It's a plugin for the Elgato Stream Deck that triggers actions as well as individual channel actions on the RME TotalMix FX application. Note: a RME audio interface/card is needed or TotalMix FX to work.
It supports OSC protocol support which offers more functionality than MIDI commands (at least I implemented more in my plugin), is more solid than MIDI and doesn't interfere with your already existing MIDI setup. The plugin however also supports MIDI wiht a limited feature set in case you don't want to use OSC.
It's not a MIDI controller or axis emulator. The Elgato StreamDeck offers simple digital buttons. They are pressed and then a predefined action will trigger. You can thus not do anything that requires analog axis. It also doesn't run on MacOS. Bummer, I know.
Inside the Release-folder you can find the precompiled plugin. Download and open it, your computer should already recognize this as a StreamDeck file and offer to open it with StreamDeck - which will have the plugin available in the list then.
Starting with v3.0.0 the plugin requires two OSC endpoints being activated in TotalMix FX to make mirroring of settings more robust and quicker. Refer to the next chapter to learn how to set it up correctly.
With both OSC listeneners active, most buttons/actions should continue to function after an update. As there are many versions out there now, broken button actions are possible however. If you encounter issues with an action, delete and replace the button on your StreamDeck. This will reset its individual settings.
Enable OSC in RME TotalMix FX' settings (let's call it TotalMix from here on for ease of typing) and have it listen to OSC commands. Note that there are 4 OSC Remote Controllers available. If you already use one, set up two for the plugin specifically. This plugin uses 2 of them, 1 and 2. 1 is used for the main actions, 2 is used for the background thread that mirrors TotalMix changes to the StreamDeck.
Note: if you don't want/need the mirroring-function, you can just not use listener #2. The plugin will detect it not being present and act accordingly.
- Open "Options" -> "Settings..." in TotalMix, then open the tab "OSC".
- Make sure Remote Controller 1 has a checkmark next to "In Use". By default TotalMix will use the ports 7001 and 9001.
- In the bottom, set the "Number of faders per bank" setting to reflect the amount of channels your interface offers (the plugin will offer channels based on that value).
- Then, do the same for Remote Controller 2. It will default to 7002 and 9002.
If you (have to) change these ports, make sure updating them in the plugin config as well!
Then, make sure to enable "Enable OSC control". Also link both Remote Controllers to the submix.
No additional software is needed. In theory this should also be able to control a TotalMix instance running on a different computer than the StreamDeck is attached to - as long as you can reach this machine on the given port with UDP packets.
Note: if you're using a (software) firewall on your PC and/or any firewall between the StreamDeck and the target PC - make sure to allow the plugin to communicate with the TotalMix port as well as allow TotalMix to listen to it.
%appdata%\Elgato\StreamDeck\Plugins\de.shells.totalmix.sdPlugin
contains the file de.shells.totalmix.exe.config (which is created with default values during the first start of the plugin and read during every start)
<appSettings>
<add key="interfaceIp" value="127.0.0.1" />
<add key="interfacePort" value="7001" /> <!-- OSC remote controller #1 "Port incoming" -->
<add key="interfaceSendPort" value="9001" /> <!-- OSC remote controller #2 "Port incoming" -->
<add key="interfaceBackgroundPort" value="7002" /> <!-- OSC remote controller #1 "Port outgoing" -->
<add key="interfaceBackgroundSendPort" value="9002" /> <!-- OSC remote controller #2 "Port outgoing" -->
<add key="mirroringRequested" value="true" /> <!-- set to "false" to disable mirroring (not recommended) -->
<add key="channelCount" value="16" /> <!--Only relevant if disableMirroring is true = mirroring disabled, otherwise this is read from TotalMix; change to required channelCount if you decide to not use mirroring -->
<add key="killAndRestartOnStuck" value="false" /> <!-- set to "true" to kill and restart TotalMix in case it doesn't respond anymore (not recommended / use only if that's actually an issue for you!) -->
</appSettings>where you can configure non-default values or the TotalMix connection. Note: This had to be set on every button individually in older versions of this plugin. I decided to have a central location for these settings to unclutter the UI a bit.
