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Using an EFX1000 as a MIDI controller with Traktor
Thought I'd give this a go today.
My 2D's great for transport (play/pause/cueing/looping/pitch control), but with 4 decks' worth I then run out of buttons for anything else - like effects.
So yeah I could just use the FX on my EFX1000... but I know there are a few gems in the Traktor FX banks, so knowing that the EFX1000 can output MIDI signals I thought it made sense for the EFX to be my effects controller - either using its own FX, or flick a switch and use it to control the FX in Traktor.
If you're thinking of doing this, my one bit of advice is: DON'T haha, the EFX's MIDI layout is strange to say the least. It's all documented in the manual, but can still take a bit of effort to get your head around.
Well, setting the rotary knobs up is easy enough, but I wanted to use the effect select buttons (orange ones saying DELAY, ECHO, etc) to select FX in Traktor. But they generate Program Change signals, which Traktor doesn't support...!
Also, Traktor shares controls between various parameters so some buttons can have undesirable effects.
But it turns out it is possible with a MIDI Translator (I used Bome's MIDI Translator) and a Virtual MIDI Port (I used Sony Virtual MIDI Router) - plus of course a MIDI-capable soundcard (I used my Xone:2D) and hopefully some basic knowledge about how MIDI commands work.
Basically the solution I came up with is creating the following chain:
EFX1000 -> soundcard MIDI port -> MIDI translator -> Virtual MIDI Port -> Traktor
The MIDI translator allows us to remap any MIDI signal to any other MIDI signal we want to get around this strangeness and then the Virtual MIDI Port allows us to connect the output of the MIDI Translator to Traktor as if it was any other MIDI input.
Then it's just a matter of writing the necessary translations to make the buttons on the EFX send appropriate signals which you can then configure Traktor to understand and do things with... which is no mean feat in itself! But I'm not going to go into the details of the issues you might hit there - just bear in mind that most things you might want to do are possible, it's just about working out what signal is being sent by the EFX1000 and what kind of signal Traktor would like to receive to control what you want.
I've now got it in a fairly controllable state, with the yellow beat effect select buttons picking my favourite 7 effects, the DEPTH/CHARACTER/MIX knobs on the beat effects side controlling the knobs for that effect and the MIX knob on the jog effects side controlling the wet/dry mix. Nice!
Hopefully this helps anyone else who's looked at it to make a start - if anyone's really interested I could try and put together a full tutorial.
And if anyone knows an easier way round this, please let me know!
I also learnt in the process that you can have multiple MIDI maps in Traktor for a given controller, which means you can partition controls to make it more manageable - e.g. have separate maps for each deck's controls and another one for FX, or however you want to separate it. Each map has it's own set of modifiers too, so that gives you loads more flexibility and you can duplicate them and save them separately. Can't believe I missed this before!
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Stu Cox |   
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