Reference Guide

889
ACT
External Devices
SONAR has built-in mappings for all relatively recent SONAR plug-ins, however some older plug-ins
such as the TTS-1 do not support ACT.
To Use ACT with the ACT MIDI Controller Plug-in
1. Make sure you have completed the following preliminary steps:
• Successfully connected your controller/surface to SONAR (if necessary, see “Setting up
Control Surfaces” on page 872)
• Opened the ACT MIDI Controller property page (if necessary, see “To Open the ACT MIDI
Controller Property Page” on page 874)
• Selected a preset from the ACT MIDI Controller property page Presets menu, either a factory
preset for your controller/surface, or a self-created preset (if there is no preset, see “Assigning
Controls on Your Controller/Surface to Cells in the ACT MIDI Property Page” on page 875).
2. Enable ACT in the ACT MIDI Controller property page by enabling the Active Controller
Technology Enable check box. The ACT MIDI Controller can enable this check box from the
controller/surface itself.
3. Put the focus on the plug-in that you want to control.
The name of the plug-in appears in the Active Controller Technology field of your controller/
surface’s property page, and the current mappings appear above the Knob and Slider fields in
the controller/surface property page.
4. Adjust the plug-in’s parameters by moving the controls on your controller/surface (if you’re using a
self-created preset for the first time, you may have to create your own ACT Mappings before you
can do this step—see the following procedure).
5. If you want to control only this instance of the plug-in with your controller/surface, enable the Lock
check box in the ACT MIDI Controller property page, or enable the ACT Lock button in the
Controllers/Surfaces toolbar.
6. If you are not locking the controller/surface to a single instance of a plug-in, put the focus on
another plug-in, if desired, and adjust its parameters.
Note: If you’re not using an Edirol PCR controller/surface, using ACT at this date means using
either the ACT MIDI Controller Plug-in, or the Cakewalk Generic Surface Plug-in. The ACT MIDI
Controller Plug-in has presets for most popular controller/surfaces that include built-in links
between the knobs and controls on a given controller/surface and the cells on the Controllers
tab of the ACT MIDI Controller property page. If you’re not using one of the factory presets (or
there isn’t one for your controller/surface) OR if you’re using the Cakewalk Generic Surface
Plug-in, you need to establish some links between the knobs and controls on your controller/
surface, and either the cells in the ACT MIDI Controller property page or the radio buttons in the
Cakewalk Generic Surface Plug-in property page. To do either of these, see “Assigning Controls
on Your Controller/Surface to Cells in the ACT MIDI Property Page” on page 875, or “To Use
ACT with the Cakewalk Generic Surface” on page 878.