Hey there, this is my first post here.

I got my NDLR a couple months ago but because of moving my office studio setup I didn't really get much time to experiment with the NDLR until the past week or so.

My setup consists of a bunch of various hardware, rack mounted synths and standalone keyboards, and I use VCV Rack in place of a traditional DAW. Hopefully there might be some people here with VCV experience. I like the modular workflow but am a little hesitant to actually jump into physical modular just because of cost (and addiction potential). I convert CV to Midi and send info out to all my gear using an iConnectivity midi hub, that has always worked without issue. I have used the NDLR a bit just hooked directly to my hardware and also no issues there.

My issues began to start when I wanted to route NDLR through VCV. Although I have some hardware I still use plenty of software sound sources, either VCV modules or VST instruments in VCV using the Host module. I'll start out just by saying that I know that some of these issues might be purely with how the VCV midi to CV modules work, but I'm hoping maybe some people have some solutions or tips.

The first issue I encountered was with Gate information, although I was able to get this somewhat workable. I did my research and I totally understand that NDLR doesn't actually send a "gate" just note on / note off midi messages. In VCV I've been able to somewhat successfully take either the "Gate" or "Retrig" outputs of the "Midi-CV" module in VCV rack and convert those pulses into functional gates that I can then use with my envelope generators. The problem is this tends to be very inconsistent and either I get missed notes or over time the "Gate" output on the Midi-CV module just appears to get stuck open. This happens both with Midi output into my iConnectivity hub, as well as Midi over USB. As far as I can tell even with other Midi-CV modules made by 3rd parties there isn't an output I can grab that is just looking at the Note On/Off signal, note on/off signals all seem to get parsed into v/oct + gate + velocity in VCV midi modules. For reference when testing this setup using Midi over USB I set each of the 4 parts to their own USB midi bus, each with their own separate channel. When using standard 5-pin midi I split 2 channels on A and 2 channels on B, and this leads into the next issue.

The 2nd issue is when using 5-pin din in this set up I get some really weird unwanted signals being sent all over the place. I have triple checked the routing both in the NDLR settings, and on my MIDI interface. Once I start playing more than 2 parts, it seems like garbage data starts getting randomly sent to every Midi channel. For example I can run Motif 1 and 2, but as soon as I start Drone random garbage pitch data starts getting output to Motif 1 and 2. This issue is circumvented by using USB for everything, which so far I can't see any downsides to. I originally switched over to using DIN because I was hoping that maybe I could get more usable gate signals that didn't drop notes, but I had more problems using DIN than just sticking to USB only. After a certain amount of time of getting this garbage message accumulation note data would just stop being sent to the Midi-CV modules no matter how many times I panic'd them out. The only way to fix it was to power off and on the NDLR, and in some cases I had to delete and re-add the Midi-CV modules in VCV rack (this leads me to believe this particular problem is a VCV issue, not the NDLR)

My final issue has to do with sending Midi CC values to the NDLR. In VCV I have a CV-CC module set up so that I can send CC's to CC 73 and 74 so that using VCV sequencers I can change the Key and Scale remotely to create an actual song structure. I also send pitch information (in the form of standard note on / off) to the NDLR to be able to sequence the Chord Degree / Type. The issue is that in VCV when I send the signal all these changes are not properly synchronized, so for example on the first beat of bar 16 of a song, I'd send values to change to E Minor Degree I. What happens a lot of the time is it will change the Key on the downbeat, but the Mode change happens a fraction of a second later (or sometimes not at all) which is very very noticeable in a musical sense. I know Midi (even over USB) has its limitations, but I feel like only sending 2 CC changes on their own dedicated control channel should be happening in a perceptibly simultaneous time. Instead I get a weird staggering effect that is easy to hear and sounds really bad.

I really want to use my NDLR with VCV to help me experiment and create more musical pieces without having to do it all with modules, but the Gate issues and the CC change issues make it almost unusable at times. Like I said I know some of this is pretty dependent on how VCV works (sending gate vs. note on/off), but I'm confused about the CC change issue. I also don't know if this is potentially an issue with just my unit too (I get a flickery screen sometimes and other graphical issues despite having not used the unit much). Also just to note I have had 0 problems I can think of using multiple other MIDI devices and controllers with VCV Rack, but none of them really are sending as much data as NDLR does, which might be contributing to the issue.

I've also included a screenshot of the NDLR template I set up in VCV Rack. From left to right the modules are CV to CC (Key/Mode) > CV to Midi (Degree Change) > 4x Midi to CC (Pad, Drone, Motif 1 & 2) > 3 modules set up to handle transposition from an external keyboard by NDLR (this works fine btw).



If anyone has any experience using the NDLR with VCV Rack I'd really appreciate some input, or just to talk about some of these issues and what might be causing them.

