Folder Mode
The bank shows folder parents; long-press SEL expands a folder into its children.
Why not just use SSL 360°?
Because SSL 360° is built for a different audience — and the compromises that come with supporting five DAWs at once land squarely on the way REAPER users work.
SSL's software works. It is aimed at people using Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase, Live or Studio One — usually one at a time, often with an SSL channel-strip plug-in on every track. For that audience it is fine.
REAPER users are a different shape. Big sessions. Coloured tracks. No SSL plug-in on the drum overheads. And the moment you use SSL 360° that way, three things start grinding.
The three that grind
Track colours need an SSL plug-in on every track
The colour lives inside the SSL plug-in, not in the DAW. It is not a setting you can flip. A 200-track session would need 200 plug-in instances just to get colours onto the scribble strips. That is not a tradeoff, it is a wall.
SSL 360° claims the controller and will not share it
While SSL's software is running, nothing else can talk to the UF8 or UC1 over USB — the vendor interface is claimed exclusively. No small helper extension can sit alongside it. Either you replace SSL 360°, or you live with the limitation.
The bridge between REAPER and SSL 360° is MCU
MCU is the Mackie protocol every DAW understands. It has no concept of colour. It carries 14-bit faders where REAPER stores 16-bit. It cannot tell the controller which plug-in parameter you are touching.
None of these are bugs. They are the natural shape of one piece of software that has to work with everyone. SSL is not going to fix them, because fixing them would mean abandoning the multi-DAW design that makes 360° worth shipping in the first place.
One middleman instead of three
Rea-Sixty is a single REAPER extension. You drop one file into your REAPER install and the controllers light up. No background daemon, no virtual MIDI port, no plug-in on every track. REAPER talks to the extension through its own C API — the same API REAPER's own mixer uses — and the extension talks to the UF8, UC1 and UF1 directly over USB.
What changes for a REAPER user
Track colours work everywhere, all the time. You colour tracks in REAPER like you always have and they appear on the UF8 scribble strips. No plug-in required, no special mode, no setup.
The faders keep their resolution. REAPER stores volume in 16 bits; MCU only carries 14. Talking to the API directly keeps the full range, and the V-Pots get the raw delta rather than a quantised MIDI CC.
The UC1's gain-reduction meter follows the actual compression on the focused track, read throughGainReduction_dB — the PreSonus VST3 host extension REAPER already exposes. Same result as SSL's internal path, no SSL plug-in required.
And the things that only make sense if you know REAPER
These exist because a REAPER-only tool can use REAPER's data model. A cross-DAW bridge has nowhere to put them.
Selection Sets
Eight saved track selections per project, recalled with one button. Snapshot or REAPER-Group backed.
Show Sends / Show Receives
Pick a track and the eight strips become that track's eight sends.
Generic FX Learn
Bind any VST, VST3, AU or JS parameter to any V-Pot or button. Not just SSL plug-ins, and no wrapper plug-in in the chain.
Nav Mode
The surface becomes a markers-and-regions navigator: jump, scroll, drill into a region, add a marker at the playhead.
Parameter Groups
Twist a knob on one track and the same parameter moves on every member track.
Why not wait for SSL to fix it
SSL knows what colours-without-a-plug-in would mean. Building it would require reading DAW state without going through their own plug-in — which means either an integration per DAW or an entirely different bridge. They support five DAWs. Five custom integrations are expensive; one MCU bridge is cheap. So the colour feature stays gated behind their plug-in.
Rea-Sixty only has to make one DAW work. That is the entire reason the project exists: a REAPER-only tool can use REAPER's API. SSL cannot.
The honest caveats
Firmware updates still go through SSL 360°. SSL ships firmware as opaque blobs and this project does not reverse-engineer firmware. Keep SSL 360° installed — every few years you will want it for an update.
Running unofficial code on your controller may void your hardware warranty. Rea-Sixty sends vendor-USB frames that are not part of SSL's documented public API. If warranty preservation matters more to you than the features above, do not run it. That is a choice this project cannot make for you.