Ableton Live & Traktor Kontrol X1 not communicating…Please Help!
I apologize if this has been posted in here already. After a search of these forums, I cannot find the answer I’m looking for and could really use help from some experience tech types.
I’ve been using Traktor for about 6 months, love it, works great with S4 and X1. Picked up Ableton Live 8 Intro and saw a few people using the X1 to control some of the items in Ableton and how “Easy” it is to midi map. My X1 goes into midi mode (green hotcue) just fine, and I can see the “out” light firing in the NI Controller Editor. The “red box” jumps from knob to button, etc. when they are hit so I know the X1 is outputting just fine.
When I open up Ableton, the X1 shows up in the “Midi/Sync” preferences tab just fine and also appears in the (I/O) drop down menu at the top of the midi/sync screen. When I select the proper drop-downs and assign the X1, I get no midi control or feedback from the indicators in Ableton. The track “on” and remote “on” are selected, the X1 is in Midi Mode and, by all setup info I’ve seen online, the manual, etc., this thing should be working. I plugged in a friends APC40 to Live and it came up just fine and started controlling all of the volume parameters, sends, etc.
Some where there is a gap between output signal, that I have confirmed the X1 is sending, and the receiving of the midi signal in to Ableton, which I confirmed with the APC40. I’m usually pretty good at figuring this stuff out and am not a total noob when it comes to midi technology, but this one has me perplexed. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Gear:
MacBook Pro 2.53Ghz, 4GB RAM
Ableton Live 8 Intro
Akai APC40 (Tested with a friends, worked fine)
Kontrol X1 (Also tested with another friends X1 and had same problem - 2 X1’s should be bad)
Have downloaded the latest drivers and updates for all software and hardware.
An update on the Ableton communication problem I was having. For what ever reason, after a good nights sleep, I fiddled around with Control Editor a bit more and then decided to change the “device name” from Kontrol X1-1 to Kontrol X1-4 in the pull down menu. All of the sudden, I have full X1 control in Ableton. In the Ableton Midi/Sync Preferences menu, I now see the “Traktor X1-1” and the “Traktor X1-4.” The X1-1 items are fully disabled, confirming that what ever happened with the device change to “X1-4” In Control Editor is what is working. Since the device is working, a new question has emerged…why? I am a “why” guy since I do like to learn from these things and not just chalk it up to serendipity.
Can anyone explain why the change in NI Control Editor to Traktor X1-4 would all of the sudden open up communication to Ableton? The Control Editor link is flawless and I’m able to make changes on-the-fly in the Editor and they work instantly in Ableton. For example, saw that another Midi device I hooked up was on Channel 1 as was the X1. Change the knob to Channel 15 in Control Editor, remapped in Ableton, and channel 15 popped up in the Midi editor and information window. I was even able to re-map the number buttons on the X1 to Ableton and retask them as toggles instead of gates for EQ cuts. They not only toggle, but also provide LED status feed back accordingly. Don’t get me wrong, I’m THRILLED it’s working and have been playing with setup options for most of the morning. Once again, just trying to figure out the “why” behind it incase I ever need to troubleshoot something similar in the future or pay it forward to someone else who may need help.
Thanks.
I am having a similar issue except no serendipity for me. I have no lights however from the controller other than when I first plug it in. It is registering in the midi port selection but seems to neither be sending or receiving commands. However, when I plug it into MAX/MSP I can adjust values with the knobs so it is sending, just not for ableton. I don’t actually have traktor/serrato software (got the controller second hand) so I can’t verify if it is functioning in that.
I also do not have the option of changing the name from X1-1 to X1-4 because only X1-1 is appearing. Not sure if you ever figured out what the issue with that was.
Ok yup, that did it. My best guess is that for some reason the first surface was specifically for traktor and they decided not to have it play nicely with regular midi interfaces for some reason because X1-2 through X1-4 all seem to function fine. I guess they just figured you would change off the traktor/serrato presets if you weren’t using that software because its a waste of knobs
