X-Session UC-17 & ACT Sonar setup FX

Here is a guide to setting up the X-Session UC-17 to control VST FX in Sonar 7

It is part 1 – showing you how to setup a Control Surface and how to use the ‘midi learn’ function.

This guide is a more advanced version of the article,

X-Session UC-17 – How to setup ACT/Sonar

Watch it through a couple of times and you’ll see how it works.

This guide works as a setup for C1 to C6 as ‘Gain’ controllers…

The rest of this article follows through my setup for all the parameters for the Sonitus Equaliser.

This includes using banks in the ‘ACT’ surface dialogue and setting up the X-Session buttons.

1. Finish Bank 1

If you followed the guide through to the end and everything worked you should now be able to control the ‘Gain’ sliders on the Sonitus.

Follow the same principles to setup C8 to control  ‘Output’.

ie.

Click ACT – move slider for output – wiggle C8 on X-Session

Click ACT – Message ‘1 parameter and 1 control touched’

—->>>

For my setup I mapped C9 – C14 as ‘Freq’ controllers.

Do this the same way as previously.

NOTE: There are no sliders, just touch each ‘Freq’ box with you mouse.

Next wiggle controllers C9-14…

Finally press the ‘ACT’ button

Click ACT – Message ‘6 parameters and 6 controls touched’

——->>>

<<<—-TIP NUMBER 1 —->>>

By editing the numbers on the Boxes you can change their names.

Just ‘right click’ on the grey part and edit —>

I changed mine from R1 to C1

—>>>– I repeated this straight through.

So now

R1 – R8 = C1 to C9

and

S1 – S8 = C9 to C16.

———>>>>

Banks can be edited so that you can have more control over your Plugins – means more work setting up though.

Drop down menu – Bank1, Bank 2, Bank 3, Bank 4 —–>>>> brings up more boxes

Drop down menu – Bank1, Bank 2, Bank 3, Bank 4 —–>>>>

As I went I took notes,

This is how I setup each bank – (following the guide)

EQ Plugin Settings – based on maximum of 6 channels

Bank 1

C9	C10	C11	C12	C13	C14	C15	C16
Freq	Freq	Freq	Freq	Freq	Freq
C1	C2	C3	C4	C5	C6	C7	C8
Gain	Gain	Gain	Gain	Gain	Gain		OUTPUT

Bank 2

C9	C10	C11	C12	C13	C14	C15	C16
Freq	Freq	Freq	Freq	Freq	Freq
C1	C2	C3	C4	C5	C6	C7	C8
Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	OUTPUT

Bank 3

C9	C10	C11	C12	C13	C14	C15	C16
Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q
C1	C2	C3	C4	C5	C6	C7	C8
Gain	Gain	Gain	Gain	Gain	Gain		OUTPUT

Bank 4

C9	C10	C11	C12	C13	C14	C15	C16
Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q
C1	C2	C3	C4	C5	C6	C7	C8
Filter	Filter	Filter	Filter	Filter	Filter		OUTPUT

Next was to setup the X-Session buttons – Make sure you’ve saved your preset – hopefully you have as you’ve gone along…

—–>>>>

Assign buttons – (My X-Session wasn’t setup with on/off funtion for the buttons, so I needed to edit. I did this manually the Enigma software didn’t seem to work for me…), this is how I did it.

X-Session Setup-

press button 1

press ‘assign’

press 1 4 6 – wait…you’ve assigned the midi command 146 to the button this is the on/off function.

Do this for buttons 1 to 10

———>>>

I also had to edit the ‘ACT’ surface to make them work properly

Click – ‘Options’ tab

First choose which button to edit:

Change ‘function’ – drop down menu —>>> ‘none’

Untick this box…’Exclude from ACT’

I did this for B1 to B6 and Shift B1 to ShiftB6

B7 – setup as – ‘previous rotaries and sliders bank’

B8 – setup as –  ‘next rotaries and sliders bank’

Finished…

Now go back to ‘Controllers’ tab.

‘Midi Learn’ each button here first…

NEXT——>>>>

Open Sonitus: Equaliser plugin.

Using the guide ‘midi learn’ – then ‘ACT’ learn the buttons

I mapped the buttons to do the

following.

1	2	3
Enable	Enable	Enable
4	5	6
Enable	Enable	Enable
7	8	9
Prev Bank		Next Bank
	0

All done.

You should be able now to use this as a template.

Remember to save.

Also worth noting – each plugin will need to be mapped using ‘ACT’ but you can use the bank setup to create lots of controllers.

Be careful and take notes.

If I’ve missed anything or have made a boo boo please leave a comment and I’ll take a look.