I just tested one of my CMC units (the CMC-CH) to see what was happening MIDI wise (using MIDI-OX).
The unit sends standard MIDI messages.
When a button is pressed, it sent a MIDI note on and off message.
The fader on the unit sent pitchbend messages.
However, there are a few things to note with the CMC units:
- If they are not connected to the computer, Cubase will not load them. They also cannot be added manually.
- They make use of active sensing messages.
- Upon Cubase startup, it sent 30 bytes of sysex data.
- Upon closing Cubase, it sent 10 bytes of sysex data.
I don’t think that’s it.
You said before that pressing the reset button made it work.
If you look at what the manual has to say about the reset button:
(Keep in mind that MIDI is a peer-to-peer connection)
You essentially have two MIDI devices sharing the same physical device.
Depending on the order of initiating the handshaking protocol (probably the CMC device first) the second device to begin the handshaking protocol may fail (because the device is still “busy” with the previous handshaking), and thus, not be initialized.
Pushing the reset button on the generic remote re-starts the handshaking protocol; and because the device is now open to return the handshake, it’ll initialize.
(Please note that this is a hypothesis)