Hello Mark and BCFamily.
I recently became an owner of a pre-owned BCF2000 that, for all intents and purposes, seemed to be in near mint condition. After severaly days of forum foraging, manual re-re-reading, video scrubbing (the infamous Dancetech exhaustive tutorial) and the likes, I have yet to figure out how to get this controller to play nicely with anyone. I fear it might be some sort of hardware problem (USB?), but am really hoping that, as my username implies, I'm just being a total noob. I will walk through the scenarios I've been through up to this point:
- The BCF is running on firmware version 1.10
- The BCF is connected via USB directly to my iMac (Retina 5k/Mid-2015), no audio/MIDI interface
- LPX recognized the control surface immediately and correctly identified it
- MIDI is being transmitted from the BCF, however it seems to be simply triggering Note Values, regardless of Fader/Encoder/Push-Rotary
- MIDI does not seem to be being received by the BCF
- I have tried this with BCF in both 'LC' emulation mode and 'BC' preset mode
- I found BC Manager through forums and decided to see if I could get it to communicate with that and perhaps do a factory reset
- BC Manager indicated that no BC Controls were detected
- I went to MIDI options and made sure the appropriate ports were selected
- BC Manager does another scan and indicates 'No response from B-Control'
- However, if I move the controls of the BCF, the MIDI input monitor reacts accordingly (i.e. move fader on 1 => Ch 1 indicates activity)
- I wanted to try and do a SysEx dump of the factory presets so that I could start with a completely fresh slate and downloaded SNOIZE's SysEx Librarian app
- Using that, I ran the 'bcf_FACTORY_PRESETS.syx' program
- Unfortunately, this has not seemed to yield any new results
So, I kind of don't know where to go from here. Perhaps I purchased a very lovely, near-mint lemon. I'm hoping that the only 'lemon' is in my understanding of how to operate this correctly. Please let me know what other information I could provide or other steps I could follow up with to aid in any assistance. I truly appreciate your time and efforts and many thanks to any and all that are able to help.
I can't say with any
I can't say with any certaintly what the problem is, so here are just some random responses:
So in which operating mode is your BCF exactly? If it is connected "via USB directly", its operating mode should be U-1/2/3/4, not S-1/2/3/4. And at this stage you don't need access to its MIDI sockets, so you should select U-1, which gives you only I/O access to the BCF itself: this avoids the risk of selecting the wrong MIDI I/O device in BC Manager or any other application.
What is LPX? Is it a DAW?
And was the BCF in standard B-Control mode or in an emulation mode when LPX recognized it?
(I don't know how LPX works, but doesn't this "correct identification" indicate that your BCF can communication bidirectionally? That would be very good news.)
For any meaningful communication between a BCF and BC Manager, the BCF needs to be in standard B-Control mode.
That's because in any emulation mode, there is no access to the BCF's 32 presets.
Again, this can only work when the BCF is in standard B-Control mode.
Incidentally, BC Manager's "MIDI System Exclusive messages" window can open and send syx files too. Although a more "regular" method would be to open bcf_FACTORY_PRESETS.syx in BC Manager's "B-Controls" window, then you can send any of the presets to the BCF via the more sophisticated B-Control communication protocol.
Did you make sure that the Device ID on the BCF itself and the Device ID specified in the "MIDI options" dlalog box match?
So MIDI communication from the BCF definitely works. (Incidentally, you can see the actual MIDI messages in BC Manager's "MIDI input messages" window, provided the Record button has been pressed.)
You might want to take a look at section 23 of BC MIDI Implementation.pdf (which is part of the BC Manager package: you can open it from BC Manager's Help pull-down menu): there's a list of things you can do by pressing special button combinations. For instance, Panic Reset and Snapshot Send should make the BCF send batches of MIDI messages, which you should be able to receive in BC Manager's "MIDI input messages" window; this should provide further confirmation that MIDI output from the BCF works correctly.
So the problem seems to be with MIDI messages sent to the BCF.
One thing you can try is send a Program Change message (with Program set to a value in the range from 1 to 32) to the BCF from BC Manager's "MIDI program changer" window: this should make the BCF switch to the corresponding preset (1-32); just make sure that the BCF's own Receive Channel is set to the channel specified in the "MIDI program changer" window.
If the BCF doesn't respond to any incoming MIDI message, its USB controller might be defective; this is a fairly common problem (indeed I once had a BCR2000 that had this defect). If this is the case, all you can do is set the BCF's operating mode to S-1/2/3/4 and access it via its MIDI I/O sockets; if things do work then bidirectionally, this is further evidence that there's a (hardware or software) problem with USB communication.
And finally: have you tried editing buttons/encoders/faders manually on the BCF?
Hope this helps,
Mark.
Hi Mark. Thanks so much for
Hi Mark. Thanks so much for taking the time to review this. I will post further after I have been able to put your suggestions to use. But to answer some of your questions:
I will review section 23 of your BC Midi Implementation and see if I can further confirm the USB-MIDI output. I also am of the mind at this point that the USB controller is defective and is not able to receive MIDI messages. I will work with MIDI program changer and see what happens there. In terms of editing buttons/encoders/faders manually on the BCF, how do you mean exactly? Like using the 'Learn' function?
This certainly helps me at least not feel completely insane! I will get back with further results later this evening.
Thanks again.
In terms of editing buttons
No, I meant what's listed in section 23 of BCMI as "Edit Element": you hold down the EDIT button, then move the element (button/encoder/fader) of your choice, upon which you can set the parameters of this element via the push encoders (push=show value, turn=change value), as detailed in Behringer's official B-Control User's Manual. Press EXIT when you're done.
Further updates: pretty
Further updates: pretty definitely seems to be a breakdown in communication to the BCF, at least via USB.
I'll be taking it over to a friend's this weekend whom has a MIDI I/O interface and will see if the results are any different from there. If so, I suppose that puts the final 5-pin DIN nail in the coffin. C'est la vie. I'll follow up just to bring closure to the topic. Regardless, appreciate your help and all the work you put into this project! Thanks again.
pretty definitely seems to be
Defective BCF/BCR USB controllers were discussed at length in this topic:
2 BCR2000s - one not recognised
By the way, my guess is that communication to your BCF via MIDI does work. In any case I have never heard about any BCF/BCR with a defective USB controller that also had defective MIDI I/O sockets: the hardware problems with the USB controller don't affect those. But don't take my word for it - you'll soon find out...