Thanks

I've also noticed that when the NDLR gets powercycled -- and it seems like sometimes when it hasn't -- it loses the configuration information about what MIDI ports and channels the various parts are assigned. Again, am I failing to store this information correctly, or is this a bug?

I have encountered some issues which make the NDLR suboptimal for live use. Sometimes my live use case involves Chord Sequencing, and sometimes it involves controlling the chords from my Roland bass pedals.  

When the NDLR is slaved to the MIDI input clock, it does not respond to the standard Start/Stop commands. In some respects, this makes sense, because there is no way for the one MIDI command to indicate which (or all) of the parts to start. However, what does not happen that really should is the Chord Sequencer doesn't start or stop. If it did, it would allow the NDLR to be ready to switch in and out the various parts.  In this case, it would make most sense to me for the part controls (Pad, Drone, Motifs, and All) to operate as mutes, rather than start/stops.

In a related way, when the NDLR is the master MIDI clock, the MIDI start/stop are sent correctly when using the All Parts button. When using a single part control, however, it doesn't sync correctly with external gear. For example, I have my drum machine slaved to the NDLR, and I press the All Parts button to start, everything is synced properly, so I can use this to record MIDI to my DAW for later manipulation. For live use, however, I would likely want to start just one part, and when I start using on of the individual part controls, the sync is off by one beat (I can't remember whether it's ahead or behind off the top of my head).

Similarly, when I switch out a part while playing a Chord Sequence, and then switch it back in, it loses sync with the other parts. Is this because I have a setting wrong somewhere? The behavior I desire is, again, for the part controls to behave as mutes rather than actual pauses so that they maintain synchronicity.

Is there a formal issue tracker somewhere that I can search for other reports? I honestly can't tell whether any of the issues I'm experiencing have already been reported.

I ran into a case where I was sending multiple MIDI channels from a sequencer and I wanted only a single channel to be sent to a particular destination.

I couldn't see a way to do that.  Was I missing something?

Basically - sending channels 1-16 out to a multi-timbral synth and to a monosynth and a drum synth.
I wanted to only send channels 1-8 to the multi-timbral synth and *only* channel 9 to the monosynth and *only* channel 10 to the drum synth.

I couldn't see a way to filter out entire MIDI channels.

Use case (for me) - sometimes I find it quicker to point a sequencer at a multimbral rack synth with a known mapping of sounds to MIDI channels during the initial fooling around/generating ideas stage.  Then at some point I'll want to swap in the 'real' synths for various parts or just try out a differnt type of synth for a sound.  Currently I would have to edit both the rack synth (to ignore a channel or channels or mute the sounds there and still have it receive the data and use up polyphony) and the sequencer to send the data to another synth on different channels and edit that new synth to listen to those channels and make another route on the MRCC.  

It would be much quicker if I had an output filter assigned to various synths that simply blocked all other incoming channels and allowed only a specific or set of specific channels through.
Then I would just create a new assignment on the MRCC and move on.

Hi ConductiveLabs,

Will the MRCC support routing arbitrary long SysEx messages? Or is there a certain limit to how long these messages are allowed to be?

Apologies if this has been discussed before.

I would like to edit the pattern, pattern length etc. of motif-2 but I can't seem to get to the editor for those parameters. When I push the top motif button the parameters for motif-1 are on screen. No amount of button pushing seems to bring up an editor for motif-2. How do I get there for motif-2?

Cheers,

Keith

MRCC's are being assembled now! At least, the circuit boards are done and going into burn-in testing. That's where they get turned on and run a special test firmware for at least 24 hours. We're still waiting on the enclosures to be finished. They are waiting for anodizing and silkscreen, and should be done next week. Then final assembly and boxing them up for shipping.
The May Day holiday starts right about the time we'd be sending them to the fulfillment warehouse which will delay us a bit. We expect them to be delivered to the warehouse the week of May 10th.

Here is a picture taken last night of the first few MRCCs to start burn-in:
     

Enclosures after machining the holes, before anodizing:
   

Hello there! In the chord sequencer, the per step note increment is set at 1/8th note resolution. It would be great to have somewhere in the edit menu the option to set a different note increment resolution such as full note, 1/2 note etc. (or maybe a combo button/encoder within the chord sequencer menu to switch between 1 and 1/8th resolution?)
By the way, I really like the NDLR, looking forward to the MRCC!!

Hi I made a chord sequencer tutorial which can be found on the Downloads page of our website here:

https://conductivelabs.com/wp-content/up...torial.pdf 

I hope this is helpful for some of you, and if you have questions feel free to ask here!

Jesse

Hi there, sorry if this was already mentioned but I could not find it in previous threads. My issue with the chord sequencer is when I press stop on the NDLR and then restart the NDLR with the sequencer armed, the chord sequencer almost never restarts at step one, making it out of sync with my other gear (i.e. Digitakt in this case with the NDLR setup as clock out and transport out). Is there a way to make the chord sequencer always restart at the beginning of step 1?