Controller mappings not activated automatically

I use VST Live in my home studio and in the rehearsal room (and on stage). In both environments I use the same master keyboard, an M-Audio Keystation Pro 88.

When I get from home into the rehearsal room, the controller mappings I defined for the Keystation (transport controls for start/stop and song selection, dials and faders for mixer volumes etc) are not active, I always have to load my saved mappings from the “Actions and Shortcuts” window.

The other way around, having used VST Live in the rehearsal room and returning to the home studio, things work as expected and the controllers work right away without a need to load the config.

Any ideas? Is there a location where I can place my preferred config to auto-load automatically?

Difference between home and rehearsal room are the other MIDI devices connected, although this is only the audio interfaces, an X32 mixer at home, a Steinberg UR22 with the band.

(tested with the latest version, 1.4.56)

You mean “Actions and Shortcuts”, correct?
These are also saved with the project, do you load a project?

Local settings (incl. Actions) are saved when you exit VST Live.
You can delete them with “Help/Clean all user Data”, which also removes other local settings.

The question is how you proceed. If you load a project, it should come as saved. Of course, Actions assigned to MIDI controllers which are not present with the actual hardware will not work.

OTOH, if you have Ports defined in “Devices/Connections” and only use those, and you saved your project once on each system, you should be able to transfer to and fro, as long as those associations are not changed.

  • save on system A, midi 1 connected to hardware 1: save
  • load on system b: midi 1 not connected, assign hardware 2, save
  • load on system A: all should be good.

If you load no project, the last used local settings should be applied for “New Project”.

So we need to know what you do exactly, and what doesn’t work as you expected.

You mean “Actions and Shortcuts”, correct?

Yes, “Actions and Shortcuts”

These are also saved with the project, do you load a project?

Yes, I have a single default project always loaded on start (and saved whenever I make a change I want to keep). I rarely use any other projects besides the default, mainly when trying to reproduce a bug for this forum :wink:

The question is how you proceed. If you load a project, it should come as saved. Of course, Actions assigned to MIDI controllers which are not present with the actual hardware will not work.

As explained above: always auto-loaded, same controllers in both locations (home and rehearsal room) including same CC mappings for all dials/faders. As mentioned, when I manually load the “Actions and Shortcuts” saved at home in the rehearsal room after the project us loaded, the controllers are mapped as expected and work.

So we need to know what you do exactly, and what doesn’t work as you expected.

At home

  • M-Audio Keystation 88 Pro as master keyboard, lots of dials, faders and buttons available for mapping to VST Live
  • Behringer X-32 as audio interface
  • Dedicated audio laptop, Windows 10
  • Latest VST Live version

Default project with about 30 songs loaded automatically at project start.

When I add or change a controller mapping by MIDI learn, I usually only saved the project and all was fine.

Once I noticed that there was a problem using this in the rehearsal room, I also started to additionally save this from the “Actions and Shortcuts” dialog in a separate file.

Rehearsal Room

  • Second M-Audio Keystation 88 Pro as master keyboard
  • Steinberg UR22 as audio interface
  • Same laptop

Default project with about 30 songs loaded automatically at project start.

After startup sometimes the UR22 audio interface is automatically selected, sometimes the “Generic Low Latency Audio Driver” is used and I need to switch to the UR22 manually.

Normally, the Keystation was auto-selected as MIDI input 1, once or twice that this not working (UR22 MIDI IN was selected instead) and I had to select the Keystation manually.

Now the keyboard (note on/off etc.) works as expected, but the mapped controls do not work. No action when I move a controller mapped to “Mixer Channel 1 Volume” or hit a button mapped to “Play”.

I need to open the “Actions and Shortcuts” dialog and load the config file I saved at home. This is what I do not understand - same laptop, same master keyboard (well not the same, but exactly the same model), same auto-loaded project.

Then everything works as expected.

Back home

Default project with about 30 songs loaded automatically at project start. All controllers on the master keyboard work immediately, no need to load the configuration file manually.

Just one question: you keep mentioning “Default project”. Do you ever transfer that project from A to B or vice versa?
If you open the same project with the completely (!) same hardware setup, it should just work.
Try to simplyfy if possible, thanks.

No transfer of the project - I take my laptop from home to the rehearsal room.

Same hardware except for the audio interface, docking station and monitors. The master keyboards are the same model, not sure if they internally get a unique id from the driver.

No, but then in “Devices/Connections”, all MIDI connections should look the same wherever you load the project, correct? Then, there is no appearent reason why that should not work.
Either try “Help/Clean all user Data”, then load your project and check if it works in both places. Or, send us the project file, best both versions saved in home and rehearsal, and the saved actions file, then we can check.