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Installing and Configuring a Control Surface To Use With REAPER

If you have a control surface such as a Behringer BCR2000, Novation Nocturn or any of the devices listed below then you can use it to control some of REAPER's actions. These might include track panning and volume, mute and solo status, arming and starting/stopping recording, and possibly to physically map the transport bar for Play, Stop, Pause, Rewind, etc. You will need to know the specific characteristics of your control surface, including how to install and set it up.

This is the current (as of v3.4) list of directly supported control surfaces:

• Behringer BCF2000 (using preset 1)
• Frontier AlphaTrack
• Frontier Tranzport
• HUI (partial support only)
• Mackie Control Extender
• Mackie Control Universal
• PreSonus FaderPort
• Yamaha 01X
• Zoom R16 R24

Different control surfaces have different capabilities; not all control surfaces can be used to control all actions, even those actions that are listed as midi CC capable.

Broadly though, control surfaces fall into two categories:

Devices on the list

of directly supported control surfaces, or which can emulate a directly supported control surface.

Generic devices

which although not specifically and individually recognised, can nonetheless be used as a control surface.

If you are using any of the recognised control surfaces, you should be able to install it on the Control Surfaces page of the Options / Preferences settings. You should also consult the manufacturer's documentation and/or web site for further information.

Even if your control surface is not shown on this list, you might still be able to install it here if it can emulate one of the devices listed. For example, the Novation Nocturn can be installed as a HUI because it can emulate, it can pretend to be, the HUI. Again, check the various documentation and web sites that are available to you.

In every case, make sure that you choose the options that are correct for your control surface from the various Control Surface Settings options.

More than one control surface can be installed. For example, you might wish to use both a Frontier AlphaTrack and a Frontier Tranzport. That's fine, but install each device correctly.

You will need to consult the product documentation to find out how your control surface(s) can be used with REAPER.

If your device is not on the list of recognised control surfaces and cannot emulate any of the items on that list, it can probably still be used by teaching REAPER what MIDI messages each of the physical controls send. An example of such a product is the Behringer BCR2000. Once it has been physically set up and installed on your computer, it will appear on the list of MIDI Devices. Depending on the actual product and which drivers you are using, it might appear on this list with its own name or as a USB Audio Device.

Install it as a MIDI Device, most likely Input Only and in most cases Control Only. If you wish, you can assign it a more recognisable name than that listed by selecting the Alias input name option.

You can then assign any action listed as supporting midi CC control to one of the knobs, faders, buttons or rotaries on your control device.

The procedure is similar to assigning an action to a key on your PC keyboard. First select the action, click on Add then instead of pressing a key on the keyboard, tweak the control surface control and click on OK.

See Also

Main Page > REAPER Documentation, going quite a lot further