Muse Research Receptor manual v1.2 - Manual (Page 191)

17: MIDI Control of Plugin Parameters 191 Receptor Manual
17 MIDI Control of Plugin Parameters
Most fixed-architecture synthesizers have a fairly straight-forward method of mapping MIDI controllers to
particular parameters. In a fixed-architecture synth, these mappings can usually be programmed into your
sequencer or MIDI control surface and forgotten.
But Receptor is not a fixed-architecture synth. It has the ability to load and play hundreds of different VSTi
instruments and VST effects, each of which may have its own idea of what MIDI cc’s should be used for
controlling it! A MIDI controller value that alters resonance for one VSTi might actually control the LFO rate
on another. Obviously, there is an ominous potential for chaos.
Fortunately, your friends at Muse Research have been busy devising a standardized set of controller value rules,
so that any VSTi or VST can be controlled via MIDI with the minimum of effort.
Editing Plugin Parameters with MIDI NRPN Messages
As mentioned previously, Receptor may contain hundreds of VSTi instrument and VST effect plugins, each of
which may contain hundreds of individual parameters. Obviously, there is no way to offer direct MIDI control
of these hundreds of thousands of possible parameters using only 128 MIDI CC numbers.
For this reason, Receptor uses Non Registered Parameter Numbers (NRPN) to control each and every plugin in
Receptor. Basically, any time you add a plugin to Receptor, it automatically assigns a NRPN value to the first
several thousand parameters contained in that plugin.
NOTE: To be specific, NRPN values are assigned to the first 4096 parameters of a VSTi instantiated in a Source
slot, and the first 2048 parameters of a VST instantiated in any FX slot.
You can control Receptor plugin parameters by programming your MIDI control surface or sequencer with the
desired NRPN values. You can view the NRPN for any parameter as follows:
1 Instantiate a plugin in Receptor.
2 Using the Graphic UI, click the plugin’s EDIT button to open its graphical editor.
3 Click the Learn Mode button in the View Bar.
4 Change any parameter on the Plugin’s graphical UI and the View Bar will display the MIDI NRPN value used
to control that parameter.
Alternately, you could click the Faceless Mode button in the View Bar, which allows you to view up to 45 parameters at
a time, complete with their MIDI NRPN values.
The advantage of using NRPN values to control Receptor’s plugin parameters is that you can control virtually
all parameters for all plugins. The disadvantage of using NRPN values is that they are harder to enter into a
sequencer or MIDI control surface. For this reason, Receptor also offers dynamic control of up to 16 parameters
per plugin using standard MIDI Controller messages. This technique is discussed in “Editing Plugin Parameters
with MIDI Controller Messages” on page 193.
NRPN Details
In order to change a parameter value through NRPN, first you have to select which parameter you wish to
edit by sending two controller messages, CC 99 (Non-Registered Parameter Number MSB) and CC 98 (Non-
Registered Parameter Number LSB). After sending these two messages you can use CC 6 (Data Entry MSB) for
coarse control of the selected parameter, or CC 38 (Data Entry LSB) for fine control of the selected parameter.