Workaround to make LED Feedback work with Akai LPD 8

Hey guys,

after working on this issue for a few hours, i finally came to the conclusion, that the leds turn themselves off after the "light on" command from traktor has been received. I think someone already mentioned it here in the forum. Because of that, you can make the led's turn on when you click on the specific control in traktor with the mouse, but it wont stay on if you press the pad.

I just found a way to get around this. The basic idea was to add some short delay to the midi data thats received from traktor, to let the lpd 8 receive the "light on" signal after the feedback from the pad turned off.

You will need the following:

Midiox
Midiyoke

You can find them here:

http://www.midiox.com/
http://www.midiox.com/myoke.htm

After you installed both, open midiox and go to "Options/Midi Devices":

- Select your LPD8 as the input device and as the output: "Out To MIDI Yoke: 1".
- Press "OK"

- Go to "Optins/Data Mapping"
- Press "insert"
- Change the field "Delay (ms) from "0" to "12".
You can basically play around a bit with this value. I found that 12ms is the shortest stable value.

Note: This will delay all controls of your lpd8. As i only wanted the pads to be delayed and not the knobs, i switched to pad mode and only delayed "note on" events. If you want to do so as well:
- Change the value for "Event Type" in the first row to "NoteOn".

- Press "OK"
- Press "OK" again to close the window "Translation Map"

- Activate the "Map"-Button on the right bottom of the midiox-window

Fine, you should be done here. Unfortunatly you have to leave the midiox window open. Otherwise it wont work anymore!

Now open up Traktor.

- Select the "generic midi device" in the "Controller Manager" tab in the options panel
- Select "In From Midi Yoke 1" as the "In-Port" for your device. Output should be the "USB Audio Device" (as usual).

Congratulations! You should now be able to send feedbacks to the leds via the "Add Out" function of traktor.

@Akai: Pretty simple he? It is really a shame that we need a workaround like this to make this thing work. It should be so easy to implement a simple "midi delay" option to the firmware. And if its not added to the firmware, just make a driver that does the job... I really like the lpd8. Its a good piece of hardware, but the software implementation is far from being professional in my opinion! And this LED issue isn't affecting traktor alone. It doenst work in ableton either (without this workaround).
---
Ok, i just thought about this. It (fairly) works, but its better tweaking this solution a bit by delaying not the input, but rather the output that comes from traktor.

I'll describe how to do it if anyone is interested that thing at all

 

Is there a way I can keep the LED states when switching between programs on the LPD8? If I leave the program in which in which I triggered an LED to be lit and then leave the program and come back to the program it will not be lit. Is there a way to have it load the LED state when returning to the program?

 

Yes please! Have tried setting pads to toggle which works great for e.g. turning FX on and off but not so good for hotcues etc, love to hear your midi out delay solution

 

yes please describe this for me!

 

---> For mac os x owners! <---

Hello peoples,

Thought I'd share this work around for mac as the midiox doesn't seem too mac friendly.

Quickly looking around with the idea of adding delay in midi messages I found this, midipipe, which seems to do the trick so far. (Only about 10 minutes of testing... I'll post back tomorrow if I do notice anything strange, and or come up with some other news.)

I took the advice of delaying the output only so my settings are as follows:
-A seperate "generic midi device" page for just the output sent to "midipipe"s virtual port.
(On this page there is no midi input assigned and only the virtual midi port as the output.) ***
-mapped all the buttons "as is", leaving the ranges as they are
-in midipipe, made a new "pipe" with first a midi in (traktor virtual output, hijacked), a delay (which I set to 20ms for now), and a midi output to the lpd8.
-saved it and will see how it works tomorrow... (Next week my friend will come back with his hercules rmx and we'll see if there's any problems with it all hooked up and going)

On that note I will hope for the best, hoping this helps someone else as well. If anyone hears of akai doing a firmware update do let me know!

Cheers! :lol:

*** I'm sure there wouldn't have been a problem having them both (the input from the lpd8 and output to the virtual port) on the same page and would've probably been easier to map but hey, I didn't want to take a chance.