Midi Control assignments killing sound.

dehuszar · Post by **dehuszar** » Sat Jan 13, 2007 7:57 am

I had a weird crash the last night. Right in the middle of working on some cool tunes too, I was in perfect flow.

I had just mapped out a bunch of synths' controls to my Keystation Pro 88 midi controller before the crash. Heaven was upon me.

After the crash, any attempt to assign a midi controller causes ALL synths (not just the one I'm tinkering with) to stop producing any sound.

Needless to say, I think something somewhere got corrupted badly.

Does it make sense to backup anything beyond my keys and my devices folder before a re-install? And should I uninstall the original inst before laying the new one down? Might something in the devices folder cause a problem? I'd hate to have to start fresh and reinstall all that crap (and by crap I mean beautiful, beautiful plugs).

Anyone who's experienced this type of problem, please chime in. I'd REALLY appreciate it.

Sam

dawman · Post by **dawman** » Sun Jan 14, 2007 4:47 pm

Are you using USB 4 MIDI, or just to power the Pro 88 ?
I use MIDI out from both of my 88's, and USB 4 powering up the controllers. This was made 4 SFP IMHO, as it has so much control. But recently I started using them w/o the MIDISport 8 x 8 and found that it causes problems w/ the cards via some strange MIDI loop. I have sent 4 Dr. GaryB to examine this more closely after NAMM here in Las Vegas, since you are a fellow Pulsarian, I shall pass along all pertinent information in this regard. I have had flawless live stability for over a year until I noticed this. So if there is no fix on the controller's side of things, I will assume it is wise to use a MIDI / USB box designed for controlling the controller. Sounds like a production facility where the producer asks 4 coffee, and the assistant to the assistant must fetch it.

I Shall Return,.....General Douglas MacArthur @ Corrigador December, 1941.

JV

dawman · Post by **dawman** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 10:17 pm

Brotha' Man Dehuszar,
I have family in Lake Forest, just north of Chitown.
I have some pretty rad developements w/ the toggle buttons on the 88's. Do you have SpaceF's Echo 35, bb-Synth FX? These delays are totally zipper free for live manipulation. I like MIDI controlling those FX. They make an average pad into waterfalls of butter, w/ a little hot sauce. PM me if you like, as we are a rare species here w/ the 88's.
The buttons can send program changes, or act like a leslie pre amp pedal, or a stompbox. In SpaceF's Echo 35, and especially the bb-Synth FX, he has 3 insert FX w/ these little mute buttons, which are MIDI controlled, ankyuvarymush. I use the buttons which are from center to right on the bottom row of the controller surface to mute and unmute other FX, i.e. while holding a pad w/ one hand, I reach up and hit the buttons to mute, and unmute the insert FX inside bb-Synth FX. This gives me a rich pad w/ delay / and say SSB Modulator, and SSB Phaser. Clicking back and forth between the two modulation FX every 4 bars let's say, gives a beautiful change of scenery to the sound.

dehuszar · Post by **dehuszar** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 5:44 pm

First, my apologies for the super late response. I've had my head down working on my web design/consulting company I'm putting together. Haven't scoured the Z for a while.

2ndly, that's awesome. I grew up in Evanston, just a few suburbs south of Lake Forest. If you're ever in the area, email me or PM me or something!

As for the KS88Pro, I have Echo2. I should just make the eff'n leap to the latest version. I'm intrigued by the bb-synthFX you speak of. I have no idea what it is. I assume the bb part is for BlackBox. Beyond that, no knowledge. I would love to hear more about what you're doing. You seem to be publicly pushing the boundaries of the platform more than anyone right now. If nothing else, I'd love to bottle some of the mojo you've been putting into seeing how far things can be pushed.

As for the muting of buttons, and pads and stuff... it sounds phenomenal, but I'm having a bit of trouble following what's actually being controlled. Not having any experience with the synthFX plug and not knowing how you are manipulating stuff, I can only guess.

Did you make your own custom cc mappings? I'm currently using the default setup (General Midi layout) as straying from the course caused the sustain pedal to not work. I have to say, I loathe the Enigma editor as it crashes every time I'm almost done tweaking something. Has this been your experience? Have you found an elegant way around these issues?

I'd love to hear more about your setting up of the actual controller itself.

I'm having a bit of a problem with my default preset. But that said, once I've made a few tweaks, I have a great default template for automating mixing tasks from sequencers. I'll be happy to share when I'm done.

Peace.
Sam

Chisel · Post by **Chisel** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 10:56 pm

I've had the same issue with recalling MIDI presets. Just when I thought I had it licked. I've gotten so far in the last few years. I have all the controls of the MiniMax and Pro-12 mapped perfectly on my X-Station. I'm basically at the point where I can turn off my computer monitor and just program exclusively on the X-Station as if it was a Mini Moog.

My problem is that when I first recall a MIDI controller preset, all the sound of the synth cuts out. I try resetting volume levels and flipping on oscillators, thinking that loading the preset switches around the parameters of the synth - but nothing seems to help. Then, about a minute later, everything starts working again. I also noticed that right after loading a MIDI controller preset, all of the synth presets are screwed up. Again, it only happens for about a minute and then everything goes back to normal.

Has anybody figured out the cause and cure for this?

BTW, Creamware has a fix for the MiniMax and Pro-12 devices such that all controls can be mapped to MIDI. Unfortunately, they don't have one for B-2003.

Peace \/
chisel316
http://www.soundclick.com/chisel316

wolf · Post by **wolf** » Sat Apr 07, 2007 2:04 am

Chisel wrote:My problem is that when I first recall a MIDI controller preset, all the sound of the synth cuts out.

Sounds similar to my experience, when loading a project with assigned midi controlers where all volumes look ok, but actully are internally set to zero.

Has anybody figured out the cause and cure for this?

If we are talking about the same phenomena .. yes and yes.
However this can only be fixed inside the device. A workaround is to click onto the midified screen controls and use arrow left/right so the value is send.

regards
Wolfgang

Chisel · Post by **Chisel** » Thu Jun 28, 2007 10:11 am

I'm still having issues when loading my own MIDI controller presets. It's frusterating me to the point that I'm ready to give up and just use the mouse. I just purchased the new Pro-One v3.0 from John Bowen. I mapped all of the Pro-One controls to my X-Station and saved the new preset. To test it out, I closed the synth, opened it back up, loaded a few synth presets to hear how they sound, then loaded my controller preset and nothing sounded the same after that. The presets sounded completely different than before I loaded the controller preset! I can't possibly see how you could use Scope in a live environment with this issue. I've had this problem with all of the controllers I've tried with it. My X-Station is connected by MIDI only. I'm still waiting for a step-by-step work-around to this issue. Ultimately, I'd love to see a fix, but that's asking to much.

Peace \/
chisel316

Bifop · Post by **Bifop** » Thu Jun 28, 2007 2:19 pm

There's indeed a nasty bug in the scope platform regarding controller assignment and external midi control, in my experience at least.
I've experienced it under XTC and SFP mode.
Some synths crash (Pro5, Vectron, Uknow) ;
some stop producing sound for a few patches changes then come back to life (Minimax, Comb Plus 1.3...) ;
some can't remember controllers when assigned to some switches (B2003, Vectron,). Most have totally different sound on patch recall when you have assigned a lot of parameters to a ctrler (Modular

).

I found that the Cat synth by Shroomz and DJ micron doesn't suffer from these anomalies... It responds straigh on after recalling a ctrler map and doesn't loses it's mapping.

A neat feature I like to use with old scope's synths is the presets box and close/open panel midi mappable. It's great to be able to invoke the panel and/or preset box at the touch of one button on the keyboard.