Midas MR18 mixer and Behringer X-Air Edit

[carlstockmal]

My new Midas MR18 has MIDI control. I have a Digital Music Corp. Ground Control, which I re-initialized, and have only been able to get the GC to control the Mute Channel function via the GC's programming for Expression Pedals (of which I have none). My hope is to have a button for "Channel Un-mute" and an adjacent button for "Channel Mute." Then, I can use the MR18 IN/OUT routing to "split" an input to another channel, assign effects to the additional channel, and toggle on/off the "dry" and/or "effect-ed" channels as needed. I also want to switch my headset mic on and off via a foot button, so I can stop moving it toward and away from my mouth between songs.

The MR18 manual shows: on MIDI channel 2, a CC value of 127 is "Mute Channel." In DEVICE NAME/MIDI CHANNEL, I set up my MR18 as "MIDAS / 2." In SETUP MODE, LEARN PEDAL programming, I turned "ON" P1 (which by default is programmed as "P1.127 CTL007 for every preset) and P2 (which by default is "P2.127 CTL016). The MR18 does mute the mixer channel- the mixer channel is "plus 1" of the CTL number, so CTL007 mutes MR18 channel 8. This is working. Changing the CTL0xx value DOES change the channel that gets muted. Thus, I DO have mute for each channel.

Pressing the same GC button again sends the same MUTE command, so the default channels (8 and 17) remain muted (instead of toggling "Mute Off" as I had hoped). The MR18 manual shows 000 is the "Unmute" command. Is there a way to change the programming manually to "P1.000 CTL007" without connecting an Expression Pedal, or do I need to connect a pedal and try to get the pedal value to three zero's that way?
< < < UPDATE 03/13/21 > > >

I connected a Roland EV5 expression pedal to my GC's PEDAL 1 input. Backing the "pedal volume" off caused the CC value to lower, but not all the way to the 000 value I need to un-mute. The pedal seems to put a "load" on the GC input, just not enough to get the value to 000, so I thought, what if I "fully load" the input by connecting together the tip and ring on the PEDAL 1 input.... so I took a damaged cable, cut one end off with a foot of cable left, and stripped and twisted together the shielding and the center wires, "shorting out" the cable. Voila! Plugging it in, the value immediately dropped to 000. I'll have to keep that piece of cable plugged into PEDAL 1; I can find a cleaner-looking solution, and don't need the Roland pedal.

Now, I can assign my first button to be "CHAN 1 ON" as I like to label it, and assign pedal 1 as P1.000 CTL000 to make channel 1 un-muted, and just turn pedal 2 off by assigning P2. OFF . Then I assign the next button "CH 1 MUTE" as P1. OFF. and P2.127 CTL000. and it's working!