Podium will create and maintain many device mappings for you automatically. In some cases, however, you may have to create or modify a device mapping manually. This could be the case for example if you want to connect a hardware device for which a device definition doesn’t exist or if an automatically created mapping doesn’t work with your configuration.

It is recommended that you use the project start page commands to create the device mapping objects. The properties of the objects can then be customized afterwards.

Device mapping objects can be configured for either MIDI/audio interfaces, plugins or mixer busses. MIDI/audio interface mappings can furthermore be categorized as input mappings, audio output monitor mappings or external device specific mappings.

Input mappings are configured as either MIDI or audio interface inputs. These mappings are used with MIDI controllers and microphone/line audio inputs to record MIDI and audio on tracks. Input mappings are available in the track inspector input panel, and can be assigned to tracks independently of output mapping assignments.

Audio monitor mappings are configured with only audio interface outputs. These are used for monitoring the audio output of your arrangements, either through speakers or headphones connected to your audio interface.

External devices controlled via a single MIDI channel and a single audio IO configuration can be configured within a single device mapping object. This allows total integration of the device on just one track in the arrangement. If the device supports multitimbrality or multiple IO, there need to be mappings for each MIDI channel and IO configuration.

The way plugins are configured is very similar to how external devices are configured. The main difference is that the plugin file is specified instead of MIDI and audio interfaces.

Mixer busses are a feature of the Podium mixing engine that allows audio to be extracted from tracks assigned with bus send mappings, and injected at tracks assigned with matching bus return mappings. A total of 99 mixer bus instances can be configured, and each mixer bus supports up to 32 audio channels.

To display the Device Mapping Properties dialog for a device mapping, locate the device mapping on the project start page, right-click it and choose Properties.

The Device definition drop-down list is used to select a device definition folder that will contain preset and parameter objects for this device.

The choices for Mapping type are: MIDI/audio interfaces, mixer bus, VST plugin, and ReWire device. Various settings in the dialog will be disabled if they have no relevance to the selected mapping type.

Select Link to global instance and specify a number if this mapping is referring to an instance that is shared with other mappings. When used with plugins, the instance number is joined with the plugin file name to identify a unique instance of the plugin. When used with MIDI/audio interfaces, the instance number is joined with the device definition object to identify a unique instance of the external device.

The interface settings will be available when the mapping type is set to MIDI/audio interfaces. If you only use one MIDI interface in your studio setup, you would typically select the <any available interface> option, to ensure that the mapping will still be valid if you later change your MIDI interface. If you use several MIDI interfaces you need to select the specific interface that this device is connected to.

For software plugin mapping types, the plugin file name should be entered either directly or by locating the installed plugin with the Browse plugin dialog. If your plugin is located within the folder path of the default VST folder defined in the Preferences dialog, you should select the Relative path option. This will remove the absolute path part of the file name. If you later relocate your VST folder or try to open the project on a system with a different VST folder location, the plugins can still be found with the relative path.

If the Use generic editor instead of plugin editor option is enabled, Podium will open the generic plugin editor window, even if the plugin has its own native editor. This may be preferable if the plugin native editor is badly designed. Some native plugin editors may even be unstable and cause crashes.

If a MIDI input interface is configured you can choose to filter the incoming MIDI to a specific channel. This can be useful if you have a MIDI controller that supports selection of MIDI channel. If you create separate device mappings for each channel, and assign these to your instrument tracks in an arrangement, you can control the different instruments just by switching MIDI channel on your controller.

The Transpose notes on input setting will transpose all incoming MIDI notes before they are sent to the receiving device or recorded to sequences. This is useful if you have a MIDI controller that does not allow easy transposition of octaves. You can then create alternative input mappings with different octave transpositions and just switch among these in the track inspector input panel.

If the mapping is configured with both a MIDI input and output interface then the Send input thru to output interface option determines if the received MIDI input should be echoed straight through to the output interface. This option should be set only if the local on/off setting on the external device is set to off, otherwise you will get ‘double notes’ played on the device. Setting the device to local off, and enabling the mapping thru option, will route the keys and controllers action on the device into Podium before being sent back to the device for playback. This allows you to record the performance in Podium.

The MIDI output Channel should be set to the same channel that is selected on the controlled device. Furthermore, if the device supports SysEx, the SysEx device ID should match the device setup. The two SysEx variables provide a means to encode mapping related numbers into the parameter SysEx messages. Depending on the device this could for example be a part number that corresponds to the MIDI channel number.

The Device is an instrument option is used by Podium to distinguish between effect and instrument mappings. This determines for example what kind of sequence is created by default on tracks assigned with this mapping. If configured as an instrument, note sequences will be created. Otherwise curve sequences will be created for parameter automation.

If the mapping is configured to use audio you can select how many source and target channels are used by this mapping. If the device being mapped is a multiple IO plugin or an external device connected to a multiple channel audio interface, then you can set the First channel to offset the channels into the number of available channels.

Note that the source and target channels are to be seen from the perspective of the Podium mixer engine. For audio interfaces ‘source’ refers to the audio interface inputs, but for plugins ‘source’ refers to the plugin outputs. It is perhaps easier to think of source channels as ‘providing a source of audio to the Podium mixer engine’.