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This is a working beta. Install and use at your own risk. It’s more or less the second half-serious thing I did in C++, I’m sure it could be done much better – any takers?
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Although there is a version for 64 bit Windows now, I have no way to test it, so you’ll have to do that yourself. (As of now it works ok, thanks for testing, Nardberr and mim!)
Update: It seems to work ok for pretty much everyone who tested it (32 or 64). See details in the thread.
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Cockos Reaper min. v4.57 (get it here)
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SWS Extension min. v2.4.0 (get it here)
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To run ReaScripts, Python has to be installed on your machine, read more about it here. Choose and download the appropriate version for your machine here
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The US-2400 has to be in Native Mode, which AFAIK is a novelty of firmware 1.31, so you might have to update it. To activate Native Mode put the US-2400 to standby (so that the Power button ‘breathes’), then keep Master Sel + Chan pushed while turning it back on – if you have the right firmware and Native Mode is active Chan should blink three times. (To put it back in the MCU emulation mode do the same with Master Sel + Aux 5)
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There are known problems with EarSketch!
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If you’ve never heard of GitHub – the ‘Download ZIP’-Button should be somewhere on the right, use it to download the files, extract them and proceed as follows:
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reaper_csurf_us2400.dll goes into
Programs\Reaper\Plugins. Whether you use the 32-bit or 64-bit versions of the dlls depends on your version of Reaper, not your operating system! So: 64-bit dlls for Reaper-64-bit (that concerns Win 7, mostly) and 32-bit dlls for Reaper-32-bit (this would be Win XP, mostly, but applies to all OS, if you run Reaper-32-bit on Win 7, for example!)If you want to use the Meter Mode (encoder rings as VU Meters) choose the file that ends with
_metermode, if you want to use the Meter-Button as an additional qualifier key (like Shift or F-Key) instead, choose the file with_mkeyin the name. Read more about it here: M-Key or Meter Mode -
I recommend putting the ReaScript (.py) files for Custom Actions in Reaper’s Scripts directory:
Documents and Settings\YourUsername\Application Data\Reaper\Scriptsbut technically you can put them anywhere. -
The Split (see Action sets in the install package) actions require some custom Jesusonic-Plugins (mainly for routing stuff), those are in the according folder (Custom Actions/Splits), they go here:
Documents and Settings\YourUsername\Application Data\Reaper\Effects. -
Now comes the tedious part: You have to load all scripts into the Action List – I don’t know if there’s a way to bulk import them – if you do: good for you, and: tell me!
I found a nice hack for this: pushing the Load button in the Action List several times opens a stack of Load File dialogs, all on top of each other. That makes it a bit quicker (at least for me).
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Only after you have done this, open Reaper Preferences / Control Surfaces and select ‘Tascam US-2400’ with its first MIDI-Port (it shows five on my PC) – otherwise the actions will only become available after you restart Reaper.
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You can throw away the
Sourcefolder (it’s the c++ code) if you just want to run the extension. I would prefer it of course, if – after a short test drive – you would identify the flaws, put on your hacker hat, fork the extension and fix them.
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Delete
reaper_csurf_us2400.dll. -
If you want, remove the ReaScripts and JS plug-ins, and uninstall Python, but you don’t have to.
That’s about it.
| Mode | No Key (Default) | Shift | F-Key |
|---|---|---|---|
| Default (Pan) | Pan | Pan > C | Stereo Width |
| Chan | FX parameter | FX-Parameter: fine | FX parameter: toggle / coarse* |
| Pan & Chan – Flip | Volume | Volume > 0dB | Volume > –inf dB |
| Aux | Send Volume | Send Volume > 0dB | Send Volume > –inf dB |
| Aux – Flip | Send Pan (!) | Send Pan > C | Send Pan |
* This switches between 0 and 1 (on and off) this works 90% of the time. For 5 way switches and the like you’ll have to flip and use faders, sorry.
There are rumors about plug ins that report optimal parameter step sizes to Reaper. If you’re lucky enough to happen upon one of those, the standard step size should be automatically set to that value. If applicable, toggle should be automatically set, too. Shift should activate a coarser step size (10 times the default step size) in this case. I’m saying ‘should’ because I haven’t found a single plug in to test this with yet. If you found one that’s freeware, tell me.
| Mode | No Key (Default) | Shift | F-Key |
|---|---|---|---|
| All Modes, no flip | Volume | Volume > 0dB | Volume > –inf dB |
| Default (Pan) – Flip | Pan | Pan > C | Stereo width |
| Chan – Flip | FX parameter* | FX parameter > max | FX parameter > min |
| Aux – Flip | Send volume | Send volume > 0dB | Send volume > –inf dB |
* If it seems you just can’t manage to turn a switch with the rotaries (unfortunately it happens, see above), you can flip and use the fader as a workaround. Sucks, I know.
