Axe for Lemur ready for beta testers

[cobbler]

Got it up and running on my Windows 7 64 bit PC and Ipad 3 attached to a mike stand with a gigeasy ipad holder. It's so nice to not have to lean over the desk to tweak. All done wireless with no third party virtual midi drivers. Well done!

Played around in the Amp module basic controls a bit and everything seems to be working. Changing presets works well. 15 mins in and I am impressed!

Cannot seem to get the looper to engage though it is probably user error at this point. Not quite sure on how that is supposed to work.

Looking forward to giving this a workover.

 

[Scrutinizer]

Got it up and running on my Windows 7 64 bit PC and Ipad 3 attached to a mike stand with a gigeasy ipad holder. It's so nice to not have to lean over the desk to tweak. All done wireless with no third party virtual midi drivers. Well done!

Played around in the Amp module basic controls a bit and everything seems to be working. Changing presets works well. 15 mins in and I am impressed!

Cannot seem to get the looper to engage though it is probably user error at this point. Not quite sure on how that is supposed to work.

Looking forward to giving this a workover.

Thanks for the feedback.

Are you seeing the Level and Mix controls on the Looper tab? These will appear if the preset contains a looper block. After adding a looper to a preset, tap the big Refresh button, or tap and hold the small Looper button to re-sync the Lemur controls w/ the Axe-FX controls. If you have not discovered this yet ... the other small buttons operate similarly. Tap and hold the Amp1 button to call up the Amp1 page and re-sync the amp1 controls.

Edited to add: Is your Axe II set to MIDI channel 1?

 

[cobbler]

Got it working. Complete user error on my part. I had switched to a preset that didn’t have the looper. Duh! I am just doodling around with it at the moment. I will go through the various pages in some detail and jot down my observations throughout the week.

I had my Axe II, MFC, Axe-Edit, and your Lemur App all running simultaneously with the looper. Pretty cool to see the record and play buttons go on and off on the II and Axe-Edit when I pushed them on the Ipad. I am quite surprised that there is no noticeable latency with my Ipad wireless connection. No cables needed, no 2nd party virtual midi. And it was quite simple to connect and pass the app with the deamon and editor.

Now you have the programmer in me thinking of all the ways to incorporate the MFC with the Ipad for total control in a playing environment and just using Axe-Edit for preset creation, mods, and database activities. Going through all this will help in reporting Axe-Edit bugs as well so it’s a win/win.

You obviously put in a great deal of work here. Bravo!

 

[bobby_g]

Scrutinizer (or anyone else with info), I'm using rtpMIDI on my desktop (win7 x64) and got your template loaded into iPad2. I can see all the PC MIDI ports from the Lemur app but don't see any MIDI traffic on the PC. Any ideas?
Thanks

 

[cobbler]

Scrutinizer (or anyone else with info), I'm using rtpMIDI on my desktop (win7 x64) and got your template loaded into iPad2. I can see all the PC MIDI ports from the Lemur app but don't see any MIDI traffic on the PC. Any ideas?
Thanks

I didnt have to use any virtual MIDI drivers. Just used my existing IPad to PC wireless. Do you have the Lemur Daemon running and connected?

 

[bobby_g]

I didnt have to use any virtual MIDI drivers. Just used my existing IPad to PC wireless. Do you have the Lemur Daemon running and connected?

Thanks for your input. Yes I have the daemon running and it shows the connected ports, that's why I'm stumped as to what's up. When you say you just used the existing iPad to PC wireless, how do you mean? I'm not using an ad hoc wifi network, just the ports ports presented to me by rtpMIDI which apparently handles that.

 

[Scrutinizer]

I am not sure that Lemur is compatible with rtpMIDI. In any case it is not needed to use Lemur.

I am using the Lemur Daemon for wireless connectivity between the Lemur iPad app and my Mac and PC. Then I use either MIDI Ox on the PC or MIDI Patchbay on the Mac to route the AxeII data to and from the Lemur Daemon ports.

 

[Scrutinizer]

I am not happy: Liine released Lemur version 3.2 today to add support for the iPad3 retina display, and the change messes up all of the fonts and makes the knobs look terrible on my iPad2.

Plus no mention of a fix for the sysex problem.

