socranop 0.4.92a3

Soundcraft Notepad control utilities

Linux Utilities for Soundcraft Notepad Mixers

Soundcraft Notepad mixers are pretty nice small-sized mixer boards with Harmon USB I/O built-in. While the USB audio works great in alsa/jackd/pipewire without any additional configuration needed, there are some advanced features available to the Windows driver that have no Linux equivalent. Most importantly, the USB routing for the capture channels is software-controlled, and requires an additional utility. For example, by default the Notepad-12FX sends the Master L&R outputs to USB capture channels 3 and 4, but this routing can be changed to input 3&4, input 5&6, or input 7&8. This tool aims to give this same software control of the USB capture channel routing to Linux users.

Supported models:

• Notepad-12FX
• Notepad-8FX
• Notepad-5

About the Name

SOundCRAft NOtePad

This software was originally written and published as soundcraft-utils, but was renamed and updated in 2021. Version 0.4 of soundcraft-utils is considered end-of-life, and will be expunged from the internet after an appropriate mourning period has expired.

This renamed and updated version is still maintained by the original authors, under the socratools organization.

Legacy Upgrades

If you're upgrading from soundcraft-utils, this version is different enough that it's worth uninstalling the soundcraft-utils and doing a fresh install of socranop as outlined below.

Installation

Note: This covers manual installation of the pypi package via pip. For distro-specific packages see the section below

Overview

socranop is written in Python and interfaces to Linux systems in a few ways. This means that the Python code itself is very well handled by Python's default installation methods, but the interface to the Linux system is not.

Therefore, at this time, the socranop-installtool utility must be called in addition to the normal Python tools for installing (--post-install) and uninstalling (--pre-uninstall) the files which hook socranop up with Linux system components like the D-Bus session bus and the XDG Desktop files and specification for integration into the desktop environment's list of applications. If you are running socranop from a distribution package, the distro package should do that for you.

For the D-bus and XDG Desktop interface, socranop supports the following three installation locations:

• /usr

  The location probably used only by distro packages.

• /usr/local

  The location probably used for system-wide installations from pypi or github sources.

• $HOME/.local

  The location probably used for user-local installations from pypi or github sources.

In all three cases, the udev rules to set the USB device permissions for the user need to be installed as well. Again, distro packages should already have done that for you, but if you're installing via pip this step needs to be done as root. The socranop-installtool will generate the script for you but will not automatically run it - This allows you to inspect the script first to make sure it's only doing what you intend.

Prerequisites

The D-Bus service and GTK GUI both rely on PyGObject which is not available via pypi without a lot of dev libraries for it to compile against.

It is usually easier to install PyGObject separately using your system's package installation tools (first line in the install examples below). And while you're at it, you could also install the system's Python dbus and usb packages and save a bit more of compiling (second line in the install examples below):

Debian:

sudo apt install python3-gi gir1.2-gtk-3.0 gir1.2-gudev-1.0
sudo apt install python3-pydbus python3-usb

Ubuntu:

sudo apt install python3-gi gir1.2-gtk-3.0 gir1.2-gudev-1.0
sudo apt install python3-pydbus python3-usb

Fedora:

sudo dnf install python3-gobject gtk3 libgudev
sudo dnf install python3-dbus python3-pyusb

Installation and Configuration

The installation may be done as root to install system-wide, or as a normal user to install in ~/.local. Regardless of how it's installed, socranop-installtool --post-install needs to be run to configure the D-Bus service, XDG desktop entry, man pages, etc. However, it can only do part of the work on its own and relies on a manual invocation of a script as root to finish setting up the UDEV rules.

See PERMISSIONS.md for a more in-depth discussion about the udev permission requirements, and alternative ways of granting the required privileges.

Example

pip install socranop
socranop-installtool --post-install --sudo-script ./socranop-sudo.sh
# Inspect ./socranop-sudo.sh to make sure it's safe to run as root
sudo ./socranop-sudo.sh
rm ./socranop-sudo.sh

Upgrading

Simply update your package from pip, and rerun socranop-installer --post-install to ensure the D-Bus service, XDG desktop entry, man pages, etc. are upgraded to the latest version.

It is not normally required to update the udev rules after an upgrade, but if changes need to be made, they need to be run manually as root, and the script will guide you through.

Example

pip install -U socranop
socranop-installtool --post-install

Uninstallation

socranop-installtool can take care of undoing what it did in --post-install via the --pre-uninstall flag, removing the D-Bus, XDG desktop entry, man pages, etc. Any actions that would need to be taken by root, such as removing the udev rules, are again placed in a script that needs to be run manually.

Example

socranop-installtool --pre-uninstall --sudo-script ./socranop-sudo.sh
# Inspect ./socranop-sudo.sh to make sure it's safe to run as root
sudo ./socranop-sudo.sh
rm ./socranop-sudo.sh
pip uninstall socranop

Distro-specific Packages

The previous version of this software, called soundcraft-utils had Arch Linux and NixOS packages. These will have to be re-done with the rename to socranop.

Distro-specific packages will not require running socranop-installtool and should instead install everything system-wide with appropriate udev permissions. See PACKAGING.md for details.

Usage

GUI

The XDG desktop launcher should be installed by default, and most XDG-aware application launchers should allow launching via a beautiful technicolor icon alongside all your other favorite GUI applications.

The GUI can also be started manually via:

socranop-gui

Usage Tips

• Select the desired input using the up and down arrow keys or using the mouse
• Apply the selection by clicking "Apply" (ALT+A)
• Instead of applying the selection, clicking "Reset" (ALT+R) will set the selection back to the current state of the mixer (if known)

Screenshots

CLI

List possible channel routing choices:

socranop-ctl --list/-l

Set channel routing:

socranop-ctl --set/-s <number>

See socranop-ctl --help or man socranop-ctl for more details.

Sample Output

[user@host ~]$ socranop-ctl --list
Detected a Notepad-12FX (fw v1.09)
-----------------------------
capture_1 <- Mic/Line 1
capture_2 <- Mic/Line 2
-----------------------------
             Mic/Line 3   [0]
             Mic/Line 4
             Stereo 5/6 L [1]
             Stereo 5/6 R
capture_3 <- Stereo 7/8 L [2]
capture_4 <- Stereo 7/8 R
             Mix L        [3]
             Mix R
-----------------------------
[user@host ~]$ _
[user@host ~]$ socranop-ctl --set 3
Detected a Notepad-12FX (fw v1.09)
-----------------------------
capture_1 <- Mic/Line 1
capture_2 <- Mic/Line 2
-----------------------------
             Mic/Line 3   [0]
             Mic/Line 4
             Stereo 5/6 L [1]
             Stereo 5/6 R
             Stereo 7/8 L [2]
             Stereo 7/8 R
capture_3 <- Mix L        [3]
capture_4 <- Mix R
-----------------------------
[user@host ~]$ _

D-Bus Service

The D-Bus service runs on the user's session bus unprivileged, and relies on he proper udev device permissions to access the USB device to make changes. See PERMISSIONS.md for a more in-depth discussion about the udev permission requirements, and alternative ways of granting the required privileges.

You can access the D-Bus service directly if you like; see contrib/dbus/access-dbus-service.sh for an example using busctl, but any D-Bus client can do it.

Because both the GUI and CLI perform their operations via the D-Bus service, any changes made through any client are immediately visible to all other clients.

What's Next

To submit ideas or bugs, and see what we're working on next, see the socranop issues page

Or come meet us on IRC: libera.chat #socratools