MIDI Grid Controllers

What it's for — CueSync turns a Novation Launchpad or Akai APC grid into a physical Cue Pads surface. The controller's pad grid mirrors your current CuePad bank slot-for-slot, the pads light up in your pad colors and track each cue's live run-state, and each press reaches the pad with its velocity (whether that velocity changes anything is covered under The pad layout). On a controller with faders (the APC40), a fader can ride your master intensity. Plug in over USB or MIDI, pick your device, and the grid comes alive with your show — no external mapping software.

Turning it on

The Grid Controller card lives in Settings → MIDI & Sync → Grid Controller:

1. Connect your Launchpad or APC over USB (or bring a wireless controller in as a MIDI input — see Wireless controllers below).
2. Open Settings → MIDI & Sync. Detected grid controllers appear in the Grid Controller card by name.
3. Pick your device. CueSync recognizes it, sends the initialization it needs (Launchpads are switched into Programmer Mode; the APC40 into its full-LED mode), and the pads light up.
4. The card shows Grid controller active once the link is up, Waiting for device if the configured controller isn't plugged in yet, or No controller configured before you've chosen one.
5. A grid plugged in before your licence was active, or while a renewal was pending, gets its set-up message and its pad colours in the same session as soon as the licence is in; you do not need to replug it. An install that cannot operate (read-only mode) sends nothing to the grid's LEDs, so the grid stays dark.

CueSync claims the controller as a MIDI device while connected. If another app (Ableton Live, the Novation/Akai editor) already owns it, quit or disable it there first.

The pad layout

The grid mirrors your current CuePad bank, top-left pad to top-left key. Each pad shows its cue's color, and the LED tracks the cue live:

• Ready — green: an assigned, idle pad.
• Next — yellow: the pad queued to fire next.
• Active — red: the cue is currently running.
• Completed — blue: the cue has finished.
• Empty — off: no cue assigned to that slot.
• Armed for the downbeat — a slow pulse: the pad is waiting to fire on the next downbeat (quantized launch).
• Press missed — the key flashes red when a press didn't land — a stale or empty slot — so you never wonder whether the grid heard you. (In read-only mode nothing is sent to the LEDs at all, so there is no flash.)

Pad presses carry their velocity to the pad, but on a pad built in the editor it changes nothing: the pad editor has no velocity-scaling control. Velocity does not move the master intensity either, so do not rely on touch-sensitive brightness.

Because grids come in different shapes, CueSync maps as many pads as the device has: a Launchpad's 8×8 gives you 64 slots, the APC mini 8×8 the same 64, and the APC40 mkII's 5×8 gives you 40. Pads beyond your bank's layout simply stay dark.

Faders (APC40)

The APC40 mkII's faders are read as MIDI control-change (CC) messages and can be mapped to targets in CueSync — most usefully the master intensity, so you can ride the whole rig's level from the hardware. Fader moves are conditioned for a smooth response. The APC40's transport STOP freezes the current look, like the Stop All mapping; it does not rewind the cue stack.

Bank switching

The grid always follows the active CuePad bank. Switch banks from the on-screen Cue Pads tabs, from an assigned keyboard shortcut (Shift+1–9 jump to the first nine banks while the Cue Pads section is focused), or from any bank control you've mapped — and the grid's LEDs redraw to the new bank instantly.

Wireless controllers

An iPad grid app or a wireless MIDI controller can drive the grid too, over network MIDI. Enable the controller as a network MIDI session in Audio MIDI Setup, then it appears as a MIDI input under Settings → MIDI & Sync → Network MIDI (Wireless) and can be selected as your grid.

Settings reference

• Grid Controller — the detected device to use as your pad grid; No controller configured until you pick one.
• Hardware LED Feedback (the card below) — Controller Profile (None, Generic (Velocity) or Launchpad RGB) says how the controller's LEDs are driven; match it to your hardware so colors and brightness render correctly. Output Device is the MIDI output the LEDs are sent to, and both profiles need one: until you pick it nothing is sent, and None — send nothing clears it.
• Network MIDI (Wireless) — wireless/AppleMIDI (RTP-MIDI) peers discovered on the network, for iPad and wireless controllers.

Troubleshooting

• Pads stay dark / device won't appear — another app owns the controller (quit Live or the vendor editor), or it's on a wireless session that isn't enabled in your OS yet.
• Colors look wrong, or the LEDs stay dark — the Controller Profile in the Hardware LED Feedback card doesn't match your hardware, or no Output Device is picked there (a Generic profile sends nothing until you pick one).
• A press flashes red — the slot is empty or its cue was deleted; the red flash is deliberate feedback that the press didn't fire anything.
• The grid is dark and the presses do nothing — the install is in read-only mode, which sends nothing to the LEDs and fires nothing from the grid. Subscribe, and the grid lights without a replug.

Supported controllers

Novation Launchpad X, Launchpad Pro MK3, Launchpad Pro MK2, Launchpad Mini MK3 (and legacy Launchpad MK2 / S, mapped to the closest profile); Akai APC mini, APC mini mk2, and APC40 mkII (the original APC40 maps to the mkII profile). Other 8×8 grids can be driven with a generic profile.

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Related pages

• Cue Pads — the on-screen surface the grid mirrors
• Elgato Stream Deck — the other physical cue surface, with hardware GO/STOP
• Devices — the network device panel