Detailed information about the config settings
<add key="interfaceIp" value="127.0.0.1" />- the IP of the PC TotalMix runs on, if it's the machine the StreamDeck is connected to, the default value will work fine.
<add key="interfacePort" value="7001" />- the port labeled "Port incoming" in the TotalMix Settings windows for OSC Remote Controller #1
<add key="interfaceSendPort" value="9001" />- the port labeled "Port outgoing" in the TotalMix Settings windows for OSC Remote Controller #1
<add key="interfaceBackgroundPort" value="7002" />- the port labeled "Port incoming" in the TotalMix Settings windows for OSC Remote Controller #2
- Needed for mirroring to work. If you do not intent to use mirroring, set
mirroringRequestedtofalse(see further below)
<add key="interfaceBackgroundSendPort" value="9002" />- the port labeled "Port outgoing" in the TotalMix Settings windows for OSC Remote Controller #2
- Needed for mirroring to work. If you do not intent to use mirroring, set
mirroringRequestedtofalse(see below)
<add key="mirroringRequested" value="true" />- this flag tells the plugin it should communicate to TotalMix with the second listener and try to mirror settings that can be mirrored.
- for this to work, the OSC Remote Controller #2 must be set and activated by ticking the "in Use" checkbox
- as TotalMix appears to use OSC as it uses MIDI, the implementaion of this was/is a bit tricky. I spare you the details, but enabling mirroring causes a bit of CPU load and isn't instant (but still quite quick 😉). I tried to find a good middle ground between performance and load, but if your PC can't handle the load the plugin causes, you can disable mirroring. The plugin will still function, just with the lack of the comfort-features of having actual track names and button status shown.
<add key="channelCount" value="16" />- as mirroring also reads out the channel count set for the OSC Remote Controller to reflect the actual amount of channels your interface has (and improve performance of the plugin/mirroing if you don't need all of the channels and set it lower) - without mirroring you can use this config setting to tell the plugin how many channels your interface supports (and you intend to use)
<add key="killAndRestartOnStuck" value="false" />- Config flag which does exactly that (or tries to at least) and should resolve the issue with TotalMix not responding to OSC requests after the PC went to sleep (which is not an issue of this plugin, but TotalMix) or for other reasons. Note that there's a snag to it (as with everything concerning TotalMix 🙄) - TotalMix appears to store everything you set, do, toggle, or otherwise interact with the UI in a config file, however it does this only when it exits gracefully. When it's killed, nothing is saved. Brilliant, isn't it. That means that if the plugin kills TotalMix and restarts it, to reenable the OSC Remote Controllers, changes you made during the runtime of the TotalMix UI will most likely not have been saved. Keep that in mind when enabling this setting.
To be able to use the plugin with another PC, three settings are mandatory:
- Set the IP of the machine the StreamDeck is connected to in the Setup for OSC part inside TotalMix as described above. Configure as described, but make sure to put the IP address (or FQDN) of the machine the StreamDeck is connected to in the "Remote Controller Address" field. This is needed so TotalMix sends its OSC responses to the computer that runs the plugin.
- Set the IP of the machine that runs TotalMix in the config file of this plugin (see above) in the value of interfaceIp, so the plugin knows where to send the commands.
- Make sure both machines have their firewall configured in a way that allows UDP communication on the ports that are set in the configuration (by default 7001 and 9001 UDP inbound to the TotalMix PC/outbound of the StreamDeck-PC, 9002 UDP inbound of the StreamDeck PC and outbound the TotalMix PC).
Restart StreamDeck after changing the config file.
Only necessary if you do not use OSC or want to use MIDI alongside OSC. You will need a MIDI driver on your device for TotalMix FX to monitor. If you already control TotalMix FX from a MIDI controller, this is probably not the thing for you anyways. On Windows I used virtualMidi but other packages like loopBe should work just as well.
