MIDI Kinetics Forum

meanwhile Lemur has like endless possibilities i feel like I'm always limited in my daw in how midi is "customizable".

wich DAW has the best options for midi, osc and stuff in terms of customizability ?

Cubase by far.

I don't think there is a best DAW. It more depends on how creative you are and how good you are at writing scripts. If you thoroughly learn the OSC and MIDI protocols, are willing to research your DAW's API, and don't mind learning a scripting language like Python or JS, you can basically do whatever you want. You get what you put in. If you're unwilling to do your homework, you're going to be stuck with templates that kind of suck no matter what DAW you use.

Cubase has a nice 'Generic Remote Device' option (MIDI, including NRPN for high resolution), where you can send and receive plugin parameters, so that the Lemur surface is always updated when you load a new preset in the plugin. I think it's also the only DAW that sends parameter values after a preset change command. It's pretty ideal for Lemur.

Reaper is good for its OSC integration, although until now it doesn't send feedback all the time. One has to switch back and forth sometimes. But the advantage of OSC over MIDI is that you not only get parameter value feedback, but also parameter name feedback. Logic has also OSC, but it's more restricted than Reaper.

So I would agree that the perfect DAW for Lemur does not exist yet, or, one has to do a lot of scripting and custom mapping to make it work as one wants. And even then there is still something missing.

Ableton has a limit of MIDI parameters per device at like 256. There's a plug-in where I needed more so I went to Logic for that. There are ways to expand functionality with Python but I'm still learning about it.

However, I would also say there are better DAW controllers than Lemur - touchable for Ableton is insane and Logic Remote is too easy. I still use Lemur more for more specific things but it's helpful to know all the tools available.

freepuppies wrote:Ableton has a limit of MIDI parameters per device at like 256.

Really? Can you point me to documentation of this? I hadn't run into this limitation before.

phase_change wrote:

freepuppies wrote:Ableton has a limit of MIDI parameters per device at like 256.

Really? Can you point me to documentation of this? I hadn't run into this limitation before.

I ran into it while mapping U-He's Bazille. (self-plug template: https://liine.net/en/community/user-library/view/661/) I thought it was 256, but this Reddit post says 128. https://www.reddit.com/r/ableton/commen ... _mappings/

The limit of 256 gets referenced on the messageboard here:
https://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175915

This guy has figured out the workaround using a combination of Lemur, Max, and Python. But he charges for his templates and I don't want to pay him money, so I'm going to try to figure it out myself.

http://www.xmonsta.com/

I would love anyone's help in trying to figure out the Live API - I know some Python but am a little over my head.

128 and 256 are always interesting numbers to come across - interesting in the sense that they tell you something is n-bit. I find this kind of surprising for a number of reasons. Someone mentioned in that reddit thread it was a limit of the MIDI protocol being only 8 bit... but what about using multiple controllers? I probably can do it fairly quickly. Definitely wouldn't give it away for free though.

This might help you get started: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgKwcCJsoz4. Couldn't find official documentation of Ableton's API aside from this bit from Cycling '74 https://docs.cycling74.com/max5/refpage ... rview.html. Idk what your experience w/ scripting is, but APIs can seem challenging to grasp at first, but they're not.

freepuppies wrote:

phase_change wrote:

freepuppies wrote:Ableton has a limit of MIDI parameters per device at like 256.

Really? Can you point me to documentation of this? I hadn't run into this limitation before.

I ran into it while mapping U-He's Bazille. (self-plug template: https://liine.net/en/community/user-library/view/661/) I thought it was 256, but this Reddit post says 128. https://www.reddit.com/r/ableton/commen ... _mappings/

The limit of 256 gets referenced on the messageboard here:
https://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175915

This guy has figured out the workaround using a combination of Lemur, Max, and Python. But he charges for his templates and I don't want to pay him money, so I'm going to try to figure it out myself.

http://www.xmonsta.com/

I would love anyone's help in trying to figure out the Live API - I know some Python but am a little over my head.

Just to comment - I know people hate paying for things, but you also have to figure out how much your time is worth. It seems kind of unfair to not want to pay for a working thing you can use immediately and then turn around and ask others to contribute their time and effort to create something for free. If you're going to do most of the heavy lifting yourself and need a couple pointers, that's fine. If you expect others to do 99% of the work for you, that's not so cool.

Lemur templates, especially ones that work well with Max/MSP, Python, Ableton, etc are non-trivial.

Something to consider anyway; there's been a long debate on this board and others about software and it's worth.