Monitoring MIDI Input from external Roland A-500PRO Controller

Question

I'm trying to make a Roland A-500PRO USB MIDI Controller work with Steinberg's Cubase LE AI Elements 6 for Windows. By default, except the 49 keyboard keys, none of the other sliders, knobs or transport controls work.

I'm able to play and record songs with the Roland A-500PRO keys but I have to use the computer keyboard and mouse for starting and stopping the recording, or changing the volume of a track for instance, which is very frustrating.

The Roland A-500PRO has the concept of a Control Map which is designed to send specific MIDI messages when using a specific controller. It comes with a simple to use software editor in order to customize an existing or create a new Control Map from scratch.

I would like to be able to use this editor to customize the Roland A-500PRO so that it works with Cubase, but I figure I would have two strategies.

1. Either customize the Roland A-500PRO Control Map in order to produce MIDI messages as expected by Cubase...
2. Or, instruct Cubase to trigger the desired function when receiving specific MIDI messages from the Roland A-500 PRO controller.

In order to do that I would like to monitor the MIDI messages sent by the Roland A-500PRO controller when pressing specific keys or using specific controls. However, I have been unable to find a way to do that.

I'm aware of several MIDI monitoring software but I could not make any of these work.

• Midi Test : this software simple does not work. It simply fails with a "MIDI no properly initialized" message, even though MIDI works perfectly well with Cubase.
• Midi Monitor : this software is hard to understand. It ran once and successfully detected the Roland A-500PRO input and output MIDI ports, but I did not manage to use it. Now, it fails to run with a "Unable to create C:\windows\System32\WINMM174.SYS" message.
• MidiOX : this software sounds like the best bet but I'm unable to make it produce MIDI message when using the Roland A-500PRO controller.

Please, can someone point me in the right direction?

Answer 1

Answering my own question since I finally figured out what went wrong.

The Roland A-500PRO controller exposes three MIDI ports :

1. MIDI IN
2. PRO1 IN
3. PRO2 IN

MIDI messages from the controller are, by default, split between ports PRO1 IN and PRO2 IN. Note messages as well as Pitch Bend and Modulation messages go through the PRO1 IN port. All other control change messages go through PRO2 IN port.

As far as MIDIOX is concerned, no messages go through the MIDI IN port, so I had o select either one of the PRO1 IN or PRO2 IN ports, or both. Although, in practice - for Cubase or, I suspect, other DAWs - the MIDI IN port is a combination of the other two ports.