Once the virtual MIDI port is setup, select it in TotalMix, enable Mackie Control Support and make TotalMix listen to MIDI controls.
Triggering functions like loading snapshots/mixes, global mute, etc. will work without Mackie Support, but changing gains won't. So if you don't want to use that, you could theoretically leave Mackie Support off (for whatever reason you might have to do so).
Now, after installing the plugin to StreamDeck, you will see all MIDI devices your system knows about. Select the virtual MIDI port you set up (the one TotalMix listens to) as target. You will need to do that for every action you put on the StreamDeck console.
There are currently 5 options:
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Trigger Function: including loading snapshots, CUE, control room functions, master solo/mute/trim gains, mute hardware outputs.
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Control Fader and Gains: set fader values on all faders (on 16 hardware inputs, 16 software inputs, 16 hardware outputs which should be plenty for most RME devices) and set gain on 16 hardware input channels. Again, as the StreamDeck only offers digital buttons, you can only set a value that will then be triggered, for example 0db and max attenuation.
You can however include multiple instances of the actions in a multi-action (available by default with the StreamDeck software) to create setups with multiple changes, for example change multiple faders at once to quickly switch between multiple output paths. For example: One multi-action changes output 1 and 2 to max attenuation and puts 3/4 on 0dB, another action does the same reversed.
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Trigger Global Function: It supports loading snapshots/mixes and toggle master solo/mute, toggle FX reverb/echo, control room/main functions as well as activating fader groups, mute groups and solo groups.
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Toggle Channel Function: Currently it's possible to set mute and solo for up to each 16 input, playback and output channels. It can also mirror the current status of the channel mute/solo and show respective button images (reportedly not working with Windows 11).
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Control Channels: Here you can set up individual channel actions for all 48 channels, including: setting the volume, pan, phase, phantom power, autoset, loopback, stereo, cue, gain, width, autolevel, eq and comp. Obviously not everything is available for every channel, for example: gain is only supported on input channels with preamps obviously.
It's important to understand that whenever you can select a channel in the dropdown selection in this plugin, this affects TotalMix channel strips as you see them in the software. TotalMix combines a stereo channel to one channel strip. You will not have control over each individual mono channel that's part of a stereo channel. What that means is that if you have, for example, a stereo output channel AN1/2, this will be output channel 1. AN3 will be output channel 2 then. However if you have AN1 and AN2 set to mono, AN3 is output channel 3 then. Bear that in mind when you configure actions that are targeted to individual channels across multiple snapshots/mixes or when you change your channel layouts in regards to mono/stereo channels in TotalMix as this will likely break those actions on the StreamDeck and trigger actions on the wrong channels.
Sadly I can't do anything about that, it's just how TotalMix works currently.
Select the MIDI device to use and the action you want to send. Simple as that!
Select the MIDI device to use and the channel you want to control the fader on, then set the desired value.
This works as follows: the acceptable range is between a value of 0 - which is max attenuation (infinity) - and 127 which is max level. 0dB is a value of 104. I thought a while on how to make that kind of easier for the user, but didn't come up with anything that would work flexible, logical and still very detailed, so I kept it that way for now. If you got a good idea, tell me :-)
If you select Input Gain as target, the acceptable values are 0 to 65, just as in TotalMix FX.
Select the function you want to use. Enabling the "Hold Mode" will only trigger the function as long as the button is pressed. Note: when selecting Snapshots, the Hold Mode will automaically engange.
Select the functions to use in the drop-down field below. If the function requires a value to send, for example Volume, enter the "Value" field with the value. Not all functions work on all channels. You can't, for example, set Gain on a channel that has no preamp. The acceptable values are:
- Volume: 0-100. 0 is ∞, 82 is 0dB, 100 is +6dB. Available in all channels.
- Pan: L100 to R100. Enter 0 for center. Available in all channels.
- Gain/Gain Right: 0-65. Available in all input channels with preamp, Gain Right is only available on stereo channels.
- Width: -1.00 to 1.00. Available in all input channels without preamp and all playback channels.
