Edirol UR-80 & MOTU DP 4.x

Setting up the Eidrol UR-80's control surface for use with MOTU's Digital Performer 4.x under Mac OSX 10.3.x
by Eddie von Eigenvector

Setting up and using the Edirol UR-80's control surface with MOTU's Digital Performer 4.x requires a little extra work. The user needs to perform the extra step of creating an additional midi control surface device in OSX's Audio Midi Setup before the DP will recognize the UR-80 control surface. This new midi device then needs to be virtually wired in the Audio Midi Setup program. Finally, the newly created control surface needs to be enabled from DP itself.

The following an outline of the steps necessary to complete this task.

1) Open the the Audio Midi Setup program (located in Programs->Utilities).

2) Select "Midi Devices" from the top of the window and then click the Add Device" button.


An unconfigured (new external device) device will then appear in this window.



3) Double click on the "new external device" to bring up it's properties. Give the device a name of "Mackie HUI", select Manufacturer "Mackie" and select Model as "HUI" from the drop down lists. Note that the midi transmit channels will reduce from 1-16 to 1 after these selections are complete. Double-click on the "Open Icon Browser" image and select whichever image you think best resembles the UR-80. Finally, click the "Apply" button in the lower right hand corner of the window.



4) Now that we have created our control surface midi device, we need to create a virtual wire (input/output) between it and the UR-80. Click-drag from the Mackie HUI output tab to the Edirol UR-80 1 input tab. This will establish a virtual connection which routes all midi information from the virtual Macki HUI to the Edirol UR-80 1 port. Finally, close Audio Midi Setup.



5) Start Digital Performer 4.x. Bring up the Setup->Control Surface Setup... window. Select Driver->HUI and MIDI>Mackie HUI from the drop-down lists. Select the "OK" button.



6) Using the documentation supplied by Eidrol, configure the UR-80 to work with DP by selecting the appropriate memory bank on the UR-80. I believe the UR-80/DP configuration can be found in memory location 4. This this should activate the UR-80 control surface for use within Digital Performer 4.x. At least it did for me using MacOSX 10.3.8 and Digital Performer 4.12.

If you have any comments on these instructions, I can bee reached via e-mail: isotropy9<AT>gmail.com.

Creating a mountable disk image under OS X

Ever wonder how to make your own mountable disk image files under Mac OS X? It's a very simple procedure using the hdiutil command.

Here's a simple example which makes a twenty megabyte disk image called foobar.dmg.

hdiutil create -fs HFS+ -volname foobar -size 20m foobar

Look at the hdiutil man page for further options and information. If you have absolutely no idea what a man page is, do the following:

1. Open a terminal window (Applications->Utilities->Terminal)


2. After the window opens, type man hdiutil in the window and press return


3. Read the instructions...though, if you are following these directions on how to read a man page, you might have difficulty understaning the contents of the man page. :) Sorry but you'll have to work things out for yourself from here.