Lucas Posted September 20, 2014 Share Posted September 20, 2014 Hi,I'm working out a new configuration for playing live. I want it to be all hardware because I find it a lot more sexy. So I borrowed the dust-gathering MPC500 of my roommate at the beginning of the week and until now I'm struggling with my timetable to find the time configuring the whole thing.Here's how it looks like so far (important note: it's some pretty "basic" hardware config and I'm willing to improve it as much as possible in the [near] future) :MPC 500 is the MIDI Master. It receives the MIDI output from my CS1X (cheap digital synth) and send it back to this synth (CS1X has "Local" disabled). From this point, I chained all my other hardware: Yamaha DX9, Korg Electribe SX and Monotribe (which has this MIDI mod which I regret I bought). It's all connected through MIDI IN / MIDI THRU (that's what you call a daisy chain right?).On the MPC, I configured each track to address the master keyboard (CS1X) to a specific synth using different MIDI channels. So each time i select a track I can play and record the corresponding synth. Additionally, the ESX receives MIDI clock and plays in sync (I program the beats on it).That's how it works, or at least how I'd like it to work. Indeed, it seems like a really playful kind of workflow but so far I experienced some frequent weird glitches from my synths. It's like they go crazy, suddenly playing very high notes out loud in the worst case (the DX9 seems to have specialized itself for that), or simply getting some notes stuck, which also sucks.As far as I understood (once again, Sound of Sound delivers) it has something to do with the synths receiving to much MIDI information. I'm not a MIDI wizard yet but hey I thought that would be a quite light configuration as it is now? Also, synths which drop out the more are the DX9 and the CS1X, which are quite at the beginning of the chain. Anyway I just wanted to know if you people have some experience in that and how you fixed it. My first plan is to borrow a MIDI box which outputs several outputs for one input (I forgot the name of that thing) and to see how it works then. But maybe there's something else? thanks for reading! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted September 20, 2014 Share Posted September 20, 2014 sounds a pain. i had a different kinda problem with an mpc1000 and midi module whereby everything with go random when i pressed start. i managed to fix it by setting the program to off on the mpc perhaps this might work for you dunno Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucas Posted September 20, 2014 Author Share Posted September 20, 2014 I don't have the time to check now but I think I disabled it already on every track I'm using (have to check again though because saving your stuff looks like a pain in the ass on this machine and every time I do something and save it I'm never sure I'll find it again later. still have to get used to its workflow). thanks for your reply! ps : nice chartreuse spits! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted September 20, 2014 Share Posted September 20, 2014 know what you mean about saving and loading. i havent bothered either yet. only got the mpc a couple weeks back but yeah that program thing i hadnt seen any info on in the manuals i had. just happened upon someone talking in a forum. also might be worth checking your midi settings on the mpc and that a1 b2 stuff. also im using the jj os 3.16 dunno if that changes anything either. its quite new to me too :) good luck though and post back if you manage to fix it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tokn Posted September 21, 2014 Share Posted September 21, 2014 yeah midi is a big world of weirdness... last night i tried to calculate hex binary and normal ccs to adress these nrpln messages.... really complicated to get into it first. also: why the hell did they choose 128 steps for one value? who decided that? and the one who decided it actually had a HUGE impact on electronic music.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucas Posted September 22, 2014 Author Share Posted September 22, 2014 know what you mean about saving and loading. i havent bothered either yet. only got the mpc a couple weeks back but yeah that program thing i hadnt seen any info on in the manuals i had. just happened upon someone talking in a forum. also might be worth checking your midi settings on the mpc and that a1 b2 stuff. also im using the jj os 3.16 dunno if that changes anything either. its quite new to me too :) good luck though and post back if you manage to fix it I still didn't figure out how to fix the problem with the actual equipment I have but I'll go grab a MIDI THRU box (1 IN -> 4 OUTS) at a friend's place and see what it brings. According to the Sound on Sound article I posted, it's risky to run several synths from a single MIDI OUT. Hope that'll help because if it doesn't I don't have any idea and all my excitement of last week about building a live set will fall. But I thought, maybe it's also due to the actual performances of my synths? I don't know anything about midi buffers, whether different synths have different (smaller or bigger) ones, but since I use my DX9, sending MIDI to it in the same time as to other machines, I noticed it's always kind of slow although the other synths are fine. It takes like one second to play in cue when I play start and I already experienced those crazy glitches with a screen message like "MIDI BUFFERS FULL" or something. So maybe the quality of implemented MIDI in hardware is kind of variable? Anyway according to some forums the MPCs seems to make several problems when sequencing MIDI. If anyone read this thread and have experience with hardware midi sequencers sending data to several devices, I'd be curious to know if such problems showed up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest dragon feces Posted September 22, 2014 Share Posted September 22, 2014 A similar thing happened to me with synths playing themselves when connected to an MPC, and turning off the "Send MMC" option in the MIDI settings fixed it. I don't know if that's related to the stuck notes or any other issues. Maybe your keyboard is sending MIDI messages besides note data? