Articulations triggering inconsistently

[0cme]

Hello - I'm using articulation maps in an orchestral template, and finding that sometimes DP will just not trigger them. This seems to happen when I move the playback wiper around in a sequence - instruments will sometimes cling to their previous articulation, and will ignore the articulations at the current playback position. So I will be expecting staccato, and get longs, or marcato, or whatever.

Sometimes this can be fixed by moving the playback wiper to another part of the sequence, where some other articulations are being used, letting it play for a bit, and then moving back to the desired time. It can also be fixed by going into the articulations, selecting a different articulation for a note, and then changing it back. But both of these are a bit awkward.

Has anyone else encountered this?

I'm using DP 11.22, on Win 10. The instruments in question are all Kontakt 5 instances, and the patches are all Spitfire stuff where the articulations are being controlled by UACC (controller 32).

Would any of these help?
-upgrading to DP 11.3
-upgrading to Kontakt 7
-altering something in the articulation map setup

[CharlzS]

Not sure if this applies to articulations, but is CC32 being chased? Menu Setup --> Event Chasing. Are you setup to chase CCs?

[0cme]

Yes, it's set up to chase everything. There's nowhere I'm automating CC32 by hand, though, it's entirely handled by articulation maps.

[CharlzS]

Didn't have a very high confidence level that chasing would be the fix. I've just been fooling around with them. Have you looked at the mode and retrigger options? Maybe something there. OTT, check with MOTU tech support - usually very helpful.

[0cme]

I've looked at the mode/retrigger options and tried altering them, but it doesn't seem to work. I'll try the tech support approach, thanks!

[dewdman42]

It is indeed quite possible that DP isn't chasing artmap generated CC messages. I will try to test for this on mac when i get a chance to see if it's happening there too.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the artmap by design does not send redundant key switches. What I mean is that if say you have 5 notes in a row with the same articulation, it only sends the key switch (or cc switch) once for the first note and then the rest of the 4 remaining notes don't need a key switch and the artmap doesn't send it.

so there could be something related to that also affecting this situation. you move the cursor...its in the middle of some section of same articulations...and for whatever the reason DP either assumes the switch was already sent and obviously because no chasing it doesn't get caught up.

I'm not actually convinced right now as I think about it that you want normal chasing. You want Dp to process every note and look at its articulation assignment and apply whatever needs to be applied, but I think it is just getting confused when you move the cursor, I'm willing to bet this is also problematic if you set a playback loop that starts in the middle of some phrase or something also. It's a matter of how DP keeps track of what the last played articulation is..is it the one you were last listening to. probably it just needs to reset the artmap whenever there is a loop or the cursor is moved, to force it to send any relevant articulation key switch and not assume it was already sent.

[dewdman42]

Also, if you are using art manager to channelize your articulations...then a similar problem is present in DP11, which is related to CC expression that needs to also get channelized along with notes. This is different than your scenario, but somewhat similar. In your situation you are using CC switches on same channel. In channelized scenario the notes end up getting sent to different channels instead of a switch, but then expression CC data also gets automatically channelized to the same channels where there notes are going. Fine so far, but DP also doesn't seem to chase those CC expression. For example, if you have an articulation sounding on channel 7, used infrequently, then finally there is a note marked for that articulation and it goes to channel7, but expression CC data is not being chased at that moment so that this articulation will be up to date with CC expression, it won't get caught up until a new CC expression comes through and finally gets forward to channel 7 also.

so..what I can say is that we have two potential problems here in art map handling, that are kind of related to chasing and keeping track of key switches and what the artmap is doing with it... DP could still use some work in this area. These are subtle problems that are hard to explain, I have tried to explain the above to support a few times and got no response, which is unusual usually when I point out something legit, they respond in some way.