Analogue-sequencer

Hello all,

I recently got a P3 and it works great will most of my gear except with my Virus TI2. When I hook the P3 directly up to the TI2 it seems to miss notes, both note on and not off messages. This is with a one midi cable going from midi out of the P3 to the midi in of the virus and nothing else connected at all. And it happens randomly, meaning it is not always the same step note. If I enable all 16 notes, there are more note misses than hits.

If I run the P3 midi signal into Abelton Live, then back out to the TI2 (not using virus control or USB, purely 5 pin midi cabling), then the problem goes away. So it seems that something gets filtered out after running through Live.

So is there some other background midi data being sent out by the P3 that is confusing the VIrus? I have tried turning off the midi clock and it doesn't help.

Any suggestions would be highly appreciated!

I forgot to mention, I tried P3 firmware version, 3.3.006 and 4.5. Both have the same behaviour.

--- In analogue-sequencer@yahoogroups.com, "jmjflyer" <jmjflyer@...> wrote:

>
> Hello all,
> 
> I recently got a P3 and it works great will most of my gear except with my Virus TI2. When I hook the P3 directly up to the TI2 it seems to miss notes, both note on and not off messages. This is with a one midi cable going from midi out of the P3 to the midi in of the virus and nothing else connected at all. And it happens randomly, meaning it is not always the same step note. If I enable all 16 notes, there are more note misses than hits.
> 
> If I run the P3 midi signal into Abelton Live, then back out to the TI2 (not using virus control or USB, purely 5 pin midi cabling), then the problem goes away. So it seems that something gets filtered out after running through Live.
> 
> So is there some other background midi data being sent out by the P3 that is confusing the VIrus? I have tried turning off the midi clock and it doesn't help.
> 
> Any suggestions would be highly appreciated!
>

Of all the synths I've tried with the P3, my Virus Polar was the only 
one that struggled multitimbrally - even with about 4 parts, which was 
the most I dared try. In fact I went through three Polars before giving 
up trying to get reliable sequencing from it. In the same period I used 
a Korg Radias and various Novation synths multitimbrally and was able to 
get great results with them, even little Novation synths like the Nova 
and KS-Rack that had nominally far less polyphony never gave me a 
glitch. There are tricks to cut down on the Virus resource use that 
could help but this shouldn't be an issue with the newer, more potent 
DSP of the 2. Not tried one myself.

Since you mention the problem goes away when you run it through Ableton, 
maybe the problem is that the Virus simply doesn't respond quickly 
enough to MIDI and the latency introduced by the computer is enough to 
slow things and fudge the timing a little so it can cope. Pure 
speculation though - as is my thought that Access are way more concerned 
with the TI side than hardware control from a step sequencer. If you 
have another multitimbral synth to try in its place, that would be a 
good test. Similarly, check the output in MIDI-Ox or similar and see if 
you're sending anything wacky from patterns, you never know.

Good luck
Paul

On 14/12/2011 11:14, jmjflyer wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I recently got a P3 and it works great will most of my gear except with my Virus TI2. When I hook the P3 directly up to the TI2 it seems to miss notes, both note on and not off messages. This is with a one midi cable going from midi out of the P3 to the midi in of the virus and nothing else connected at all. And it happens randomly, meaning it is not always the same step note. If I enable all 16 notes, there are more note misses than hits.
>
> If I run the P3 midi signal into Abelton Live, then back out to the TI2 (not using virus control or USB, purely 5 pin midi cabling), then the problem goes away. So it seems that something gets filtered out after running through Live.
>
> So is there some other background midi data being sent out by the P3 that is confusing the VIrus? I have tried turning off the midi clock and it doesn't help.
>
> Any suggestions would be highly appreciated!
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

-- 
Paul
http://www.softroom.co.uk
http://paulnagle.bandcamp.com/

Hi,

Just alerted to this this question...