| Mode | No Key (Default) | Shift | F-Key |
|---|---|---|---|
| Default (Pan) | Select track | Rec Arm* | Switch Phase** |
| Chan | Select this track’s FX Chain | Rec Arm* | Switch Phase** |
| Aux | Select track | Remove Aux Send*** **** | Add Aux Send / Switch Post / Pre (Fader)*** **** |
* Indicated by the light below the encoders blinking
** Indicated by the light below the encoders glowing steady
_*** Pushing F-Select on a track without Send adds a standard Post Aux Send to the track. Pushing the combination again switches the same Send to Pre, and then back to Post, and so on. Remove any existing Send (Pre or Post) with Shift-Select. In Aux mode the encoder diode glows steady for a Post Send and blinks for a Pre Send.
**** Attention users of previous versions: This is new – I think this it’s more intuitive that way. Also, more room for custom actions!
| Mode | No Key (Default) or Shift | F-Key |
|---|---|---|
| Pan & Aux | Deselect / Select all Tracks | Select Master |
| Chan | Select Master’s FX chain | Select Master |
| Mode | No Key (Default) or Shift | F-Key |
|---|---|---|
| All modes | Solo Track | Solo this track only (un-solo all others) |
| Mode | No Key (Default) | Shift | F-Key |
|---|---|---|---|
| All modes | Mute Track | Bypass all FX on this track* | Mute this track only (un-mute all others) |
* Trust me, you want this outside of Chan Mode.
| Mode | No Key (Default) or Shift | F-Key |
|---|---|---|
| All modes | Un-solo all tracks | Un-mute all tracks |
Flip between encoders and faders
Enter / exit channel strip (Chan Mode)
Enter default mode (Pan Mode)
Pan & Chan, no qualifiers: Enter Aux Mode, select Aux 1 to 6
| Chan Mode | (no qualifier key) |
|---|---|
| 1 | Bank shift FX parameters left (steps of 24) |
| 2 | Bank shift FX parameters right (steps of 24) |
| 3 | Bypass current FX |
| 4 | Insert FX (also opens and closes FX Browser) |
| 5 | Delete current FX |
| 6 | Switch between recording FX automation (plugin parameters) and track automation (volume, pan, etc.)* |
Combinations with qualifier keys are assignable to custom actions.
* – blinks when FX automation is enabled
Can be assigned to custom actions
Scrub Button activates Scrub, otherwise the Jogwheel just moves the cursor silently. F-Key enables faster adjustments.
Signals from the Joystick are not assigned to any Control Surface functions. Instead, the MIDI signals get transmitted on the second US-2400 MIDI input (CH 15, Y: CC 90 / X: CC 91), so you can use those for whatever you like.
| Mode | No Key (Default) | Shift | F-Key |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pan & Aux | Bank shift left / right (steps of 8) | Bank shift left / right (steps of 24) | Move left edge of time selection left / right by 1 bar |
| Chan | Previous / next FX in chain | Bank shift left / right (steps of 24) | Move current FX up / down in chain |
| All modes: | No Key (Default) | Shift | F-Key |
|---|---|---|---|
| In | Time-select previous region (between the previous set of markers) | Toggle time-selection between whole project and current range (or nothing) | Move right edge of time selection left by 1 bar |
| Out | Time-select next region (between the next set of markers) | Toggle loop playback | Move right edge of time selection right by 1 bar |
| All modes: | No Key (Default) | Shift |
|---|---|---|
| Rew | Rewind | Selected tracks’ automation: Off / Trim* |
| FFwd | Fast forward | Selected tracks’ automation: Read Mode* |
| Stop | Stop | Selected tracks’ automation: Latch Mode* |
| Play | Play | Selected tracks’ automation: Write Mode* |
| Rec | Rec | Selected tracks’ automation: Write current value to whole time selection |
All hardcoded actions of the Transport section can be overridden by loading custom actions.
The default set in the installation package overrides the default Rew / Ffwd with ‘Jump to next prev POI (marker, loop start/end, etc.)’, because you can use the scrub wheel to get around. If you want default behaviour, simply don’t install those two custom actions, or assign them to another button. (See Custom Actions)
*The light above the according transport buttons blink to indicate mode(s) – if more than one light blinks that means different tracks have different modes enabled.
The extension identifies any track, anywhere in your tracklist, that has ‘aux---1’ to ‘aux---6’ in its name as the respective Aux. You can call them anything – as long as ‘aux---X’ is in there somewhere it should work. Also, the search is not case sensitive so you can use ‘AUX’ or ‘Aux’ if you want.
