
                <mapping shift="false"></mapping>
        </param-mapping>
</c1plugin-mapping>

It is planned to allow creating the mapping file for the plugins inside the setup dialog. This, however, might take some time.

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