(Update: Due to recent events in the UA universe, this project has been cancelled.)
(Update: this project is now called LSD-Pilot)
I've been working on a set of profiles for my Stream Deck XL for about the last six months, to be used with Luna. I started out building this just for myself and, only after I got about halfway thru, did I decide to modify it to try to make it as user friendly for as many people as I could, and then share it with everyone. Keeping that in mind, I’ve done a good amount of testing for reliability, but that testing was limited to my two Macs (MacBook Air M1 and Mac Studio M1 w/65” 4K screen). So I figured I'd see if anyone was interested in giving it a try before I release it out into the wild. Granted, this is just something I'm sharing with everyone, and isn't and won't ever be a "product", but I'd still like to share it in an "as plug and play as possible" state, hence the request for a tester or two.
Anyway, I put these profiles together because hardware control of plugin management is mostly non-existent in the DAW world, and is certainly non-existent for Luna. I use the term “plugin management”, and not “plugin control”, because there are various hardware controllers that do have knobs which you can turn to control plugin parameters in Luna, but there aren’t really any hardware controllers that exist that allow you to comprehensively MANAGE plugins in Luna. So these profiles are intended, not to be a replacement of your typical hardware controller, but to be a supplement to your typical hardware controller. That said, you can obviously still use these profiles even if you only have a Stream Deck, and no other hardware controller.
So when I talk about plugin management, I’m talking about hardware control of all the things that go into getting you to the point where you are actually ready to start turning knobs on a plugin (or Luna extension). These are things such as opening/closing plugin GUIs, realtime feedback of plugin states and location on any given channel, control of plugin presets, control of adding/removing/enabling/disabling/etc. plugins, control of plugin favorites, mouse-less navigation to various sections of the mixer/timeline window (inputs, inserts, Console, etc.), MCU integration so that menu diving on standard hardware controllers (SSL UF8, Behringer X-Touch, etc.) is no longer needed for plugin control, full length plugin names/icons instead of the standard MCU 6-character limit, and so on. I’ve also added some profile pages for places to assign Stream Deck buttons to perform mundane or frequently conducted tasks, such as certain multi-step tasks which take place during editing, for example. Why do a bunch of menu diving and mousing around when you can just automate it with one button?
I tried to incorporate a coherent UX into the design of these profiles, using things like color coding of buttons, plugin images on buttons for easy identification, persistent location of buttons to promote muscle memory, using a simple means of navigation (toggles instead of menu diving) from one profile to another, etc. to make it as user friendly as possible to use these profiles. These profiles are mostly built with a “one button, one function” approach, to facilitate speed and eliminate the need to memorize sub functions. Where sub functions exist, they are typically related to the main function of that button (and the sub function is also identified on that button). I tried to build these profiles as robustly as I could, to avoid issues with these profiles not working on certain setups. That robustness includes things like adding a “User Defined Variables” macro to allow people to tailor certain aspects of these profiles and macros to their unique setup, though there is a balance I tried to keep between tweakability and reliability. These profiles also allow you to set things up according to your preferred screen setup as well as any alternate Luna themes you may be using. You are also free to create and manage plugin names and button icons, as you desire.
If you're interested, let me know. This setup was built to be used with a Stream Deck XL (32 key), but, as I understand it, you could also purchase/demo Stream Deck Mobile for use on your iPad, if you don't own a Stream Deck XL. Either way, 32 keys ARE required. This setup also requires Bome MIDI Translator Pro, which can also be purchased or demoed if you don't already have it. This setup also requires Keyboard Maestro, which has a free trial, if you don't already own it. So you'll need all of those things. It's also Mac only, as this is built on top of Keyboard Maestro, and Keyboard Maestro is only available on Mac. To anybody who is interested in doing a beta, I'd send you everything (KM macros, SD profiles, BMT presets, plugin icons, etc.) with instructions on how to set it all up. A lot of the buttons on these profiles are not just activating a simple keystroke/shortcut in the background. I had to build a lot of macros to get all of this to work in the background, so I'm mostly just interested in seeing if anyone can break those macros.
I still have a few weeks worth of work left to do to get everything tidied up, create the rest of the plugin icons, etc., but I figured I'd go ahead and put this out there to see if anyone might be interested in doing some independent testing. These are just two of the profile pages below. As you might guess from the navigation section on the right side of those screenshots, there are multiple profile pages for plugin category types, as well as a placeholder for hardware inserts, and various profile pages for editing/workflow macros/shortcuts. The eight insert buttons on the left side will open and close plugin GUIs as well as automatically trigger your hardware controller (SSL UF8, in my case) to display plugin parameters above your Vpots, ready for knob twisting. So one push of an insert button will open your GUIs, ready to be controlled by your HW controller, and then another push of that same insert button will put it all back like it was (GUI closed, HW controller displaying track names). These eight insert buttons also always display whatever plugins you have loaded on whatever channel you have selected. They automatically update as you change selected channels or modify/add/remove/open/close specific plugins on that selected channel.
These are NOT final versions below, but it's getting close to final version. A few things may slightly change.
