Powercab+ and MIDI Control

[MALIBONZO]

I am not an experienced MIDI user however I recently purchased a Disaster Area DMC Micro Pro MIDI controller to control my HX Stomp and H9.  It works great.  I would love to be able to also include the Powercab+ in the presets that I create and have the ability to scroll through presets on the Powercab+ from the Micro Pro.  Is anyone familiar with how to set this up so that the midi controller can control the Powercab +?  Disaster Area is saying: "...we don't have a device driver for the PC+ but you can use the Custom1 and Custom2 slots for it, or the General MIDI driver should also work to just send PC messages".  Can anyone provide some more information or direction on how to program this?

 

Thank you.

A MIDI Nube...

[rd2rk]

There's a lot of ways to go about this. How depends on how you use the HXS and PC+.

I don't own a DMC, and I don't have time to read the manual to tell you how to configure the DMC.

What I can do is talk to you about the basic MIDI principles involved as they relate to the HXS and PC+.

 

The way I use the HXS with PC+ is to send PC (Program Change) and/or CC#s for Speaker selection using InstantCommands (ICs) in CommandCenter.

 

I'm going to assume that your DMC is plugged into the HXS MIDI IN, and the PC+ MIDI IN is connected to the HXS MIDI Out.

I'm also going to assume that the HXS is listening on MIDI Channel 1 (BASE default).

If you're using the DMC to scroll Presets on the HXS, you'd use the same configuration for the PC+, but you'd set that to a different MIDI Channel, for instance, 2.

EDIT: In order for commands sent from the DMC to reach the PC+, the HXS needs to have MIDI THRU enabled.

In the PC+ System dialog, you set the MIDI Channel to Channel 2.

From a VERY QUICK look at the DMC web page, it looks like the DMC can control up to 4 external devices, with 8 pages of functions for each?

I would then assume that each device can be set to send on a different MIDI Channel. If your HXS is Device A, set the PC+ as Device B on MIDI Channel 2.

You can now scroll presets on either device  independently.

Messages sent to the PC+ using CommandCenter would then need to be configured to send on Channel 2 also.

If you scroll presets on the HXS using the DMC, the ICs on the HXS Presets will send their messages to the PC+ just as if you were changing Presets directly on the HXS.

 

In the HXS Global Settings>MIDI/Tempo, Disaster Area DMC Micro Pro MIDI PC Tx" to OFF. This prevents the HXS from sending it's DEFAULT PC# when you switch Presets, allowing CommandCenter full control of that function. For each HXS Preset, set IC1 to the PC# of the PC+ Preset that you want to call. You can also send CC#s to select specific Speaker emulations, but it's easier to create Presets with the desired configuration. PC+ comes with a number of example Presets using both the stock Allure IRs and Speaker emulations.

Using Snapshots, you can also use different PC+ Presets simply by setting IC1 to different PC#s in each Snapshot.

 

OTHER PC+ MIDI SETTINGS: This depends upon what you have downstream from the PC+. If there's no further HW downstream and you're not recording MIDI in a DAW, you're good to go with the defaults (other than MIDI Channel). If there's more MIDI HW downstream that you're controlling with either the DMC or HXS, you'll want to enable MIDI THRU. If you're recording MIDI to a DAW, you may or may not want to enable USB MIDI. Again, this depends on exactly what you're trying to do, what you're using for your Audio/MIDI Interface, other good stuff beyond my limited ability to make further assumptions.

 

Questions?