- Phantom Power, Autoset: no value. Available in all input channels with preamp.
- Loopback, Cue: no value. Available in all output channels.
- Phase, Phase Right, Stereo, Cue, EQ, Comp, AutoLevel Enable: no value. Available in all channels, Phase Right only on stereo channels.
- There is no MacOS support at this time. I started looking into it, but no promises, this is all free-time hobby coding...
- MIDI: I developed this using virtualMidi with a RME Fireface UC (which was the only device I currently have access to). It should theoretically work with most other RME interfaces too, as long as they support TotalMix FX.
- MIDI: It needs a virtual MIDI port, writing my own drivers and have them signed is definitely above my skillset, so you'll have to install a driver for that additionally. (e.g. virtualMidi, loopBe)
- MIDI: I basically stopped supporting MIDI, still leave it in for anyone who wants to go through the pain using it.
You can submit an issue or request a feature with GitHub issues. Please describe as good as possible what went wrong and also include any log files as they are incredibly helpful for me to figure out what went wrong. Logs can be found in %APPDATA%\Elgato\StreamDeck\Plugins\de.shells.totalmix.sdPlugin, the file is named pluginlog.log.
As described above I developed this with a Fireface UC which is the only device I have at home and with that constant access to so debugging/developing for any other RME device might not be the the easiest task, but I'll see what I can do.
If you're interested in using this plugin but something you really need is missing, let me know. I naturally don't have access to all RME devices, so I can't really try things on the boxes themselves, but eventually we might find a way to work something out.
If you'd like to drop me a coffee for the hours I've spent on this:
- Remote OSC instances (on another host) are working now. Please refer to the corresponding documentation, thanks for @roguedarkjedi for pointing that out and making a PR (I did not merge in the end, sorry), I totally forgot about that.
- Various minor changes I came across over time, all under the hood, nothing UI facing.
- Added documentation for remote host config.
Change History
- Config flag "killAndRestartOnStuck" (default off) which does exactly that (or tries to at least) and should resolve the issue with TotalMix not responding to OSC requests after the PC went to sleep (which is not an issue of this plugin, but TotalMix) or for other reasons. Note that there's a snag to it (as with everything concerning TotalMix 🙄) - TotalMix stores everything you set, do, toggle, or otherwise interact with the UI in a config file, however it does this only when it exits gracefully. When it's killed, nothing is saved. Brilliant, isn't it. That means that if the plugin kills TotalMix and restarts it, to reenable the OSC servers, changes you made during the runtime of the TotalMix UI will not have been saved. Keep that in mind.
- Readme now has a more detailed explanation about the config parameters hidden behind a dropdown in the respective section.
- Added a check for the background mirroring task if the OSC listener is still active or not after the plugin has successfully started, preventing an infinite loop that would occur otherwise. Now, the mirroring task will stop until the background OSC listener is available again, then resume (and the icons will flash briefly to let the user know something's up).
- Toggle Channel Function would display the wrong icon when mirroring is willingly disabled in the config
- PI bug that could lead to channel selection reverting back to Input channel 1 without reflecting that on the UI if function was selected shortly after channel, hence rendering button functions ending up acting on the wrong channel
- Control Channel now has the option to incrementally lower or raise volume levels (including the option to set a multiplier for the step size)
- Trigger Global Function now has the option to incrementally lower or raise Main volume levels
- Some icons could flicker between normal and "no connection" icons when TotalMix was not available.
- Added images for EQ, Comp, Autolevel instead of default mixer.
- Mirroring is globally on for the plugin by default now. Removed option to mirror single buttons from the UI to unclutter the menu. Instead there is now a global setting to disable mirroring completely. Once mirroring is set up and working, there should not be a need to mirror or not mirror single buttons.
- Channel Toggle functions wouldn't work with mirroring disabled
- Channel selection list would be empty with mirroring disabled
- Updating from Marketplace version (or any other old version for that matter) would break existing buttons. While it is not impossible for existing buttons to break, this should be happening only occassionally, not for sure.
