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letters to audio equipment… or… typing to my mixer

June 24, 2018 • Derek

Did you know it is possible to access some equipment through other means than its physical controls, an app of some description, or skills for the various AI assistance such as alexa? It is! Even in the 21st century there are many uses for a command line interface, and a program called MX terminal makes one available for the Behringer x32.

In fact, MX terminal is described by its author as “A chat style app for the M32, X32, M-Air, and X-Air digital consoles.” What this means is that you have an interpreter which takes language which is easy to write and understand by an average user, and converts it to OSC (Open sound control.) So depending on your approach, you could write something as simple as “set channel 1 fader to 0” which would move the fader of channel 1 to unity gain, or bypass the interpreter and write “/ch/01/mix/fader I 0.749755621” and get the same result. That having been said, have a breakdown OF why this is the case.

  • “/ch/01/mix” is OSC for “set channel 1 fader.”
  • “I” is OSC for “I’m going to specify an integer between 0 and 1,
  • 0.749755621 comes from setting proportions like you would have in an algebra class. The possible range of the fader that the English interpreter understands is -90 to +10, but OSC likes its values as integers expressed between 0 and 1.

Fortunately, in most cases, we don’t have to solve such equations because we can use mx terminal to set fader values on any send, Matrix or DCA group we like. What we can’t do are things like insert effects at specific points and change the effect type unless we use OSC to do this.

My friend nick, who is one of the hosts of the Digital Domain online radio show, is now the happy owner of the x32, and has been able to do all of the routing and editing he needs for the broadcast as well as other projects. All of this work was able to be done with a combination of mx terminal, the manual, and information gathered from Drue brashlers effects tutorials.

Today, for example, he was able to use the following commands to

  • take one of the effects processors, and assign it to the combinator effect to get master compression,
  • specify that the left and right channel inputs were to be assigned to an insert,
  • rout the insert on the main out to that processor, and enable it.

/fx/4 i 39
/fx/4/source/l i 0
/fx/4/source/r i 0
/-insert/fx4L i 55
/main/st/insert/sel i 7
/main/st/insert/on i 1

After that, it was time to address the hardware to edit the effects parameters. That was simply accomplished by pressing the effects button, pressing the right arrow key 4 times to get to the relevant processors parameters, and following the tutorial linked above.

I’m not documenting this as a demonstration of why I should get out more. What I’m trying to convey is my appreciation for the resourcefulness and consideration of the developers and content creators which have enabled me to use the x32, and teach it on location, and remotely.

Categories: Behringer x32

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