Stuck MIDI Notes?

[mark camp]

I get stuck MIDI notes often.  Seems to occur more often if I am modulating Position of Pad or Drone relatively fast (Rate = 4 Beats @ 110BPM).   occurs both USB out and MIDI DIN outputs.  

Anyone else experience this?

fw 1.1.066 currently installed.

Thanks!

-M

[Jesse Johannesen]

I get stuck MIDI notes often.  Seems to occur more often if I am modulating Position of Pad or Drone relatively fast (Rate = 4 Beats @ 110BPM).   occurs both USB out and MIDI DIN outputs.  

Anyone else experience this?

fw 1.1.066 currently installed.

Thanks!

-M

Hey Mark,
I haven't noticed this occurring but I'd be happy to try to reproduce it on my unit. Can you tell me the spread setting and modulation range, etc. to try? Also any relevant info regarding whether to use hardware connection, or usb to Soft synth and so forth. The more data the better...
Thanks,
Jesse

[giacecco]

It often happens to me, too, I will keep an eye on it to document the cases.

[Jesse Johannesen]

It often happens to me, too, I will keep an eye on it to document the cases.

Thanks giacecco.

[House de Kris]

I can get stuck notes easily by modulating Pad Position (25%) (48 beat sine wave) AND with Strum at any value over 1. This is in an 80 BPM song. Turning off modulation, I can use any value of Strum with no ill effect. All through the 5-pin DIN. Don't know if this helps or not.

[Jesse Johannesen]

I can get stuck notes easily by modulating Pad Position (25%) (48 beat sine wave) AND with Strum at any value over 1. This is in an 80 BPM song. Turning off modulation, I can use any value of Strum with no ill effect. All through the 5-pin DIN. Don't know if this helps or not.

Yes thank you Kris, I'll see if I can reproduce this and test it on a few different devices to see if that has bearing on the outcome, and report back.
Jesse

[Jesse Johannesen]

I can get stuck notes easily by modulating Pad Position (25%) (48 beat sine wave) AND with Strum at any value over 1. This is in an 80 BPM song. Turning off modulation, I can use any value of Strum with no ill effect. All through the 5-pin DIN. Don't know if this helps or not.

Yes thank you Kris, I'll see if I can reproduce this and test it on a few different devices to see if that has bearing on the outcome, and report back.
Jesse

So I spent an hour troubleshooting this morning trying various settings to see if I could get my unit to repro this issue, and try as I might, I never got a single stuck note (*I did have some other weird strum behaviors however). I tried using Ableton soft synths (analog with a strings preset, and various collision presets) via usb, as well as an Arturia Ipad softsynt over DIN portA. I used a triangle lfo to modulate position, with settings from about 7% to 30% and chose several aribitrary combinations of strum and spread. No hung notes.

The weird issue I came accross was when modulating with strum it would not always play all notes (say range is set to 10 notes, sometimes it would play 2, sometimes it would play 5, etc.) and occasionally would not do any strum but just play all notes at once with higher velocity. This went way when I turned off modulation.

So next step is to let me know what gear you're playing on and if you can get another piece of gear to recreate the stuck notes as well. If so, it sounds like we can continue to work at isolating the issue, if not it may be an issue with that particular piece of gear (?).

I would also like to hear what the signal path to the gear looks like, so it's DIN out, does it go straight into the affected synth or is it downstream (ei midi splitter > Synth A > MIDI thru > Affected synth etc.).

Thanks again for helping with this Kris
Jesse

[House de Kris]

Not being able to reproduce doesn't surprise me. After I wrote that, I wondered if downstream equipment might be more suspect. So, this evening I tried to come up with more definitive conditions to cause this.

Here's my step-by-step:
1. Started it up an right off noticed my Pad wasn't moving although modulation was on and programmed. I was using Mod 2 (48 beat sine). I remembered that this modulation source and Mod 4 (8 beat rand) sometimes refuse to work. I've wanted to write a bug/complaint about that, but it usually fixes itself in a day or so. So I selected Mod 1 (40s tri).

2. Right off I got a stuck note in the pad.

3. Encouraged, I tried playing around more hoping to make it happen multiple times.

4. Never got another stuck note.

5. Did hear many examples you shared of Strum 2 or 3 not strumming (all notes simultaneously) or only one or two notes sounding.

6. Then, when going from chord degree III to I the whole thing went dead. The beat indicator was a solid red and no button or knob was responsive. Shift+Panic did nothing. Oddest thing was that all sounds suddenly stopped when the NDLR froze. This almost implies that an All Notes Off command was issued. It was sudden silence.

7. I cycled power and all was well. In fact, Mod 2 and Mod 4 were working again.

In conclusion, I was unable to recreate the situation I had in the past which lead me to decide to never use Strum with Modulation. Had I been able to reliably get stuck notes, I was planning on bypassing my gear between the NDLR and the synth. The synth is an E-mu XL-1. The NDLR is connected via a JL Cooper Synapse for routing only, no processing is done there. The router goes to a Yamaha MEP4 MIDI processor, which is then connected to the XL-1. I was hoping to get many stuck notes, then use a single MIDI Cables from the NDLR to the XL-1 to see if the stuck note thing cleared up.

Oh well, I'll keep trying.

[giacecco]

I could find a setup where I always get stuck notes, perhaps it can help the developers.

This is the setting: I get the clock from CLK IN, coming from a Pamela's New Workout (PNW). To reproduce:

- factory reset the NDLR
- set the clock in to CV, check that it is being received
- set the Motiv 1 MIDI channel to whatever needed (in my case, 3 USB 1, to go into a Squarp Hermod)
- stop PNW, if not stopped already
- start Motiv 1
- start PNW
- stop PNW

... and hear the stuck note.

[Jesse Johannesen]

I think what perhaps is happening here is that we are confusing a stop message with pausing the incoming clock. If I set the NDLR to external clock it literally waits for each new clock pulse to do it's next thing, so if you pause the clock while a note is playing it will play forever until it receives the clock tick where it is scheduled to end.
Another way to think about it is this: when you stop the clock, the NDLR treats that as a reaaaaaaalllly slooooowwww bpm.
With a midi stop message, it will end all playing notes. That doesn't happen with pausing the clock. If you need that behavior it would be better to have a midi device clocking NDLR and sending clock downstream to the Modular.

Jesse