Midi control of basic amp settings

MNG

Inspired
Is it possible to control the basic amp settings by midi - i.e gain, master, bass, mid, treble, presence?

I love the fact that it is like playing a real amp now, but I don't like the fiddly controls. I have a Yamaha DG1000 pre amp which has automated knobs and it would be great if I could use that to physically control the amp models in the Axe. I don't see any reference in the manual and I'm guessing that this is not going to be possible.

Good as the Axe is, I do miss physical knobs for the basic amp settings.
 
You can fire a MIDI Command at anything that can have a Controller attached... most if not all (can't check as don't have AxeFX near me) of the controls you're looking at don't have that option
 
Yes indeed you can. I've often thought it'd be really handy to have a 1U midi controller that's just, essentially, a bunch of pots. I don't use more than two amps, and what I could really use is the ability to reach back and tweak an amp or drive pedal on the fly. I just haven't found anything that fits that bill yet.
 
This does bring up one question: if a control is mapped to a midi CC, what happens when you change presets? Will that control revert to its stored value, or will that CC value stay "latched" into the Axe? For expression inputs on the MFC I believe you have control over how this is handled, but I wonder what happens if we're talking about some other midi controller.

I wonder if there's a market for a basic rack-mount midi controller consisting of a bunch of knobs and maybe a few buttons? I do really miss having controls I can tweak on the fly. Every venue sounds different and it can be a real life-saver being able to, say, roll off the bass if you're stuffed into the corner of a room/stage.
 
It would be a cool idea, but then how do you choose how many knobs you have? Gain/b/m/t/master? do you add more for controlling distortions? what if you have 2 amps in a patch? I guess this is where Axe-edit comes in!

In the Ultra, with Axe-edit it was done through midi sys-ex messages. In theory, you can make a knob panel that sends the sys-ex messages to control amp parameters, but then you would need an 'amp select' button, maybe 'x/y' buttons as well.

I do wish there was a piece of hardware to do this.
 
Yes indeed you can. I've often thought it'd be really handy to have a 1U midi controller that's just, essentially, a bunch of pots. I don't use more than two amps, and what I could really use is the ability to reach back and tweak an amp or drive pedal on the fly. I just haven't found anything that fits that bill yet.

Well there... you learn something new each day
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In most of the amp sims I believe you can control the Master, Input trim, Input Drive, Boost, Bright, Saturation no EQ.
 
This does bring up one question: if a control is mapped to a midi CC, what happens when you change presets? Will that control revert to its stored value, or will that CC value stay "latched" into the Axe? For expression inputs on the MFC I believe you have control over how this is handled, but I wonder what happens if we're talking about some other midi controller.

When you change presets on the Axe, the preset will determine the initial settings. A MIDI controller like the FCB1010 has it's own "patches" and can send, in addition to an Axe preset change msg, up to 2 CC messages. These can be used to set mapped controls to whatever values you want. Unfortunately, there is no FCB function to send a CC with a value of the current state of the pedals. My old Johnson Millennium 150 had that ability and it was nice.
 
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It would be a cool idea, but then how do you choose how many knobs you have? Gain/b/m/t/master? do you add more for controlling distortions? what if you have 2 amps in a patch? I guess this is where Axe-edit comes in!

In the Ultra, with Axe-edit it was done through midi sys-ex messages. In theory, you can make a knob panel that sends the sys-ex messages to control amp parameters, but then you would need an 'amp select' button, maybe 'x/y' buttons as well.

I do wish there was a piece of hardware to do this.

I figure in a single rack space you could easily fit 16 rotary encoders without them being cramped. As far as how you mapped them, they'd have assignable midi CC, so any knob could send any CC you want, and control anything in the Axe (or any other midi gear) that has an assignable control. In my mind, it would be about providing an absolute position/value control - like on a real amp, or an expression pedal, so each knob would be a normal potentiometer and each CC would send absolute value. It would look, feel and act like analog controls. However, for things that don't current have an assignable CC, then yeah, sys-ex would be the approach to do that. Anything that Axe-edit can control (everything, yeah?) would be controllable. I think it'd be kind of cool.

To my knowledge (and research) nothing like this currently exists on the market. Most midi control surfaces these days are geared towards soft-synths and/or sampler/DAW type programs like Ableton Live. In fact, most of these don't even have MIDI outs on them; they're using usb-midi.

I've thought about designing and producing a controller like this, but I'm not sure if there's a market for it or not. I'd love to have one, but I'm kind of weird ;-)
 
When you change presets on the Axe, the preset will determine the initial settings. A MIDI controller like the FCB1010 has it's own "patches" and can send, in addition to an Axe preset change msg, up to 5 CC messages. These can be used to set mapped controls to whatever values you want. Unfortunately, there is no FCB function to send a CC with a value of the current state of the pedals. My old Johnson Millennium 150 had that ability and it was nice.

