MOTUnation.com

Still getting the MIDI stuck notes here too. Frankly I am equally surprised at MOTU's lack of attention to this issue. It is worse in DP5 and began with 4.5

My guess is that they (are) paying attention to this stuck notes thread at MOTU, just haven't finalized a fix yet that won't break something else. This fix must be pretty complex, given the depth of features supported in DP, and the wide variety of (our) systems that it has to work on.

I'm currently recording and looping a 16 channel MIDI sequence over and over, pretty dense notewise, 120bpm, with 8 and 8 empty audio tracks, no problem. The only slight weirdness was a red spike on the Playback bar in the Audio Performance window, when I rewinded and hit (MIDI) record quickly. But after I hit the spacebar and then record again, it was fine..(time passes) Now I've just recorded it all to one of the stereo audio tracks, no problem. over and out.

tommymandel wrote:Sorry for the bloated post here, but it seemed to include info that you were requesting from the 'nation.

Well, I'm mainly curious about the drivers, and whether those with stable systems all happen to have older drivers. Just curious, of course. But if a pattern forms, well, then the next step would be to show MOTU.


Shooshie

for what its worth- my stable (dp5, 10.3.9, g5x1.8. midiexpress128) system has Motu MIDI Driver.plugin vers 1.2.4d2

I forgot to mention in my previous stuck notes post - they only stick when I stop the transport in the middle of a note, i.e. on beat 3 of a whole note. If the notes reach their note-off point, they don't stick.

This can happen in a 1 track sequence with 1 note in the track, using only a Motu VI like Proton. It also happens in other VI's and in outboard modules. I'll do more mucking about, try it on a clean system with no 3rd party anything and see how it goes. As I mentioned, it seems very intermittent and I haven't found a pattern yet.

bart

bart,

I'm curious.
if you play the same sticking note or scrub over it does it/can it become unstuck?

-b

yeah, bart- that's starting to ring a bell. when my stuck notes occured, they were stopped in the middle of their durations too.

Tonight I downgraded my Motu MIDI Drivers from 1.32 to 1.31 (per Shooshie's data collecting thread), and after a couple of hours of work in DP5, I've had no stuck notes. I've tried all the stuff that seemed to be causing them for me and others in DP5, and no sticking. Nada.

I'll let you all know if the non-sticking continues here.

regards, bart "teflon" mclaughlin

pencilina wrote:for what its worth- my stable (dp5, 10.3.9, g5x1.8. midiexpress128) system has Motu MIDI Driver.plugin vers 1.2.4d2

Got it. Anything else you want to add will be greatly appreciated. In fact, it might save MOTU from hungry coyotes. Hmmm... actually, it might not. Those coyotes looked unstoppable when I saw them pass by here a few hours ago, and I'm pretty sure they were headed in a northeasterly direction.

But it can't hurt. Let me know all the details you're willing to share about your system. And if anyone else is reading this, I'm watching you through your iSight. (even the hidden ones behind the apple logo on computers that "don't have iSight.") I know you're slacking off and not sending me your info. But go ahead and send the info, and as a reward I'll restore your credit rating to AAAA so you can buy that new MacBook Pro when the universal binaries come out.

HARD DRIVE/SYSTEM/LIBRARY/EXTENSIONS/ all the files that start with MOTU (should be 3 or less). Give me the versions of those, OSX, DP, along with the hardware you're using (interfaces), and your active plugins. I'll put it in the Excel database, and we'll start mining it for keys to these problems when there's enough info to be statistically meaningful. (don't tell anyone, but secretly we're mining this data for gold. Yep. Pure 64 carat gold.)



Shooshie

Let me ask once again. Please post your info as I've been asking. I think I'm seeing some significant patterns, and Bart has supported it with his findings after downgrading from version 1.32 to 1.31.

If you have posted problems to this thread, you really owe it to yourself to post your info if you haven't already. I've got Barts, Tommymandel's, MarkWayne's, and Pencilina's, though some of those could be more complete (exact computer, OS version, Audio interfaces, plugins, etc.)

So, think it over. Anything you see that might be a part of the active CPU path would be a good addition to this list. It's all in Excel, and we'll be able to sort on any field to see if there are correlations to the stuck notes and/or crashing problems.

Shooshie

Just a suggestion, sometimes the MIDI stream can be interrupted just enough to make a keyboard miss a note off. Or you can have so much velocity, aftertouch, or pitch bend information the MIDI gets clogged for just a second. This can cause stuck notes. Thin out your control data, turn off or filter control data you're not using, and turn active sensing on, on your keyboards and MIDI modules. Might help a little.

From,MIDI.org
System Real Time Messages
The Active Sensing signal is used to help eliminate "stuck notes" which may occur if a MIDI cable is disconnected during playback of a MIDI sequence. Without Active Sensing, if a cable is disconnected during playback, then some notes may be left playing indefinitely because they have been activated by a Note On message, but the corresponding Note Off message will never be received.

Sly

Hi guys.
Just to report I have been using DP5 for a week and I got the same problem with the stuck notes. Never happened to me wih the DP 4.61.
I will try with everything I have read on this forum to see what's going on. Just a comment , DP5 does not seems to be very reliable yet.

Obviously DP has a bit of a problem with sticking MIDI notes, but I think that a bit of blame has to be directed elsewhere as well.

On this thread people have reported varying degrees of success with using the command-1 (stop all MIDI notes) function. Basically it sends two messages to every device attached to the computer, an 'all sounds off' (to stop the notes) and 'controller reset' (to stop any stuck sustain pedals etc.). ie. It's a 'MIDI panic' button.

The problem seems to be that a lot of VI's these days do not respond to the 'all sounds off' message, which, considering that it's a pretty basic MIDI implementation spec, is pretty irresponsible to say the least. I tested all of my gear, and whilst my trusty JV1080 (which hardly sees much action these days) responds every time and immediately kills all hanging notes, only a couple of VI's that I tested did the same.

Here's a list of the VI's (etc.) I tested that don't respond to the 'all sounds off' message - and therefore 'command-1'

Reason, (East West) Collossus, (East West) Symphonic Orch, GigaSampler (on a separate PC - fairly old version though)

NI's B4 and Pro 52, did work though (also running on a separate PC).

This doesn't solve the original hanging notes, of course. But it would be more bearable if MIDI manufacturers and developers all implemented proper MIDI specs.

My recent foray into collecting data about everyone's DP setup has led me to the conclusion that in MANY cases, the stuck note problem is related to the new MIDI drivers. If you're using a MOTU MIDI interface (such as the MIDI Express or MIDI Time Piece AV) then driver version 1.3.1 may very well be the most stable for you. I'm just going to suggest that people with stuck notes give this a try. I can't guarantee anything, and you should use all precautions when testing this so as not to risk losing data, though I don't see why there would be any problems. Several people have done this so far with no problems.

You can no longer get that driver from MOTU's site, so I'm going to post my own installer, which I downloaded from MOTU about a year ago:

MOTU USB MIDI Driver version 1.3.1.sit

Shooshie