LinuxMusicians

This $5 app has exceded my expections(and so has the $40 android tablet I'm running it on!) For those of you that don't know, Touch DAW is an emulation of a Mackie Control Universal DAW controller. It's emulation is near perfect to the real $1000 unit, and you get some cool extras like an on screen MIDI Piano, Sample Pads, and an XY controller. That's a lot of cool tools for a $5 app! Took me a while to get everything working correctly and stable, but I've got it feeding dB meter info, timecode, and everything I could want back to the app from Ardour. Here's my experience to getting it to work:

1.)Download app from an Android Store(On Play, Amazon, and others.)
2.)Download qmidinet to linux(It was in ubuntu repos for me, so sudo apt-get install qmidinet)
3.)Start qmidinet with this command:
You need 1 port for out and one for in.

4.)In TouchDAW: Menu>Setup>DAWController>Sequencer>Reaper(though most have reported Logic to be the best choice, Reaper seems to have less issues overall for me, but anything but ProTools can be selected here and should work to some degree.)
5.)In TouchDAW: Menu>Setup>DAWController>MIDI Connection>Select Wifi>Press Ok>Multicast>Press Ok twice.
6.)Launch Ardour and go to Edit>Preferences>Control Surfaces>Make sure Mackie is enable and Feedback is enabled>Double Click on Mackie>Device Type>Mackie Control Universal Pro
7.)In a JACK patchbay(I'm using Catia in KXStudio but you could use qjackctl or even the MIDI/Audio Routing in Ardour) Connect the output of Qmidinet "Port 0" to the Ardour input labled,"mackie control in." And connect the output of Ardour "mackie control out" to the input of Qmidinet "Port 1."

At this point you may notice your play and stop keys control Ardour but the session you loaded isn't sending feedback? Well, what I found was with sessions I already have saved, I have to go into them, enable the controler, save them, quit ardour and relaunch. It's one flaw seems to be that it only syncs all the data back to TouchDAW when Ardour is first launched. Not a big deal once you set it up this way, and new projects you create will "just work" from their on out. I went the extra step of adding the qmidinet launch as a startup script in Linux Mint. I intend to use it almost every time I mix, so it makes sense. I hope this help someone out, cause it took me many hours yesterday piecing together how to get this to work with linux!

EDIT
Now, how to get the other cool features of the program to run, like the piano, pad controls, and XY controller. It may be possible to create more multicast midi ports for this, but when I saw the option to use DSMI that I already have a bridge for, from many other MIDI over WiFi apps on the android market place, I used it. It just means, you need ANOTHER BRIDGE! go to:

http://code.google.com/p/dsmi/downloads

Download dsmidiwifi-v1.01.tgz and unpack somewhere. This is a launcher that will launch in most modern GUI linux variations. Adds a MIDI in and OUT to your JACK patchbay. There's not a lot of mystery here. In TouchDAW: Menu>Setup>MIDI Utilities>MIDI Connection>Select WiFi>Press Ok>DSMI>Press Ok Twice.

Connect in a JACK patchbay any enjoy. It's a pretty awesome pad controller, and XY Controller. The onscreen piano is as mediocre is every one I've tried, but for $5, this thing gives you a lot of bang for your buck! I honestly would have paid $10 for this. It emulates thousands of dollars worth of hardware, on a touchscreen, and I have very few complaints!

To update this tutorial, using multicast for XY controller and onscreen MIDI is definitely easier than using the extra DSMI. Just change your launch command to: Use the 3 port as the MIDI out of the XY/Keys, and port 4 for input back to the app(though not sure what MIDI info you'd send back to drums pads and keys?)

Who else here has made one of these OSC things work recently?

I am trying it this way:

- Turn off firewall.
- Launch QmidiNet; configure it: Interface Any, UDP Port 21928, number of ports 2, JACK.
- Launch Midisnoop, because it always detects goddamn everything.
- Configure Midisnoop: Driver JACK, Input system:midi_capture_1 <OR> QmidiNet:out_1 (neither works)
- Launch OSC in Android tablet: I have TouchDAW, Control, DAWOSC and Wireless Mixer.
- Move sliders, touch buttons, nothing happens.

Any ideas?

have you set the android osc apps to connect to that port?
I wrote a tutorial a while back for using OSC2MIDI
http://mountainbikesandtrombones.blogsp ... droid.html

hope that helps.

Thanks. I installed osc2midi, it runs, but it doesn't seem to receive any input at all.

This is tough.

try it in monitor mode
osc2midi -mon

find your ip address using ifconfig, then then try sending a message locally:
oscsend <ipaddress> 57120 /hello i 1

let me know what happens.

Where is oscsend? I don't have it installed. Seems available in several sites. Which one do you recommend?

I use the one that ubuntu has under the liblo-tools package

ssj71 wrote: I use the one that ubuntu has under the liblo-tools package

try it in monitor mode
osc2midi -mon

find your ip address using ifconfig, then then try sending a message locally:
oscsend <ipaddress> 57120 /hello i 1

let me know what happens.

Sorry about disappearing. Been very busy.

Turns out liblo-tools is available on Debian, too. Great. So I ran the test you suggested.
And it works. The terminal that runs 'osc2midi -mon' prints '/hello i 1' as expected.

Any other ideas?

Luc wrote:Any other ideas?

Do you have a 2nd machine that you could do the same thing but send from one onto the other?

If not the next step is probably to jump to the phone. If you have a terminal app you can check that you can ping the desktop.

Make sure both devices are an the same subnet. Not sure if that's required for osc or not but it sure won't hurt.

I don't have a second machine. Just this one and the tablet.

The tablet can ping the computer, and the computer can ping the tablet. Computer pinging tablet has some high latency and even some occasional packet loss. Not the other way around, though.

are you sure you are configuring your OSC apps on the tablet to send to the right IP and port? OSC2MIDI in monitor mode will print whatever message comes through the port so its good for debugging.

ssj71 wrote:are you sure you are configuring your OSC apps on the tablet to send to the right IP and port? OSC2MIDI in monitor mode will print whatever message comes through the port so its good for debugging.

Well, yes, when the app allows it. About half of them do, and I've checked the configurations, it's all correct. Mind boggling, isn't it?

can you set the tablet up for usb tethering? That might work to ensure they are on the same network. Disconnect the computer from wifi or whatever network you are using and have it connect to the tablet directly.

What is the definition of "same network"?

They are connected to the same router. The router is 10.50.1.1, the computer is 10.50.1.2 and the tablet is 10.50.3.1. They can ping or SSH each other.

Connecting them over USB does not really create or involve a network.