It has to be three dashes to avoid confusion with tracknames ending in ‘aux’, though. For example, I don’t speak French, but I think some words end with ‘...aux’, so maybe there are tracknames like ‘plateaux 2’ or whatever ... well, you can use those and mark aux-busses with three dashes, no space.
The US-2400 supports up to 6 aux busses, you can access the settings to each one entering aux mode 1 to 6 by pressing Aux buttons 1 to 6. In Aux Mode you can add and remove sends by pressing FKey/Shift and Select of the according track, and adjust the levels with the rotary encoder. Using flip in Aux Mode gives you Aux Levels on the faders and Aux Pans on the encoders!
When entering Channel Strip Mode (Chan Mode for short) you can select the FX chain of one track using the Track Select buttons – your existing track selection stays active, a blinking Track Select button indicates the selected FX chain.
In this mode the rotary encoders are used for FX parameters. The function auf Aux and Bank buttons changes, so you can step through your parameters and through you FX chain, insert new FX, delete FX and move them up and down the chain using the Aux buttons in this mode (details under Hardcoded Functions).
Due to the way many VST plugins are coded, the parameters will not appear in the same order on the US-2400 as they do in the Graphical User Interface of the plug-in – nothing I can do about that.
You can use Reapers option to switch to a basic UI (the UI button on the top left of the FX window) – the parameter order in this view will match the one of the US-2400 (thanks, Nardberr!).
Or you can use the Scribble Strip Window.
Many of the buttons are connected with a trigger that simply fires a ReaScripts (read about those here. The scripts get identified by parts of their filenames and assigned to the according buttons on program start. You can give your ReaScript any name you like, I recommend a short description of what it does, because the filename is the text that shows up in Reaper’s action dialog and in the US-2400 On-Screen-Help.
The filename has to contain a kind of signature at the end that the csurf plugin uses to identify and assign the action – it looks like this:
(US-2400 - Chan - FKey - 3)
... which is pretty self-explanatory I guess, but here are the details nonetheless:
US-2400– this identifies it as an action the CSurf plug-in is supposed to load.Pan/Chan/Aux– assigns an action to a certain mode (i.e. the action is only available in that mode). You can leave this bit out, then the action will be triggered regardless of current mode.NoKey/Shift/FKey/MKey– the qualifier key this action is assigned to, obviously. You can leave this out, too, for the action to be assigned to all qualifier combinations. UseNoKeyif you want the action assigned to the button without qualifier exclusively.MKeyis only available if you haven’t installed the meter mode version (see Meter Mode or M-Key and Install) of course.- Lastly, the button itself – available are the 6 Aux Buttons (
1to6), theNullbutton, and the transport section (Rew,FFwd,Stop,Play,Rec).
The right form is important for assignment to work: Separate the above bits by space, dash, space (-). Also, the identification is case sensitive (e.g. Ffwd won’t work).
The narrower assignment overwrites the wider one. – Example: Let’s say you have an action (US-2400 - 3). This should be triggered by the 3rd Aux button, with every qualifier in every mode. But if you also have an action (US-2400 - FKey - 3) this action overrides the other action (only for FKey/3 of course). (US-2400 - Chan - FKey - 3 would overide both previous ones.
All buttons except ‘Null’ have hardcoded actions, when no qualifier is pressed: Aux 1 to 6 with no qualifier enters Aux Mode, transport does the obvious things, but you can override those by loading an action using the according signature (e.g. override Play with (US-2400 - Play) or (US-2400 - NoKey - Play))!
This set includes:
- Remove envelopes from selected tracks (FKey – 6)
- Show or hide envelopes (FKey – 5)
This set includes:
- Undo (FKey – Rew)
- Redo (FKey – FFwd)
- Save (FKey – Play)
- Open Render Dialog (FKey – Rec)
This set includes:
- Toggle scrolling with play position (FKey – Stop)
- Scroll to play position – not edit cursor! (FKey – Null)
- Zoom time selection (NoKey – Null)
- Zoom track selection (Shift – Null) – this seems to be buggy, working on it!
- Jump to next point of interest – end of loop, marker, etc. (NoKey – FFwd)
- Jump to previous point of interest – beginning of loop, marker, etc. (NoKey – Rew) – *These last two actions Overrride the hardcoded FFwd / Rew. I find them to be much more useful, I use the scrub wheel to get around if I ever have to, mostly I’m just jumping from point to point. But you can of course put them somewhere else by renaming the file, or simply not install them.