If I had just purchased Lemur and saw how terrible the fonts look on my iPad2, I would never have developed this template. I hope all of you who have purchased Lemur will complain to the developer. This really sucks.

 

[cobbler]

Thanks for your input. Yes I have the daemon running and it shows the connected ports, that's why I'm stumped as to what's up. When you say you just used the existing iPad to PC wireless, how do you mean? I'm not using an ad hoc wifi network, just the ports ports presented to me by rtpMIDI which apparently handles that.

I did not do anything special. I am on a Win 7 64 bit PC and have my Ipad3 connected through a wireless router for everyday use.

Here is what I have done:

1. Turn on the Axe.
2. Turn on the Ipad and click on the Lemur App. Click on the settings icon and note there is nothing connected as shown here:

3. Run the Lemur Daemin on the PC. Click "Add" on the initial screen to bring up the "select local port to connect" screen. I clicked on both the Daemon MIDI In and MIDI Out line items to expand them showing all the port on my PC. You can see the Axe II ports along with my Fireface UFX ports.

4. Click on the Axe-FX II MIDI-OUT and it pulls up a "select destination for the port" screen that should have your Ipad listed. I clicked on the Ipad line to expand and get the list of Lemur ports. I simply chose port 0 as shown here and then clicked on the "CONNECT" button in the lower right of the screen.

5. It then takes you back to the initial Lemur Daeon screen showing you have a Daemon MIDI In connection.

Note that on the Ipad you now have a MIDI From connection as shown here:

Continued on next post...

 

[cobbler]

...continued from previous post

6. Click "Add" again and to the same for the Daemon MIDI Out connection and you should be done with the PC activities. Here is how it looks on mine:

You can close the Daemon screen and note that you now have the Axe II connections in the FROM and TO MIDI Targets on the Ipad as shown here:

7. Click (touch) the Project box on the Ipad and bring up dropdown list of available projects. (I had loaded Scrutinizers app to the Ipad earlier through the Lemur editor.)

8. After choosing the the App you can now see that the Ipad has MIDI IN & OUT ports and the PROJECT selected as shown here:

9. Click the "DONE" button and well.... you are done!

Woooooooooo Hoooooooooooo! (please excuse the flash in the pic )

This is working for me with:

Win 7 64 bit
Axe-FX II
Ipad v3 (wifi connect to PC)
Lemur Daemon 3.1

I did not need any 2nd party virtual MIDI connections. No MIDI OX or rptMIDI.

 

[LMO]

I hope all of you who have purchased Lemur will complain to the developer. This really sucks.

Agreed, and I've written to the developer. The update came out shortly after I loaded Lemur on my iPad 2 for the first time, so I only got a quick look at it before the update.

So far it has been rock-solid connected via wifi to my iMac and USB to my axe2. I am impressed with the work you have done, and I can imagine the hours really added up. Thanks for sharing your work, and I'll be giving it a workout over the next few days.

What would you think about doing pop-ups for selecting amps and cabs?

 

[cobbler]

If I had just purchased Lemur and saw how terrible the fonts look on my iPad2, I would never have developed this template. I hope all of you who have purchased Lemur will complain to the developer. This really sucks.

It looks good on a IPad 3. I emailed them regardless and let them know owners of the IPad 2 are not happy!

I agree with LMO, a popup for amps and cabs would be cool. Also, thinking a popup similar to the preset selection popup but just where you could load say 5 boxes with numbers and then just hit them when needed. Basically just a simple array of preset numbers you could tap and change to instantly.

 

[Scrutinizer]

Agreed, and I've written to the developer. The update came out shortly after I loaded Lemur on my iPad 2 for the first time, so I only got a quick look at it before the update.

So far it has been rock-solid connected via wifi to my iMac and USB to my axe2. I am impressed with the work you have done, and I can imagine the hours really added up. Thanks for sharing your work, and I'll be giving it a workout over the next few days.

What would you think about doing pop-ups for selecting amps and cabs?

I'm happy it is working so well for you. I had been using the Amp/Cab/Drive pages for about 2 months before I spent the time to add the other pages for the effects. The most common problem I see is the Lemur -> PC wireless connection is sometimes lost. But the PC -> Lemur connection never seems to be a problem. It is very easy to recover from the error by re-selecting the MIDI target from the Lemur iPad app settings screen.