> I recently got a P3 and it works great will most of my gear 
> except with my Virus TI2. When I hook the P3 directly up to 
> the TI2 it seems to miss notes, both note on and not off 
> messages. This is with a one midi cable going from midi out 
> of the P3 to the midi in of the virus and nothing else 
> connected at all. And it happens randomly, meaning it is not 
> always the same step note. If I enable all 16 notes, there 
> are more note misses than hits.

There could be a hardware incompatibility between the P3 output and Virus
input.
You can confirm whether it is a hardware or a software problem by connecting
the P3 to the MIDI in of a synth it drives without problem, then taking a
hardware MIDI thru connection from that synth to the Virus, and see if it
works OK.

The P3 MIDI output on earlier units uses an open-collector drive, which may
not having sufficiently sharp edges to drive the Virus input if its
sensitivity is marginal.
That can often be the case where designers have thrown in a heap of EMC
filtering to keep the digital crap inside the box.

If you find buffering the P3 MIDI output fixes the problem, you could add a
little dongle to the P3 MIDI output stage to sharpen it up.

Cheers,
Colin

Colin,

I believe you have nailed down what the issue is. I used a simple thru program on my mac, and the P3 and Virus work great together now. I have a Midi Solutions Thru on order as well. Thanks so much!





--- In analogue-sequencer@yahoogroups.com, "Colin f" <colin@...> wrote:

>
> Hi,
> 
> Just alerted to this this question...
> 
> > I recently got a P3 and it works great will most of my gear 
> > except with my Virus TI2. When I hook the P3 directly up to 
> > the TI2 it seems to miss notes, both note on and not off 
> > messages. This is with a one midi cable going from midi out 
> > of the P3 to the midi in of the virus and nothing else 
> > connected at all. And it happens randomly, meaning it is not 
> > always the same step note. If I enable all 16 notes, there 
> > are more note misses than hits.
> 
> There could be a hardware incompatibility between the P3 output and Virus
> input.
> You can confirm whether it is a hardware or a software problem by connecting
> the P3 to the MIDI in of a synth it drives without problem, then taking a
> hardware MIDI thru connection from that synth to the Virus, and see if it
> works OK.
> 
> The P3 MIDI output on earlier units uses an open-collector drive, which may
> not having sufficiently sharp edges to drive the Virus input if its
> sensitivity is marginal.
> That can often be the case where designers have thrown in a heap of EMC
> filtering to keep the digital crap inside the box.
> 
> If you find buffering the P3 MIDI output fixes the problem, you could add a
> little dongle to the P3 MIDI output stage to sharpen it up.
> 
> Cheers,
> Colin
>

Colin,

As a follow up, my midi solutions thru box arrived yesterday, and it worked like a charm, so no issues at all with the TI.  Thanks for your help!

--- In analogue-sequencer@yahoogroups.com, "Colin f" <colin@...> wrote:

>
> Hi,
> 
> Just alerted to this this question...
> 
> > I recently got a P3 and it works great will most of my gear 
> > except with my Virus TI2. When I hook the P3 directly up to 
> > the TI2 it seems to miss notes, both note on and not off 
> > messages. This is with a one midi cable going from midi out 
> > of the P3 to the midi in of the virus and nothing else 
> > connected at all. And it happens randomly, meaning it is not 
> > always the same step note. If I enable all 16 notes, there 
> > are more note misses than hits.
> 
> There could be a hardware incompatibility between the P3 output and Virus
> input.
> You can confirm whether it is a hardware or a software problem by connecting
> the P3 to the MIDI in of a synth it drives without problem, then taking a
> hardware MIDI thru connection from that synth to the Virus, and see if it
> works OK.
> 
> The P3 MIDI output on earlier units uses an open-collector drive, which may
> not having sufficiently sharp edges to drive the Virus input if its
> sensitivity is marginal.
> That can often be the case where designers have thrown in a heap of EMC
> filtering to keep the digital crap inside the box.
> 
> If you find buffering the P3 MIDI output fixes the problem, you could add a
> little dongle to the P3 MIDI output stage to sharpen it up.
> 
> Cheers,
> Colin
>