This set includes:
- Move selected tracks left (FKey – 1)
- Move selected tracks right (FKey – 2)
- Duplicate selected tracks (FKey – 3)
- Rename selected tracks – uses SWS’ very handy dialog (FKey – 4)
- Insert empty track before first selected track (Shift – 4)
- Delete selected tracks (Shift – 5)
- Wrap selected tracks in folders / remove selected folder, unwrap containing tracks first (Shift – 1)
- Open or close selected folders – in mixer view (Shift – 2)
- Group selected tracks (Shift – 3)
- Ungroup selected tracks (Shift – 6) – *For the SWS Grouping / Ungrouping actions to work you have to set / save the default flags once in every project: Shift + G (on your keyboard, not the US-2400) opens the Grouping Settings, tweak yours and hit Save.
Edit these files to load your favorite plugins: Open the .py file in a text editor and insert the name of the plug in you want to load with that action in line 4 behind ‘fx_name = ’, in quotes (e.g. ‘fx_name = "ReaComp"’).
Templates are included for actions triggered by every Aux Button with all qualifiers in Chan Mode (Chan – FKey/MKey/Shift – 1/2/3/4/5/6).
These actions are not really US-2400 related, but I found them so useful, I wanted to have them on the US-2400 – and since I made it, why should I exclude it? You can always play around with them and just throw the scripts out if you don’t need this stuff.
Basically they split the signal of a single track into several sub tracks (like an mono/stereo pair for example). Those get send to a folder that automatically adjusts the sum volume of the sub tracks to stay at 0 dB, regardless what you do with the volumes of the sub tracks.
Included flavors:
- Split first selected track LR – left/right (MKey – 1) – Much quicker than duplicating and setting item props! You can always work with all mono files like the oldschool of course, then this action makes no sense to you at all, probably ...
- Split first selected track MS – mono/stereo (MKey – 2)
- Split first selected track LFHF – frequency crossover lo/hi freq (MKey – 3) – Set frequencies in the ‘(LH-Split)’ plug-in that gets inserted automatically in the first sub track.
- Split first selected track LMH – frequency crossover lo/mid/hi freq (MKey – 4) – Set frequencies in the ‘(LMH-Split)’ plug-in that gets inserted automatically in the first sub track.
- Split first selected track LMMF – 4-way frequency crossover, lo/lo mids/hi mids/hi freq (MKey – 5) – Set frequencies in the ‘(LMMH-Split)’ plug-in that gets inserted automatically in the first sub track.
- Add parallel processor (MKey – 6) – Go wild with NY compression! The automatic volume compensation in the folder track makes sure you judge the sound and not the volume
- Unsplit first selected split track (MKey – Null) – Removes a split and returns to the single track you had before. Any FX you inserted in the sub tracks will be lost!
I finally found out how to adress the Meter Mode of the US-2400, you can employ it by installing the .dll with _meter-mode in the filename and then pushing the Meter Key on the US-2400.
But I admit that I find this a quite useless feature (15 lights for a VU signal, that’s more like a consumer tape deck ...) – I could use an additional qualifier key instead (more custom actions, yay!) so I made a version for that as well: If you use the .dll with _m-key in the filename pushing the Meter Button makes another command set available (like Shift or F-Key).
Unfortunately this button doesn’t send a signal for releasing the button (unlike every other button, weirdly), which poses a problem in using it as a qualifier: If you can’t check for a button-up you have no way of knowing if it’s still pressed when another button goes down (which is of course how qualifier keys work).
The workaround is as follows: when you press the M-Key it stays activated for a short time (half a second or so). The M-Key and all buttons with assigned M actions flash rapidly during that time ... just FYI (I don’t think it makes a real difference in use).
Pushing Shift and F-Key together (in that order, reversed order brings up the On-Screen-Help) opens a resizable Scribble Strip Window, showing track names / FX parameter names dynamically correlated with the corresponding fader / encoder row (column?) – it even indicates touch states, selected / rec armed tracks and parameter values.
Still not better than if the US-2400 had a display, but it sure helps.
Images: Track View (Pan and Aux Modes), Channel Strip View (Chan Mode)
There is a Keymap for the hardcoded functions which you can print out and stick on the Master section.
But to include the custom actions doesn’t really make sense if you’re using your own anyway. And even if you’re using the default sets, with the new M-Key there wouldn’t be room to put them all on the Keymap in a sensible fashion. So I made an On-Screen Help Window that shows all button functions (hardcoded ones as well as custom actions that were loaded). You can access it by pushing F-Key and Shift together and in that order (reversed order brings up the Channel Strip). As long as it's open it simply follows your actions (like changing modes, pushing qualifiers) and shows you the according options.
Images: Keymap, Pan Mode – no qualifier, Chan Mode – no qualifier, Chan Mode – F-Key pressed
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There is a thread about this extension here.
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When I have some time, I’ll update the ‘Issues’ section with known bugs and stuff. As of now it’s nothing major.