sour notes - RESOLVED

[Jim]

I've been remixing a lot of my back catalog, using new methods I've learned and new plugins.

Something that's been cropping up every now and then is some VI tracks sounding sour notes - slightly out of tune with other tracks. This occurs on tracks that have sounded correctly in tune in the past.

This is odd because not all tracks are affected, which could be caused by a clock that's fluctuating. This is happening on my mix system (see my signature), in which I use the Mac's USB internal clock - the only available option.

On one occasion, creating a new VI and dragging the sour MIDI tracks to the new one fixed the issue. But, that doesn't work all the time. I tried creating a New Project and loaded the sour Sequence into the New Project, and that doesn't fix it either. I deleted the Audio Prefs. I reinstalled DP 11.32. I tried changing the VI or preset, and the sour notes persisted. I bounced during experiencing this twice. One bounce had the sour notes; one didn't.

I have no modulation CC or pitch bend events in the track.

On a few projects, the issue just went away on its own, after a while. Yes, I've considered the possibility I'm losing my mind.

[stubbsonic]

If it is only happening on VI tracks with MIDI, then there is a possibility some kind of modulation is shifting pitch.

I can't remember if PANIC also resets pitch and zeros out any CCs.

You could just wiggle a pitch wheel on your controller to reset it. Makes me wonder if your current controller might be sending out a non-zero pitch bend as you work.

[HCMarkus]

Makes me wonder if your current controller might be sending out a non-zero pitch bend as you work.

+1

[Jim]

If it is only happening on VI tracks with MIDI, then there is a possibility some kind of modulation is shifting pitch.

I can't remember if PANIC also resets pitch and zeros out any CCs.

You could just wiggle a pitch wheel on your controller to reset it. Makes me wonder if your current controller might be sending out a non-zero pitch bend as you work.

I've tried that. Doesn't help. Thanks for the suggestion.

Disabling the track from Record doesn't help either. It just happened again, and quitting and relaunching DP fixed it - for now.

EDIT: I was wrong about this, and stubbsonic was absolutely correct. I record enabled a track, added a PB event and highlighted the PB value, wiggled the PB on my keyboard, and the supposedly zero value was recording four digit numbers. My keyboard is malfunctioning. I apologize for my error.

[stubbsonic]

The only other thing I can think of is perhaps a mismatch in the playback sample rate? Where something is playing at 44.1 and another is playing at 48K? Really just grabbing at straws.

[Jim]

Here's an example of what I'm hearing - if you can stand to listen to it:

https://spaces.hightail.com/space/1iHFkifegg

There are NO pitch bend controllers in any tracks.

[stubbsonic]

Yea, that's annoying. I was thinking if it was DP, we'd have heard of this happening more often.

And, in fact, when we do hear about it, it is always pitch wheel related-- not necessarily in the track, but some pitch wheel pot just sending out data because it's dead zone isn't working right.

As a test, you could go into the VI and see if you can turn of pitch bending entirely. Set the pitch bend range to zero.

Then just see if it still happens.

Since it does play back normally sometimes, then would rule out there being problematic data on the track.

The only other thing I can think of is some kind of clocking error, but I'd imagine that would affect all tracks equally.

[Michael Canavan]

Have to ask what others have again, a little more specifically. Do you have ANY controllers setup? is there anything selected as a control surface in DP? and is any MIDI device attached? Mackie Control and other protocols use all kinds of odd cc combinations and NRPMs to get a fader or knob etc. working, if somethings amiss it could be doing this.

The other elephant, some third party virtual instruments use tuning as copy protection. U-He do this for example, if you used their plugins and the serial number wasn't installed the plug in properly it would go out of tune over time. I don't know which other brands use this method? but that's definitely a rabbit hole worth going into.

The third suggestion would be to switch the audio interface of your mix system with your other one, it's possible it's a bad audio driver or the card is going out, but obviously the least likely reason.

[Jim]

As a test, you could go into the VI and see if you can turn of pitch bending entirely. Set the pitch bend range to zero.

Then just see if it still happens.

Since it does play back normally sometimes, then would rule out there being problematic data on the track.

The only other thing I can think of is some kind of clocking error, but I'd imagine that would affect all tracks equally.

You solved it. If I wrote it was happening on tracks that were not record enabled, that was wrong, because apparently my Axiom keyboard was sending out pitch bend events (extreme values, too, like 2048, which wouldn't result from vibration).

I record-enabled a track and put it into overdub mode. Then, I opened the event viewer and set it to view only PB data. I hit record, and watched the Event list. Sure enough, it recorded several random PB events.

I'll try a full factory reset on the Axiom, or toss it and use the opportunity to upgrade.

THANK YOU to all who offered suggestions!

[Jim]

Do you have ANY controllers setup? is there anything selected as a control surface in DP? and is any MIDI device attached?

Your comment came in while I was replying to stubbsonic. You were correct as well. My keyboard was sending out PB data on its own. I hadn't noticed the sour pitch was happening to record-enabled tracks.

Thank you.

[Michael Canavan]

Alls well that ends well!

I highly recommend downloading MIDI Monitor for this kind of troubleshooting in the future, you would have seen the erratic pitch right away and where it is coming from etc.

https://www.snoize.com/MIDIMonitor/

[stubbsonic]

I had a pitch bend potentiometer go bad on my PC3K. One approach was to just clean it well-- but others have said that while this works sometimes, it's not the most reliable fix-- either it doesn't fix it at all, or the problem returns. So I ordered a replacement pot which wasn't very expensive.

I suppose if you're looking for an opportunity to upgrade, than who are we to argue

[James Steele]

Nice! Glad you tracked it down. I'll mark this topic RESOLVED.

[HCMarkus]

Thanks for reporting back Jim! Always good to see a problem resolved..

[stubbsonic]

Just an additional note. The value of 2048 from the pitch bend is significant, but not extreme. Pitch bend is a 14 bit value-- so 2048 is equal to a value of 16 in 7-bit terms. That's a 12.5% departure from center, so not small potatoes, but still smallish potatoes. Mmmmm. .... potatos.