This will walk you through the process of configuring and using a Behringer BCF2000 MIDI control surface , or BCF, with Ardour. This should also work with the BCR2000, but has not been tested.

It's assumed that your USB ports are functional under Linux. The easiest way to tell if you've got a functional link is to simply connect the BCF2000 to your computer with a USB cable, connect the power, and turn it on. You should see the USB MODE light come on in the upper right corner of the BCF. If that's not on, you'll need to figure out how to make your USB port work under Linux. If the USB MODE light is on, doublecheck that Linux knows of the device. xtc:~% aconnect -o client 64: 'M Audio Delta 1010 MIDI - Rawmidi 0' [type=kernel] 0 'M Audio Delta 1010 MIDI' client 72: 'BCF2000 - Rawmidi 1' [type=kernel] 0 'BCF2000 MIDI 1 '

The first thing you're likely to have to do is update the firmware in the unit. This is a relatively painless process. Download the firmware from Behringers downloads page. There will be a zip file available which should be downloaded. (This example uses version 1.07 of the firmware, the latest available at the time of this writing. There may be a newer version available now.) Unzip the file you downloaded. You'll typically extract 2 files, a PDF file with release notes and an SYX file, which is the firmware update. Find the system device of the BCF xtc:~% cat /proc/asound/cards 0 [M1010 ]: ICE1712 - M Audio Delta 1010 M Audio Delta 1010 at 0xdf80, irq 2 [BCF2000 ]: USB-Audio - BCF2000 BEHRINGER BCF2000 at usb-00:1d.1-2, full speed In this case there are 2 devices. The number at the left indicates the card number. The BCF is almost certain, then, to use the device /dev/snd/midiCnD0 where n is the card number, in this case, 2. Write the firmware to the BCF with the command cat bcf2000_1-07.syx > /dev/snd/midiC2D0 Make sure you use the actual device you determined in the previous step The BCF display will show a whirling figure-8 animation and count up to 18. Once the whirling stops, you should turn off the BCF, count to 5, then turn it on again. You should then see the version number of the upgraded firmware displayed for a few seconds as the BCF starts.

After starting Ardour, it's important to connect the MIDI device ports of Ardour and the BCF together so that they will communicate with each other. There are a few ways to do this.

If you use the program qjackctl to control JACK, there's an easy way to connect Ardour to the BCF. Run qjackctl, and click on the Connect button in the main qjackctl window. This will bring up the Connection window. You should see at least 2 items listed, the BCF and Ardour: Connect the BCF output to the Ardour input, and vice versa:

You can set qjackctl to automatically make the MIDI connections (and others) by using the Patchbay feature in qjackctl. Start qjackctl and Ardour, and make the MIDI connections as shown above. Click on the Patchbay button, then click on New. Qjackctl will ask if you want to create a patchbay definition as a snapshot of all actual client connections. Clicking on Yes will bring in a set of all ports available. Make sure you've got both connections as described above, and click Save... and choose a filename. Once this is saved, you can close the patchbay. Next, click on the qjackctl Setup button, then click on the Options tab. Click on Activate patchbay persistence and use the filename you used to save the patchbay above. The patchbay connections will now be made after qjackctl starts up the clients.

The command aconnect, which is the ALSA sequencer connection manager, can do the job of connecting the BCF to Ardour. First find the numbers of the MIDI device ports for the two: xtc:~% aconnect -o client 64: 'M Audio Delta 1010 MIDI - Rawmidi 0' [type=kernel] 0 'M Audio Delta 1010 MIDI' client 80: 'BCF2000 - Rawmidi 2' [type=kernel] 0 'BCF2000 MIDI 1 ' client 129: 'ardour' [type=user] 0 'seq ' Here, the BCF is 80, and Ardour is 129. The proper connections can be made between the two with two commands: xtc:~% aconnect 80:0 129:0 xtc:~% aconnect 129:0 80:0

It's sometimes handy to start Ardour from the command line. I found it irritating to have Ardour come up, and then have to manually make the connections for the BCF. This was quickly solved by the following script, which starts Ardour, finds the proper MIDI device ports, and connects them: #!/bin/ksh # /usr/local/bin/start_ardour.sh # # April 17, 2005 - Joe Hartley (jh@brainiac.com) # A quick script to start Ardour and then make the MIDI connections between # the BCF2000 and Ardour. # start Ardour and give it a little time before setting the MIDI connections nohup /usr/bin/ardour & sleep 3 # Set the IDs - note that they'll both end with a colon BCF_ID=$(aconnect -o | grep BCF2000 | grep client | awk '{print $2}') ARD_ID=$(aconnect -o | grep ardour | awk '{print $2}') aconnect "$BCF_ID"0 "$ARD_ID"0 aconnect "$ARD_ID"0 "$BCF_ID"0 As an alternative to the patchbay in qjackctl, you could have it run this script to start Ardour and make the MIDI connections. Click the Setup button and choose the Options tab. Enable the Execute script after Startup option, and change the line to call the start_ardour.sh script. In this example, I change directories to the drive I record to so new sessions will open there by default before I run the script.

