Generic Remote: relative NRPN in Cubase

I’m actually searching the internet since a few days nonstop and tried out almost everything but still found no solution.

I’ve got a AKAI MPK25 Keyboard that has some endless rotary knobs. I can set the MPK25 to send NRPN Inc and Dec so i could really use them like endless knobs but it seeems like Cubase can’t handle those signals.
I tried to se the MPK25 as generic remote, setting midi status to ctrl-nrpn and set the midi channel and adress the same as on the mpk. I tried different max values including 16383 and 127 but i think this shouldn’t matter, right? For the flags I tried all different combinations possible althougt I’m pretty shure it should be recieve and relative, correct?
Oh and I also editet the XML file and addet 16 to the flag value as discribed in some thred here as possible solution.
NOTHING WORKED!
I’ve got no more Ideas, can anybody help please?
Thanks

Edit: finally found the the thread about changing the flags value again. Pretty interesting, unfortunately doesn’t solve my problem :slight_smile: Cubase: Music Production Software | Steinberg

I’m sorry to read this. I am currently looking into getting a controller that can be used with Cubase to control parameters via nrpn’s and this is worrying to read. How come Cubase doesn’t have decent nrpn implementation after all this time? I’ve also dabbled quite a few hours in the generic remote setup in the past, and in short it just sucks! As the Akai mpk is on my shortlist, I would be very interested to know if anyone has found a way to get this to work?

I’ve tried to set this up a while ago with my MPK25. learned a lot about midi in the process. theoretically the generic remote in cubase should work with NRPN but looks like the function is broken.

I even opened a support ticket with Steinberg, took a while to get them to understand what the issue was. in the end they said its a bug that this doesnt work and will be fixed someday…

so in the end, getting a keyboard like MPK with endless rotary knobs is kinda pointless (if you use cubase). now I just use them as standard knobs, sending values from 0 to 127 for which the traditional knob is better since you have an idea where is 0 and where is 127.

That’s a bummer, I’ve been trying to get NRPN to work with cubase 5.5 and an mpk88 and just couldn’t. Seems like I can stop wasting my time, then…(is there any way to at least get a soft takeover/pickup behaviour like other german daws? That would be the next best thing, I guess)

It sounds like such an obvious thing, too: nowadays most daw projects have tons of channels->great likelyhood of a physical knob to be used with different parameters-> endless controllers that just inc/dec the value of whatever parameter they’ve been assigned to-> no value jumping each time you manipulate a different parameter!

I’m not sure what you mean, like converting NRPN to CC with another software?

it does suck, I was expecting things to just work.

By soft takeover I meant a cc controller behaviour where you turn the knob and nothing happens until you pass through the value that the parameter had previously. This avoids parameters getting messed up when you switch your hardwa controller’s focus to them, as well as preventing sudden jumps in parameters when you touch the knobs, faders etc.
Ableton live lets you select this behaviour, for instance, I think it’s called pickup mode there.

Soft takeover is a well hidden feature in Cubase : it is neither documented, nor available in the ‘Device setup’ window UI. But it is functional, provided that you add 8 to the flag values stored for each controller in your Generic Remote definition .xml file. As an example, for a knob control of my MPD32 controller device, I replaced the ‘flags’ value of 1 in the following line :
K 13 (B5)1767561271

in order to be like this :
K 13 (B5)1767561279

The result is that the knob is usable as a soft takeover one, after relaunching Cubase.


About the NRPN Incr/Decr messages, FWIW, I found a workaround that can be used as long as you don’t need more than 16 controllers (as using this workaround requires that each involved controller needs its own dedicated MIDI channel). See here :

But indeed, the NRPN implementation in Cubase is flawed. Still expecting anyone from Steiny crew to give us thoughts/explanations about this…

It can be done. Don’t ask me how it works, it just does: the trick is to get your Akai MPK to send this for example:

Knob01
type: inc/dec1
Midichannel USB A1
Msb:000 Lsb:54
Midi to Din: off
Value 053

Then in Generic remote increase and decrease are received as two different control change numbers (96 and 97 if I remember well), each one can then be assign to any command you want on the lower table of the generic remote. I know this topic is old and maybe my answer is old news but here it is.