(Update: this project is now called LSD-Pilot)
I've been working on a set of profiles for my Stream Deck XL for about the last six months, to be used with Luna. I started out building this just for myself and, only after I got about halfway thru, did I decide to modify it to try to make it as user friendly for as many people as I could, and then share it with everyone. Keeping that in mind, I’ve done a good amount of testing for reliability, but that testing was limited to my two Macs (MacBook Air M1 and Mac Studio M1 w/65” 4K screen). So I figured I'd see if anyone was interested in giving it a try before I release it out into the wild. Granted, this is just something I'm sharing with everyone, and isn't and won't ever be a "product", but I'd still like to share it in an "as plug and play as possible" state, hence the request for a tester or two.
Anyway, I put these profiles together because hardware control of plugin management is mostly non-existent in the DAW world, and is certainly non-existent for Luna. I use the term “plugin management”, and not “plugin control”, because there are various hardware controllers that do have knobs which you can turn to control plugin parameters in Luna, but there aren’t really any hardware controllers that exist that allow you to comprehensively MANAGE plugins in Luna. So these profiles are intended, not to be a replacement of your typical hardware controller, but to be a supplement to your typical hardware controller. That said, you can obviously still use these profiles even if you only have a Stream Deck, and no other hardware controller.
So when I talk about plugin management, I’m talking about hardware control of all the things that go into getting you to the point where you are actually ready to start turning knobs on a plugin (or Luna extension). These are things such as opening/closing plugin GUIs, realtime feedback of plugin states and location on any given channel, control of plugin presets, control of adding/removing/enabling/disabling/etc. plugins, control of plugin favorites, mouse-less navigation to various sections of the mixer/timeline window (inputs, inserts, Console, etc.), MCU integration so that menu diving on standard hardware controllers (SSL UF8, Behringer X-Touch, etc.) is no longer needed for plugin control, full length plugin names/icons instead of the standard MCU 6-character limit, and so on. I’ve also added some profile pages for places to assign Stream Deck buttons to perform mundane or frequently conducted tasks, such as certain multi-step tasks which take place during editing, for example. Why do a bunch of menu diving and mousing around when you can just automate it with one button?
I tried to incorporate a coherent UX into the design of these profiles, using things like color coding of buttons, plugin images on buttons for easy identification, persistent location of buttons to promote muscle memory, using a simple means of navigation (toggles instead of menu diving) from one profile to another, etc. to make it as user friendly as possible to use these profiles. These profiles are mostly built with a “one button, one function” approach, to facilitate speed and eliminate the need to memorize sub functions. Where sub functions exist, they are typically related to the main function of that button (and the sub function is also identified on that button). I tried to build these profiles as robustly as I could, to avoid issues with these profiles not working on certain setups. That robustness includes things like adding a “User Defined Variables” macro to allow people to tailor certain aspects of these profiles and macros to their unique setup, though there is a balance I tried to keep between tweakability and reliability. These profiles also allow you to set things up according to your preferred screen setup as well as any alternate Luna themes you may be using. You are also free to create and manage plugin names and button icons, as you desire.
If you're interested, let me know. This setup was built to be used with a Stream Deck XL (32 key), but, as I understand it, you could also purchase/demo Stream Deck Mobile for use on your iPad, if you don't own a Stream Deck XL. Either way, 32 keys ARE required. This setup also requires Bome MIDI Translator Pro, which can also be purchased or demoed if you don't already have it. This setup also requires Keyboard Maestro, which has a free trial, if you don't already own it. So you'll need all of those things. It's also Mac only, as this is built on top of Keyboard Maestro, and Keyboard Maestro is only available on Mac. To anybody who is interested in doing a beta, I'd send you everything (KM macros, SD profiles, BMT presets, plugin icons, etc.) with instructions on how to set it all up. A lot of the buttons on these profiles are not just activating a simple keystroke/shortcut in the background. I had to build a lot of macros to get all of this to work in the background, so I'm mostly just interested in seeing if anyone can break those macros.
I still have a few weeks worth of work left to do to get everything tidied up, create the rest of the plugin icons, etc., but I figured I'd go ahead and put this out there to see if anyone might be interested in doing some independent testing. These are just two of the profile pages below. As you might guess from the navigation section on the right side of those screenshots, there are multiple profile pages for plugin category types, as well as a placeholder for hardware inserts, and various profile pages for editing/workflow macros/shortcuts. The eight insert buttons on the left side will open and close plugin GUIs as well as automatically trigger your hardware controller (SSL UF8, in my case) to display plugin parameters above your Vpots, ready for knob twisting. So one push of an insert button will open your GUIs, ready to be controlled by your HW controller, and then another push of that same insert button will put it all back like it was (GUI closed, HW controller displaying track names). These eight insert buttons also always display whatever plugins you have loaded on whatever channel you have selected. They automatically update as you change selected channels or modify/add/remove/open/close specific plugins on that selected channel.
These are NOT final versions below, but it's getting close to final version. A few things may slightly change.
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