Volatile link.
FL Studio has this. You have a MIDI controller with a spare knob. You link it up to the ‘Volatile Link’. Now it follows you around. Whatever MIDI control you tweak on your MIDI controller hardware, or click with the mouse, that knob is linked to that parameter.
So you can click on any knob at any time and now your knob controls it and is ready to write the automation.
It really is a poor choice of acronym… Did they really come up with a list of potential names/acronyms and that’s what they settled on? Perhaps they plan on implementing AI into it…?
QI (Quick Integration) or something similar, imo would have made more sense.
Just as an aside (yet bizarrely back on topic), an example of how that “AI” functionality of the CC121 can be implemented for other controllers using Cubase’s MIDI Remote is the wonderful fp-wizard script, available here.
Quoting from the manual, “The Mode in which the ‘value under mouse’ function is assigned to the Rotate Knob has now been given a name based on the original CC121 Controller from Steinberg and is now called AI Mode. AI stands for ‘Advanced Integration’.”
Basically, you just move the mouse over a virtual knob and then turn the physical knob.
What it doesn’t do, however, is putting midi through. It only is able to control VST elements. I cannot go into the key editor, point to a lane of CC11 and have the hardware knob control that.