At the lower right of the Controllers/Surfaces dialogue box, there's an 'Import ACT Data' button. However, there are a couple of options that come close. If you come up with some really great mapping for a plug-in, for example, that you want to share with someone else, there's no way to simply export that mapping and import it elsewhere. For example, with almost all synths I'll want to tweak filter cutoff and envelope attack, decay, and release times, so I've used ACT's Learn function to assign these to the same knobs for all the soft synths I use. I don't think the main reason ACT exists is to assign every single parameter to a control, even though it pretty much can it seems to me that the best use of the ACT facility would be to set up a consistent set of controls for the options you use the most. To use ACT really effectively, I feel you need to customise it for your own needs. I was pleasantly surprised that the parameters of just about anything I called up showed in the ACT MIDI Controller plug-in, including PSP's Vintage Warmer, Line 6's Gearbox Gold plug-ins, Amplitube 2 and Waves GTR. For example, even a plug-in that has no ACT data will have its Enable parameter assigned to a switch. If there is no generic data or learned data available, Sonar tries to match particular parameters to appropriate control types. This is really considerate, because if you add a new control surface at some point, the generic mapping will try to map the parameters to the control types you've chosen. If you've already used ACT's Learn function to set up your own mappings, not only does Sonar know that, but it modifies the generic data file to take the learned preferences into account. If the plug-in has an entry in this file, Sonar does its best to match the parameters to your control surface.
If there is no learned mapping, Sonar looks at a second set of data that has 'generic' mapping (including preferred parameters and preferred control type - rotary, slider or switch) for various plug-ins. When you give focus to a plug-in, Sonar looks at the ACT data to see if there's a specific mapping of your particular surface to that particular plug-in. Every VST plug-in I have that offers automation shows up under ACT Direct X plug-ins have to expose true Direct X 8 automation parameters (as opposed to MIDI control parameters). So what makes a plug-in show up under ACT? The deciding factor is simply whether or not the plug-in exposes automatable parameters.
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The biggest improvement is ACT's context sensitivity, which instantly maps physical knobs to software parameters that belong to the application having the focus. Sonar has always been able to access any plug-in parameter, and you can think of the ability to show effects controllers in the Console View as a mini-precursor to ACT, which is basically a layer on top of the existing framework. Whatever has the focus is what is controlled at that moment: for example, if the Console View has the focus, the controller affects the mixer controls.ĪCT doesn't really offer any startling new technology. Note that they're mapped to the rotary controls and also to the sliders, for extra convenience.Įver wished you could use your favourite control surface to change not just mixer controls, but effects plug-in parameters and virtual instrument settings? Apparently someone at Cakewalk has too.ĪCT (Active Controller Technology) is Sonar 's way of mapping its controls and parameters - mixer faders, pan pots, effect settings, virtual instrument controls and so on - to a particular hardware controller. The parameters for the Project 5 Compressor/Gate have been re-mapped from their default settings, using ACT, to something that seemed more logical, at least to me.