One problem that I ran into with the BCF2000 was that none of the factory presets really did what I needed to control Ardour. I had a modest set of things I wanted to use the BCF to control for a track: Volume Panning Mute, solo and rec-enable Transport (play, stop, ffwd, rewind) Preset 2 (P2), the Simple Mixer, was almost there, but I could not map the mute, solo and rec-enable controls in Ardour to a pushbutton on the BCF. This was because in P2, the buttons sent a Program Change signal, but Ardour expects a Control Change signal. This required re-programming the BCF a bit. Here's a list of the controls and what I mapped them to send: Rotary knobs 1 through 8, when pressed: CC33 through CC40 First row of buttons: CC65 through CC72 second row of buttons: CC73 through CC80 Here's a quick walkthrough to program the controls on the BCF. First we'll do the rotary knobs: Hold down the EDIT button and press the rotary control. The display will show b1. Turn the rotary control labeled "TYPE" until the display reads "CC". Turn the rotary control labeled "PAR" until the display reads "33". Turn the rotary control labeled "MODE" until the display reads "t on". Press the EXIT button. Continue to program the other rotary controls in the same way, incrementing the value set by the "PAR" control by 1 each time. This will set the CC parameter for the second knob to 34, the third knob to 35, and so on. The steps are the same for the two rows of pushbuttons under the rotary knobs. The CC values for the first row of buttons run from 65 to 72, and from 73 to 80 for the second row. Finally, you need to store these changes so that they'll be kept even when the BCF has its power cycled. Press the STORE button. Its LED will start to flash. Select a different preset number if you wish with the left and right PRESET buttons. Press STORE again to write the settings to an empty preset. If you want to overwrite an existing preset, press STORE twice. You can cancel the store at any time by pressing EXIT. Your BCF2000 is now ready to control Ardour!

Here is a saved preset file, which has the definitions described above. You can use amidi to load this into the BCF as .

The final step to control surface Nirvana is to map the controls in Ardour to the knobs, buttons and faders on the BCF. Before you can map things properly, you'll need to set the MIDI options within Ardour. In the Editor window of Ardour, choose Windows Options Editor . Make sure the seq device is online, and make sure MTC, MMC and MIDI Parameter Control is set for the seq device. Also make sure that the 4 boxes below are checked: MMC control MIDI parameter control Send MMC Send MIDI parameter feedback Now you're ready to do the actual mapping. This is a pretty simple process, all controlled with a Ctrl Button2 click. This will pop up a little window which says operate MIDI controller now. Simply press the BCF button (or move the slider) that you want to have control the Ardour function.

We want to map the Master fader in Ardour to the first slider on the BCF. Hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard, and click with Button2 on the Master fader in Ardour. You should see the operate MIDI controller now. Move the first slider on the BCF up or down a bit. The window should disappear, and you should see the master fader move up and down as you move the slider on the BCF. If that works, move the fader in Ardour with your mouse. You should see the slider on the BCF move up and down in tandem with the Master fader! If the "operate MIDI controller now" window does not go away, there is no connection between Ardour and the BCF. Make sure you've properly connected the two as outlined in the Connecting to Ardour section.

The 4 buttons in the lower right corner are already mapped in Preset 2 to the MMC transport controls Home (or rewind to the beginning of the session), Fast Forward, Stop and Play, as shown here.

After beating my head against a wall trying to get various programs that handle SysEx messages to do what I wanted, I realized that once again, the simplest way for me to do this the first time through is from the command line. ALSA provides the perfect tool for saving and loading files: amidi First, use amidi to list the available ports: xtc:~% amidi -l Device Name hw:0,0 M Audio Delta 1010 MIDI hw:2,0,0 BCF2000 MIDI 1 There's the BCF, at port hw:2 (we can ignore everything after the first number after the colon). We'll tell amidi to use this port with the -p option

There's 2 parts to saving a preset: telling the BCF to send the data, and telling the computer to accept it.

Run amidi, using the -p option to specify the port, and the -r option to receive the date into. xtc:~% amidi -p hw:2 -r preset1.syx The system will collect data from the MIDI port now until it's told to stop with a CtrlC so it's time to send some data.

To send the MIDI data for the current preset to the computer, hold down the Edit key on the BCF and press the Store button. They should both stay lit and the display should read EG . This is the Global Edit mode. You can choose whether to send the current preset's data or the data for all 32 presets by turning the Mode knob, #6, and selecting either All or SnGl . When ready to send the data, press knob 6. The display on the BCF will circle around while it's sending data, and return to EG when complete. At this point, CtrlC out of amidi. You'll see a report on the amount of data read: xtc:~% amidi -p hw:2 -r preset1.syx 13169 bytes read xtc:~% ls -l preset1.syx -rw-r--r-- 1 jh jh 13169 May 1 22:14 preset1.syx The data for the preset is now saved in the file preset1.syx. Press Exit on the BCF to exit the Global Edit mode.

Loading a .syx file, such as the one saved above, is very simple. First, select the preset on the BCF to choose the preset to overwrite. Then call amidi using the -s option instead of -r to send a file. xtc:~% amidi -p hw:2 -s preset1.syx There will be a quick left-to-right flash of the encoder LEDs along the top of the BCF, followed by the display circling around until the data is loaded. It will then display the preset number again. The preset is now loaded with the settings from the file. They are only active as long as the preset is not changed. If you go to another preset and back to the one you loaded, all the changes will have disappeared. To save the settings, Press the STORE button. Its LED will start to flash. Select a different preset number if you wish with the left and right PRESET buttons. Press STORE again to write the settings to an empty preset. If you want to overwrite an existing preset, press STORE twice. You can cancel the store at any time by pressing EXIT.

The tool provided by Behringer to manage presets and other things on the BCF is the Java program BCEdit. This program will start up under Linux provided the correct version of Java is used. I've found that JRE 5.0 Update 2 starts up correctly, but earlier versions of 5.0 will not. The Behringer support page says that the "editor software was originally developed under J2SE-1_4_2_05". I tested it with J2RE1.4.2_08 and BCEdit started, but was unable to see the BCF when the "Scan" button was pressed. Running under JRE_1.5.0_02, pressing the "Scan" button found the BCF, and I was able to load presets from the BCF to BCEdit, but when I simply renamed the preset and tried to write it back to the BCF, I got a Timeout Error while sending "$rev F1" in the application. At this point, I don't consider BCEdit to be fully usable under Linux yet.