Robert Baldock

This might be more of a controller issue than a Max/MSP issue but when I load a patch and start it running, it doesn't pick up the value of the controllers on my control surface until I change the values.

I thought I might be able to get round this by storing a preset with a closebang and loading the preset with a loadbang but that doesn't seem to work.

What's the best way to read the initial state of a control surface?

reading-initial-state-of-controllers

That's really up to the controller. What model do you have ?

Sometimes  you can send a dump message that will cause the controller to send out all of it's parameters...

I currently have a (fairly obscure) Omnitronic FAD.9 which does have its own tool for reading and sending data but I thought I might be able to do this from within Max.

I doubt you can do it from Max unless there's a dump message, like Nat said. Maybe look up SysEx messages for that model? There's an object to manage those.

The preset store/recall should be working...any idea why it isn't? I use the same technique and it's OK. It needs to be in full Max, not Runtime...in Runtime you have to write and read a preset file, not just store the preset number (which only stores internally, and in Runtime, reverts back to the original values upon close). So, you'd have to store the preset number, then write the file upon closebang, and read the file and load the preset number upon loadbang. It's a few steps but works fine.

Reading initial state of controllers