Reference Guide

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Setting up Control Surfaces
External Devices
7. In the Controllers/Surfaces dialog, make sure that both the ACT and WAI check boxes are
enabled, and click Close.
Now that your controller/surface is connected, you can see which tracks and/or buses are being
controlled by it by looking at the colored markings (the WAI display, (see The WAI Display for more
information) in SONAR’s interface.
If you selected the ACT MIDI Controller plug-in or the Cakewalk Generic Surface plug-in for your
controller/surface, you can load a default set of mappings by opening the property page for either
plug-in, and selecting the name of your controller/surface from the Presets window in the property
page.
See also:
To Use ACT with the ACT MIDI Controller Plug-in
To Disconnect a Controller/Surface from SONAR
1. Use the Options > Controllers/Surfaces command to open the Controllers/Surfaces dialog.
2. In the controller/surface column, click the name of the controller/surface that you want to
disconnect.
3. Click the Delete button , which deletes the name of the controller/surface that you selected.
4. Click Close.
Control surface refresh rate
Control surfaces are refreshed by posting a windows message every 75 milliseconds.
CtrlSurfaceRefreshMS=<50 - 5000> (default=75)
You may wish to increase the value of this Cakewalk.ini variable if you are experiencing sluggish
UI responsiveness when using a control surface and playing back high CPU projects.
Also, if you are using a control surface that is not bi-directional, the surface does not need to be
refreshed at all and you can safely increase the value.
This variable should be set in the [Wincake] section. For example:
[Wincake]
CtrlSurfaceRefreshMS=75
See:
ACT MIDI Controller Plug-in
Cakewalk Generic Surface Plug-in
Important: If your controller/surface needs to be in a certain mode, or have a certain memory
preset loaded in order to control a software application, put your controller/surface in the proper
mode or load the required memory preset now.