SMART pads (Alt+3)

The SMART pads across the banks: what each pad does, plus a custom effect builder. This page sets pads up rather than playing them. To PRESS a pad, use a keyboard shortcut: the number row plays the pads of the bank the unit is on, and every kind of pad works, sound pads included. See Keyboard shortcuts on the Device page.

• Tabs: The pad you are working on is chosen above the strip, because the first two tabs act on it. They are split by how they behave: everything on Pad Settings takes effect the moment you change it, and nothing on Reassign happens until you press Apply. Then Voice effects, which is the effect builder and changes no pad at all: it saves an effect to the list you then pick from on Reassign. Last is Maintenance, which is jobs on the whole grid, with one exception, the pad export, which acts on the pad you chose above. Arrow left and right along the strip, Home and End for the ends, and only the tab you are on is on the page. Opening Pad Settings or Reassign reads the pads from the unit again, and the tab you leave off on is remembered.
• Pad Settings: The chosen pad as it is now: its name (with a Rename button, the one thing here that needs pressing), volume, colour, how it plays, whether a press restarts it, and looping. A mixer pad also gets its trigger mode, and a Back Channel pad who is in the room. Each one writes to the unit as you change it, so there is no Apply. An empty pad has no settings, so it says so and offers a button through to Reassign.
• Trim and fade (sound pads): Four points as a percentage of the whole sound: where playback starts, where it fades up to, where it fades down from, and where it stops. So a bed that should come in gently over its first quarter is Start 0, Fade in until 25. Leave a fade point on the same percentage as the start or the stop for no fade at that end, and if a fade point ends up outside the part being played the page tells you, because the unit accepts it and simply does nothing. Percentages rather than seconds because the unit does not report how long a sound is.
• Fade times and censor sound (mixer pads): A Fade pad carries how many seconds it takes to fade the mix down and back up, and whether your own mic is left out of the fade so you can still be heard. A Censor pad can use a sound of your own instead of the built-in beep, though that sound has to be put on the unit itself; the page says whether one is there.
• What a MIDI trigger pad sends: On a MIDI trigger pad, Settings also carries the mapping: the message type (Control Change or Note), the control or note number, the MIDI channel, the value sent when you press and when you release, and whether it latches (press on, press again off) or is momentary (on only while held). Out of the box a pad sends a Control Change on its own number counting from zero, so bank 1 pad 1 is 0, on channel 1, with 127 pressed and 0 released. Those numbers only take effect with the custom mapping switched on, and switching it off puts the pad back on the default WITHOUT keeping what you typed, which is how the unit itself behaves.
• Reassign: What the pad does: a sound of your own, a voice effect, a mixer action or a MIDI trigger. Nothing here touches the pad until you press Apply, the last control before Clear this pad, so until then the pad carries on as it is and Settings still describes it. A successful Apply moves you to Settings for the new content, since volume and looping are usually the next thing you want.
• Mixer actions explained: Censor lays a beep over everything; Trash Talk cuts your audio to callers while you still hear them; Fade In and Fade Out ramp the mix up or down; Back Channel is off-air talkback; Ducking lowers everyone but the host.
• Create a custom voice effect: Build your own voice effect from reverb, echo and more, give it a name and save it; it then joins the voice-effect list ready to put on any pad. Live preview lets you hear it on your own mic as you build, and only touches the mic while it is switched on.
• Your saved effects: The effects you have made, with a delete for each. Deleting one takes it off the list you choose from; it does not change any pad it is already on.
• Pad maintenance: Jobs that act on the whole grid rather than on the pad chosen at the top, and every one that changes the unit asks you to confirm first. Clear all pads empties every sound, voice-effect, mixer and MIDI pad in one go, leaving the built-in System pads alone. Anything that copies sounds to the unit takes minutes rather than seconds, because each one goes over one pad at a time.
• Restore the factory voice effects, Censor and Ducking: For when you have overwritten one of the six factory voice effects, or the Censor or Ducking pad, and want it back. Only those eight pad positions are touched; everything past pad 16 is left alone. It cannot bring the factory SOUNDS back, and nothing in AccessCaster can. Those eight WAV files belong to RODE and live on the unit itself rather than in this app. Two things do bring them back: restoring a backup taken while they were still on the unit, which changes nothing else you have not asked for; or Start again from factory settings on the Backups page, which puts the whole unit back to how it left the factory. Try a backup first, because the factory reset occasionally leaves the unit needing its power pulled before it comes back.
• Export a pad's sound, and open the exports folder: The exception on the Maintenance tab: these two act on the pad you chose at the top rather than on the whole grid, and neither asks you to confirm, because neither changes the unit. The export copies that pad's sound into your Documents folder, under AccessCaster, Pad exports, named after the pad. Use it when the unit holds the only copy of a sound, or to edit one and put it back. Only sound pads have a file to export: a voice effect is a recipe the unit builds, not a recording.
• Tidy up unused pad audio: Deletes sound files from the unit that no pad plays any more. Replacing a pad's sound used to leave the old file behind, and it adds up. The app now clears up after itself when you replace a pad, restore the defaults, clear all pads or restore a backup with pads, so this is for what older versions left behind, or after clearing pads one at a time. It only ever removes files no pad points at, so nothing you can currently play is touched.