I suspect you'd have to do something like have the controller have both midi in and out. When it saw a patch change message it would then re-transmit its midi CC and sys-ex values back to the Axe. The issue would be if that resulted in audio glitches or not. I know that you can setup an expression input to re-read its values when you do a patch change, and every thing is smooth. I'm currently using an expression input on my MFC for master volume on the axe. I have a pot in a box that I can use to turn up/down the volume on the fly; but that's controlling a global parameter that doesn't change per-preset.
 
The whole patch panel sounds like a cool idea for when you just want direct access to basic controls without needing a computer, or diving into menus. I think it could be a game changer in bringing a more user-friendly interface.

However, can't you assign the quick knob controls (A,B,C,D) to any parameter? You'd be limited to only 4 however.
 
The whole patch panel sounds like a cool idea for when you just want direct access to basic controls without needing a computer, or diving into menus. I think it could be a game changer in bringing a more user-friendly interface.

However, can't you assign the quick knob controls (A,B,C,D) to any parameter? You'd be limited to only 4 however.

You can, but in practice I haven't found it to be very practical. The quick control knobs only control what you've assigned them too when you're in the control menu and you've moved over to the quick-control tab. Every time you change presets you go back to the recall screen. So pretty much you can never rely on being able to just reach back and tweak them.
 
this has been a pet peeve of mine since the first days I owned an Ultra. Currently, Bass/Middle/Treble/Presence do not have controllers attached to them, thus for basic MIDI CC# & value, we're out of luck to use MIDI pedal boards to have free access to changing these parameters. However, you CAN access these parameters via MIDI, but only using the sysex MIDI string associated to that parameter, which is not a published spec.

GM_Arts compiled this a while back (for the Ultra?) and here is what it looks like:

http://www.gmarts.org/html/axefx_ultra_sysex_1005.html

I'm a knobs, faders, and buttons user at heart. Call me old school, even though I use iPad apps for other music stuff. But in terms of live control of amp tone features, IMHO, B-M-T-Presence with some type of assignable hardware knobs is long overdue. ABCD totally misses the boat on this since you need to be in EDIT mode in order to access parameters this way. Yuck for live and on-the-fly.

[FWIW, this type of thread pops up every few months or so, and amongst some users has been an ongoing hurdle if you prefer or need on-the-fly tweaking. It's worth re-hashing, but again, a relatively well-discussed item.]
 
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I don't' think you have access to these controls via MIDI specifically, but you can control them remotely through Axe-Edit, which means you can probably control them remotely with anything through USB provided you implement the right interfacing language.

I would pay for a 1U or 2U unit of nothing but assignable physical knobs and buttons today for the Axe-Fx if one were available. Allow the knobs to dynamically change to whatever you want based on context (in recall screen, all knobs control Amp1, in Drive edit screen, all knobs control Drive parameters, etc) and I'd pay double that.
 
You can, but in practice I haven't found it to be very practical. The quick control knobs only control what you've assigned them too when you're in the control menu and you've moved over to the quick-control tab. Every time you change presets you go back to the recall screen. So pretty much you can never rely on being able to just reach back and tweak them.

Yeah, I know that while you are in an edit menu, the quick knobs are available immediately to the left or right of the parameter you're cursor is on. However, I "thought" you can go into a parameter and assign a control knob A,B,C,D to the parameter, just like you would attach any other controller (external, ADSR, envelope, etc.). I'm not in front of my AXE, so I might be off-base here. I've also never tried it, so I can't personally comment.

I also use a midi-control knob and assign it to things like Input gain so I can change gain levels on the fly. It's pretty cool, and it would be very cool to have like 6 of those set up on my controller, so I can reach down and adjust up to 6 parameter on the fly.

The only problem when assigning these is when you select a new patch, you cannot save any of these parameter at a certain value, since it will query the controller value and the parameter will adjust to that value. At least that's how mine works... maybe this can be ignored through a setting?
 
How about axepad? Is this already up to date? Then you can control many things on the fly??!!


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How about axepad? Is this already up to date? Then you can control many things on the fly??!!

meh...I indulge iPad interfaces on occasion...but not because I prefer them, especially for this basic, fundamental function (tone stack adjustments). Knobs for me, please.
 
Thats pretty cool, but for me, I'd also like physical hardware :p, if there would be a list of set sys-ex messages that FAS could publish, this kind of controller would be easy to create. I don't think there would be a large market for it, unless it would be like Livid instruments - a user designed controller from a set of templates.

This all comes down to FAS and whether they want to give user the sys-ex control ability, as we already have midi control. If the complete Sys-ex message table was available, then it would be easy to implement (keep in mind, each block's controls must have unique address etc).

Again, I would totally be down for a customizable controller with physical knobs and faders (aka axe-edit in hardware form), as I find it easier to tinker with knobs haha.

EDIT:

here's the sysex data for the AFXII: http://wiki.fractalaudio.com/axefx2/index.php?title=MIDI_SysEx#SysEx_messages_for_Axe-Fx_II right from the wiki
 
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