Transport Controls & Midi Clock Reset

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pgnnwy
pgnnwy's picture
Joined: June 23, 2009

As mentioned in the Ideas forum:

I'm using a Korg Nanokontrol with the transport controls mapped to Audiomulch using 'parameter control' / Quickmap midi'

I have a nord micromodular synced up to receive midi clock from AM.

If I click the 'Play from start' control with my mouse, The Nord starts from 1 even if it's been stopped midway through a 16 step sequence (as you'd expect)

If I use the Nanokontrol it doesn't reset to 1.

It also seems that it actually maps the 'Play from start' button to the 'Play' button - also if I assign the 'rewind' button on Nanokontrol to 'go to start' and then press 'Play' on the Nanokontrol, this also doesn't reset the midi clock.

Hope that's clear!

Paul

Ross B.
Ross B.'s picture
Joined: April 11, 2009

Hi Paul

I've looked into this. As far as I can see AudioMulch is operating as intended. I'd be interested if anyone else is seeing the same behavior when getting AudioMulch to sync to other devices since I'm not sure why it isn't working for you.

The test I've done here today is to control AudioMulch transport from MIDI using a MIDI keyboard, and syncing MIDI-OX using MIDI Yoke, and inspecting the MIDI messages AudioMulch is sending. In the past I've tested AudioMulch sending MIDI sync to a Roland R-series drum machine.

MIDI has messages for START (play from start), STOP, CONTINUE (play from current position) and also SONG POSITION POINTER (set a new position). AudioMulch always sends SONG POSITION POINTER + CONTINE, even when playing from the start (so it sends SPP:0 + CONTINUE, instead of START). I think this is a normal way to do things but perhaps the nord micromodular doesn't understand SPP (?) One way to check this would be to drag the playback position pointer in AudioMulch automation while the Nord is syncing and see if it locks correctly. If not, I'm guessing the Nord isn't recognising MIDI SPP. Although page 53 of the Nord Modular manual (http://www.clavia.se/nordmodular/Files/NM3_0Ed2Manual.pdf) says:
[[[ If you are synchronizing Nord Modular to an external MIDI Clock source, this function will keep track
of any incoming MIDI Song Position Pointer messages.]]] so it should work. hmmm...

So at this stage I'm not really sure where the problem is -- try dragging the AM automation position while playing and syncing the nord and let me know what happens.

Thanks

Ross.

Ross B.
Ross B.'s picture
Joined: April 11, 2009

Hi Again.

Just re-reading your post above, you seem to be seeing different behaviour when using the mouse and when using MIDI. I don't see that here. (except there is a bug where if the transport is stopped, the GUI will not reflect a Go-to-start message from MIDI, but it still actually goes to the start if you press play -- that bug is fixed for the next update 2.0.3). So I'm quite confused.

Lets try to get the MIDI control aspect out of the picture.

Can you confirm that the AudioMulch playback position is behaving correctly, and consistently, whether controlled via MIDI or via the GUI. Specifically, do the play, stop, and play-from-start MIDI controllers from your nano-control affect the automation transport position as expected?

Another test: only create MIDI mappings for Stop and PlayFromStart -- do these behave correctly with AudioMulch automation?

Thanks

Ross.

pgnnwy
pgnnwy's picture
Joined: June 23, 2009

Hi Ross,

I've just been back over this with AM 2.1. The same behaviour seems to be happening. I've tested this with play from start and stop mapped to both a nanokontrol and keys on an alesis micron with AM acting as master clock to both a nord micro modular and a korg esx, in both cases the receiving kit didn't start from 1 when AM was stopped mid-sequence and the play from start was triggered from an external device. However, pressing play from start in AM (using mouse) always worked ok, and dragging the automation position as suggested had the desired result (i think) of making the playback hang when moved around and if I dragged the marker back to 1 then the receiving kit also reset to position 1.

To answer your questions above, AudioMulch is always reacting correctly to the mappings from external midi device (both nanokontrol over USB midi and the micron using normal midi in) ... but it doesn't seem like AM is passing on the information to play from start to devices it's acting as master-clock to.

I'd love it if someone else could try this out - it should be pretty quick to verify whether it's just me doing/getting something wrong :)

Paul

Ross B.
Ross B.'s picture
Joined: April 11, 2009

Thanks Paul. I'll have another look at this next week and send you a test version to try. -- Ross.

flukazoid
flukazoid's picture
Joined: June 26, 2009

YES. getting these exact symptoms, and it's driving me nuts!

also - it would be nice if the mappings for the playback controls could be application-wide rather than per-patch.

Ross B.
Ross B.'s picture
Joined: April 11, 2009

Flukazoid: you have a nord as well or are you getting this with something else?

This seems to be a bug/problem with the nord's MIDI implementation since everything else I've tested with so far has worked fine.

Ross.

flukazoid
flukazoid's picture
Joined: June 26, 2009

Ross: no this is the transport strip on an Akai MPD24

Ross B.
Ross B.'s picture
Joined: April 11, 2009

Paul's problem appears to be to do with the way the Nord receives the MIDI clocks (it doesn't correctly reset the clock phase when it receives an SPP 0 message). Based on my tests of lots of other things working just fine, this seems to be a problem with the device that receives the MIDI clocks (Nord), not the one that sends the Play message.

So are you saying that the MPD24 transport display doesn't reset to bar 1 (0) when you press play from start mapped from the MPD24?

Ross.

flukazoid
flukazoid's picture
Joined: June 26, 2009

Audiomulch does, but the device receiving clock (Korg Electribe EMX-1) doesn't start from the beginning

Ross B.
Ross B.'s picture
Joined: April 11, 2009

> the device receiving clock (Korg Electribe EMX-1) doesn't start from the beginning

Does the EMX-1 track the playback position correctly if you drag the playback position (in Automation) around and let go of it in an arbitrary place?

Reading here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/13078663/Korg-EMX1-Manual
It sounds like the EMX-1 might receive MIDI SPP in Song mode. Do you have it in song mode?

You should be able to get AM to send MIDI START messages instead of SPP by tweaking the sync offset setting in the settings (set it to longer than your audio buffer delay). Try +20ms and -20ms for example (sorry can't remember which off the top of my head right now) -- basically this will let AM send a START message instead of an SPP message.

Ross.

flukazoid
flukazoid's picture
Joined: June 26, 2009

Great minds Ross... that's exactly what I tried yesterday and it worked great!

Ross B.
Ross B.'s picture
Joined: April 11, 2009

@Flukazoid: which did you try, song mode or changing the offset?

flukazoid
flukazoid's picture
Joined: June 26, 2009

Sorry about the delay in responding - I changed the offset