- Clarified in README.MD that updating requires to enable the second OSC endpoint.
- Global settings to disable mirroring and - if set - configure channel amount.
- Channel names >9 are now displayed correctly
- Actions now update the current channel count automatically in the drop down list (before, the channel count was only checked when adding a button, then saved in the corresponding action settings and never reevaluated again)
- Crash caused by waiting for a callback on async reading a socket that was already disposed. I call it fix attempt as I did not yet find the reason why this happens in the first place, it has been a b[...] to track down as it could happen after several hours of plugin runtime on my machine, so for now the exception is caught and the plugin shouldn't crash from it anymore. Depending the actual root cause this may or may not lead to the mirroring getting stuck. Please report issues if it does. As said, I had a hard time to actually get that crash on my machine with my interface.
- Snapshot names will be read from local TotalMix config file as they are not transmitted via OSC
- Global Functions Display Channel Name checkbox was not functional
- Global Functions skipped over default "Global Mute" making it flicker the wrong icon/name
- a *load of try/catch logging on the receiving/sending parts
- listener thread ocassionally throws an exception (safe handle closed in UDP receiver somewhere), investigating if that's caused by the lib or .NET. It's been an elusive one... StreamDeck detects the plugin going down and restarts it, so impact is... meh. It's not great, but for now it'll be that way.
- Background task updating the device wasn't as sync as it should be
- Added checks for TotalMix being unreachable or just having the command OSC listener running and act accrordingly
- misc cleanup
- Made track/channel name display optional but default for all actions
- Support for more/less than 16 channels!
- During button load the plugin now tries to determine how many channels your interface offers (which is rather what the user set in "faders per bank" setting in TotalMix OSC setup) and offers these channels now in the plugin -> which allows interfaces with more (or less) channels to be fully supported as well now :)
- Partial rewrite of the plugin with lots of improvements, not necessarily every little change will be represented here
- This update might not be completely compatible with existing actions/buttons made with earlier versions. You might have to redo your buttons. It's annoying, I know, but I can't keep multiple code-bases to cover all eventualities active in the same plugin to keep full compatibility.
- Mirror function reworked. Switched the library and how it's implemented to make it more robust, quicker, less ressource intensive and compatible with Windows 11
- added multiple additional icons to make actions more clear (less using default "Mixer"-style logo which made different actions look the same)
- Track names (channel names) as set in TotalMix are reflected on the StreamDeck to make it easier to distinguish buttons.
- Phantom Power is now able to be mirrored too and moved to Trigger Channel Functions
- overall more beautification ;)
- Windows 11 issues should be fixed now.
- Plugin (or at least mirroring) stopping working after it ran a while should be fixed now.
- Some less common actions have been sending a wrong value and never worked - fixed now.
- updated readme.md to reflect potential issues with Windows 11 and mirror channel
- moved files locally from a dying drive, git recognizes them all as modified now and I can't be bothered to mess with that, so I'm pushing it, but nothing should have changed except for a bit of debugging I added for testing this Windows 11 thing in osconoff.cs.
- Updated default graphics
- Updated README.md to reflect graphics changes
- Show/Hide UI should work now even when/after moving back to Stream Deck top level
- removed unused namespaces from all modules, cleaned up a bit, updated readme.md
- hold-mode (no latch mode) for OSC Global Functions
- enable toggle icons for all modules
- various minor fixes
- calulations updated for 16 channels in OSC Channel handling
- Mirrored buttons initilization delay
- Real time updates for channel mute/solo. StreamDeck should now (with a slight delay at times for technical reasons) update the button state if a channel is muted or solo-ed inside TotalMix or by other means (if you enable the mirror-checkbox on that button)
- Option to hide/restore the TotalMix window (using Windows techniques, haven't found out how RME does that with ARC, probably not exposed for third parties)
- Support for up to 48 channels (3x 16) pending testing, I don't have access to a 16 channel RME interface myself at the moment
I'm in no way affiliated with RME or Elgato. I wrote this plugin out of personal interest.