I am adding popups for amp type, cab type, and mic type. There are some other changes I have made based on the great feedback you and others have provided. Thanks!

 

[bobby_g]

@cobbler, that was awesome, thanks a lot!

Interestingly enough I don't ever see the list like in step #4 screen after selecting a port to connect to.

I got it to work by:
1- UPDATING to the newest Lemur version (had 3.0.2).
2- selecting the AxeFx II ports in step 2. The daemon automatically mapped itself and appears like step #6.

@Scrutinzer, that's a good and tedious peice of work you created for us all to share. Kudos! I'll start playing around and let you know what I find. Thanks!

 

[LMO]

I ended up reverting to Lemur 3.1.0, which does look much better on my iPad 2. I hope Liine fixes that with the next release and doesn't force us to choose between bug fixes and ugly fonts/controls. So far I've not gotten a response to my email.

I noticed that the EQ settings on the AMP1 page do not update when doing a Refresh. All of the other controls I've tested so far on that page do get updated.

This is really outside the scope of what you are doing, but the feature I'd want to see is a page dedicated to live control during performance. I have an MFC that of course is designed for this, but with steel guitar the MFC can be a little awkward to use and I don't always have enough space for it on stage. Plus Lemur could provide functionality not possible with the MFC, at least unless you have a bunch of expression pedals hooked up. This is something I'll probably work on once I get comfortable programming with Lemur.

 

[cobbler]

@cobbler, that was awesome, thanks a lot!

Interestingly enough I don't ever see the list like in step #4 screen after selecting a port to connect to.

Do you mean you didn't get the top IPad line or the Lemur 0-7 ports below it. You have to double click on the IPad line for them to show.

Edit: Just loaded and ran the 3.2 daemon and still have the same steps to go through as in my original post. Nothing changed with that regard for me.

 

[MikeyB59]

I finally had a chance to hook this up. I'm using Ipad 3 with CCK plus M Audio usb midi interface/cable all-in-one into Axe II midi. It looks beautiful and generally seems to work fine. The issues I'm having sounds like the Lemur sysex problem you referred to earlier in the thread. I don't get my reverb or rotary showing up either in the individual editing screen or on the Matrix screen as a possible choice. The template doesn't seem to know all the effects that are in a particular patch. I have tried it extensively, but it seems consistent that reverb isn't included, which makes me wonder if it's one of the later things to be updated via sysex.

Great work so far though. This has amazing promise and I look forward to using it more. It's the easiest way to tweak the Axe that I've seen. Thanks for all your work.

 

[LMO]

I received a response from Liine Support yesterday about the 3.2 update. It sounds like the dev team is going to discuss this early next week and decide on how to resolve the issue in the next update.

 

[Scrutinizer]

I finally had a chance to hook this up. I'm using Ipad 3 with CCK plus M Audio usb midi interface/cable all-in-one into Axe II midi. It looks beautiful and generally seems to work fine. The issues I'm having sounds like the Lemur sysex problem you referred to earlier in the thread. I don't get my reverb or rotary showing up either in the individual editing screen or on the Matrix screen as a possible choice. The template doesn't seem to know all the effects that are in a particular patch. I have tried it extensively, but it seems consistent that reverb isn't included, which makes me wonder if it's one of the later things to be updated via sysex.

Great work so far though. This has amazing promise and I look forward to using it more. It's the easiest way to tweak the Axe that I've seen. Thanks for all your work.

Sounds exactly like the sysex problem. In the Status tab at the bottom of the screen, what is the number under "BYP". The LED under this number is probably red, indicating the incoming sysex message was truncated/incomplete.

In my experience, this error will be seen whenever the connection between the iPad and the AxeFX includes MIDI cables. If the connection is made with wifi and USB, the problems are minimized, but do not go away completely. To minimize the effects of this problem, the template uses a retry mechanism when querying bypass states: it tries to get a complete response three times before giving up.

I need to add buttons on each page that forces the controls to appear. These will be very easy to add. I am not sure what to do about the Matrix if the template cannot get a complete bypass state message. What is your opinion: should I make all buttons available and use the default CC numbers?

 

[Scrutinizer]

I received a response from Liine Support yesterday about the 3.2 update. It sounds like the dev team is going to discuss this early next week and decide on how to resolve the issue in the next update.

That's great news, thanks!