As we’ve mentioned before, we are very enthusiastic users of Propellerhead Reason as the main DAW in our studio. As tech-heads we love plugging things in and getting stuff to work together. Unfortunately, not every new device has drivers available and this can make things complicated and inelegant. We recently bought an Akai MidiMixer to control some aspects of our performance requiring loops and samples managed in Reason, and to integrate these maintaining the spontaneity of the live performance with regular instruments.
Disappointingly there were no official drivers supplied for this device by either Propellerhead or Akai. Bringing up this issue on the excellent Reason Users’ Group on Facebook led to finding basic drivers (or codecs, as they’re more accurately referred to) which got us up-and-running. But we wanted two more things: (1) that the mapping conformed more to the default way the device worked with the dual-function bottons activated by holding down the ‘solo’ key, and also – vital for live performances in low light – that the LED light indicators worked.
Luckily our resident whizz Chris is a software engineer, so he set to work writing and refining the codec for this device and now everything should work as it should.
So, if you’re in the same boat – a Reason user who has an Akai MidiMix control surface, please feel free to use our driver/codec pack which we’re sharing for free. If it has made your workflow better and you’d like to say ‘thanks’, why not buy one of our albums?