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucas Posted September 22, 2014 Author Share Posted September 22, 2014 A similar thing happened to me with synths playing themselves when connected to an MPC, and turning off the "Send MMC" option in the MIDI settings fixed it. I don't know if that's related to the stuck notes or any other issues. Maybe your keyboard is sending MIDI messages besides note data? There doesn't seem to be such an option in the MPC500, but the thing is I need MMC (it stands for MIDI Master Clock right?) to sync my Electribe on which I want to make the beats. Regarding the MIDI messages, the glitches and stuck notes already happened as I wasn't sending some, but I'd like to be able to do so in order to pre-record some automations for my sets so I should also get that work properly in case it happens to bring problems too. I grabbed the MIDI-Thru box I was talking about and plugged it after the MPC (it distributes MPC's MIDI out directly to the MIDI ins of the different synths I have). I started to adapt one of my tracks to this new setup ; I still get some stuck notes but it seems way better so far. Also, the stuck notes seem to appear more when I'm playing with the keyboard, and I'll do that mostly for recording loops on different tracks but in what I imagine my live set to be I won't be messing up with the keyboard that much (I'd rather twiddle some knobs and push buttons). So hopefully this will be enough. I still have to see how it behave on heavier sessions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest dragon feces Posted September 22, 2014 Share Posted September 22, 2014 A similar thing happened to me with synths playing themselves when connected to an MPC, and turning off the "Send MMC" option in the MIDI settings fixed it. I don't know if that's related to the stuck notes or any other issues. Maybe your keyboard is sending MIDI messages besides note data? There doesn't seem to be such an option in the MPC500, but the thing is I need MMC (it stands for MIDI Master Clock right?) to sync my Electribe on which I want to make the beats. Ah okay, I was using a 2000xl. MMC stands for MIDI machine control. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest volg4 Posted September 22, 2014 Share Posted September 22, 2014 hey, separate midi thru box is the way to go with this... //// midi thru on synths is notoriously bad - daisy chains can cause trouble, lag and other wierdness //// the "midi buffer full" message sounds like a midi feedback loop, an output to an input, sends to the same output, back to the input.... //// are you using the cs1x for sounds? if not go out from cs1x to input on mpc then out from mpc into thru box to your synths and everything should be fine... //// MMC (midi machine control) is not required for midi clock, they're 2 different things, midi clock will start and stop your synced gear without MMC ////(all my words seem to run together if i dont put //// inbetween the line... sorry) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucas Posted September 23, 2014 Author Share Posted September 23, 2014 Yeah I'm using the CS1X for sounds. I'm not a big fan of this synth but so far it's the most versatile I have and it brings variety to my sound palette. So I set its "Local" mode off (so that its keyboard doesn't send data to the internal synth) and I send the MIDI data back to it after the MIDI thru box on a specific channel. Seems fine. I hope the whole thing stays stable enough for playing live. I mean I really don't have crazy synths, just entry level stuff I bought because I was so impatient. The first thing I'll have to do is to add a Microbrute I think, this MIDI-moded Monotribe doesn't do the bass job that well (sounds really good but every MIDI note on and off comes with a rather loud click). oh shit I forgot the //// sorry! thanks for your lights guys Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ascdi Posted September 23, 2014 Share Posted September 23, 2014 Yeah you can turn MMC off, that's if you want to run a tape machine or something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ryancolecreate Posted September 23, 2014 Share Posted September 23, 2014 ya it sound to me like you're overloading midi's bandwidth. In other network types when that happens data gets buffered and sent out later, but since midi is so time sensitive it just drops bytes. That would account for the stuck notes and other weirdness. Note off messages getting lost. If you can switch off clock signals from all the machines except your master that would help. So are you doing like MCP --> synth1-midi in | synth1-midi thru --> synth2-midi in | synth2-midi thru --> etc ? Then having the midi outs from each synth feed into a merger and then to the MPC again? You're on a Mac right? Could you pop into the midi setup environment thing and recreate the setup there with the patch cables and post up a screen shot? Then I can better see if there's some obvious issue. It could also be that some machine in the chain is choking up the bandwidth, or is just really slow in passing along data. Trying different order of machines in the chain and see if that helps. Welcome to hardware! You're in the real school now haha. I bought a midi patchbay a while ago and it's great for solving shit like this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ryancolecreate Posted September 23, 2014 Share Posted September 23, 2014 This app is what I meant: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucas Posted September 24, 2014 Author Share Posted September 24, 2014 Hi slightlydrybeans and thanks for your help. Let me recapitulate how I plug all this stuff. That's how I did before I figured out I should pick up a MIDI thru box : Yamaha CS1X -OUT----------------------->IN- MPC500 (master Keyboard) -IN<------------------------OUT- (master clock/sequencer) -thru | | V - DX9 -----thru----> Electribe SX ------thru----> Monotribe - The MPC loads several tracks, each having a dedicated MIDI out channel. Each track addresses a different synth of the chain. - CS1X has "local" mode turned off (so that the synth engine doesn't receive MIDI information directly from the keyboard. It does receive it once it went through the MPC though). - Electribe SX is set to MIDI slave because I want to use its internal sequencer (for making the beat). then I figured out I should use a MIDI thru box in order to reduce those MIDI bugs. So I'll hook up the OUT of the MPC to the IN of the thru box. And I'll connect the 4 THRU of the thru box directly to the other machines (CS1x, DX9, ESX1, Monotribe). Which is supposed to be better for the signal quality. I wanted to do a schema for that as well but I figured out it would be tricky with characters lol, hope it's clear anyway. I wonder what you mean with having all the synths' MIDI outs merged and sent back to MPC? Maybe you thought I was recording MIDI coming from each synth? Well I'm just using one master keyboard so I don't need to do that. I was surprised that the daisy chain configuration didn't work because I've been using it since a long time with a PC (sequencing the hardware in Reaper) and it never raised so much problems. So I guess the MPC is less stable for handling a lot of MIDI. PS : I'm on a PC ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ryancolecreate Posted September 24, 2014 Share Posted September 24, 2014 Ah ok for some reason I thought you were a numerology user. :) your setup sounds fine really. The daisy chain thing unusually only introduces a bit of latency. That's easy to over come though if you put your more pad-oriented synths at the end so the latency it not a problem. It's a small amount. Like 4-10 ms per box normally. It could be that the MPC sends out a lot more data than the PC. I bet there is some mdii filter setting there you could fiddle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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