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Old 03-29-2014, 08:44 AM   #1
Mink99
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Default Loop with MIDI sync out to external gear fails ....

If i loop a certain area (let's say 4 bars) and I want to have external gear synced to that by midi clock/spp the external instrument stops after the first run, and starts again on the third.

So when the drum box is in running state, it is stopped, when the drumbox is in stopped state,it is started.

This behaviour is independent from a particular midi interface or connected instrument.

It is really annoying when I am trying for example to do programming on the mpc (real one no fake renaissance vst) . The expected behaviour is on the first run to act in write mode, and then switch on the second run to overdub. instead the mpc stops and switches to play mode on the third run.....

There is some clutter in the spp / clock and mmc that makes all drum machines stop on the first rewind.

Hardware :
reaper newest version 64 bit ,
Win 7 64
motu 128 express xt (no generic drivers) or
ESi m8u xl (no generic drivers) or
Roland cakewalk whatever (generic and dedicated drivers)
Drumboxes & sequencers
Mpc2000 xl
Boss dr670
Korg ddd1
Korg vodka drums
Alesis ion arp
Venom arp
Yamaha cs1x arp

This behaviour is shown since I am working with reaper (some years ago), I just wanted to bump....

I tried to trace the problem with midiox and midi yoke , but I could see nothing special.
But I did not invest too much time as tracing midi clock and mmc is not fun.
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Old 04-01-2014, 11:18 AM   #2
Mink99
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I hate bumping, but, am I really the only one who has this problem ?
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Old 04-01-2014, 12:46 PM   #3
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you are not the only one, but we have to be patient. Hopefully devs will give it a look in a future release. In the meantime we have to live with that i think :\
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Old 04-01-2014, 12:52 PM   #4
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Hi,

Last time I tried this, It didn't go so well either....will do another test by Thurs....BTW,have u ever tried the other way...reaper as slave? From what remember, it was way wacky. I have a tempo reading device, that send s midi clock and I would love to get that work in with reaper...so I will set up a test for Thursday.

Midi has seen a lot of improvement lately, and this would fill out missing midi features nicely.

Guido
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Old 04-01-2014, 01:18 PM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mink99 View Post
[...]
Korg vodka drums
[...]
I guess your spellchecker corrected that Mississippi for you.
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Old 04-06-2014, 03:48 AM   #6
Mink99
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I just identified the cause for the problem:

When reaper is rewrapping to the beginning , it issues the following midi sequence:

...
F8 00 00 Clock
FC 00 00 Stop
F2 40 00 SPP
FB 00 00 Continue
F8 00 00 Clock
F8 00 00 Clock
...

when the position is reset by the SPP, the MPC (and other machines) will
take the "Continue" as a "Start", because the position where it was paused, is overwritten by the SPP command.

The "Start" will then end the recording mode.

When I suppressed the SPP by filtering it out through MIDI-OX, everything ran as expected.

So an easy fix would be, in the midi preferences, to have two "switches"

[ ] Send Midi Clock / SPP to device
[ ] Send Midi Clock to device (no SPP)
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Old 04-06-2014, 06:13 AM   #7
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Filed a bug report. Please support it.
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Old 04-08-2014, 10:11 AM   #8
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Hi,


Deleted...............
I gotta read the ops better. Didn't get the record part......will vote.
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Old 04-08-2014, 10:54 AM   #9
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Hi,

".......If i loop a certain area (let's say 4 bars) and I want to have external gear synced to that by midi clock/spp the external instrument stops after the first run, and starts again on the third. ...."

That doesnt happen here. Sorry..using Reaper 4.62 pre 6a and a yamaha motif 6 internal sequencer set to song mode. I recorded an 8 bar piano riff in internal sync mode on the motif, then set it to midi sync mode. Then i made a loop in Reaper from bar 2 to bar 6. turned on reapers metronome and hit play. Motif seq started at bar 2 went to bar 6 then back to bar 2 and played normaly. As many time as i left it on for.

If i try to hit record on the motif b4 hitting play,then play in Reaper, the motif will stay in record until the end of loop and then displays Stop internal seq.

I hope i have duplicated ur report correctly...and if i can run any further tests to help u let me know. My big issue is trying to get Reaper to slave to midi clock...so i may need ur help there^^.

The one thing i notice in your posts is the mention of mmc..machine control. my yammy has a setting called "Seq Control" with options of off,in,in/out. That must be what that is in midi specdom.

i have dtxpress drum brain available that does sync..will try with that.
So at this time i cannot reproduce..sorry.

Guido
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Old 04-08-2014, 11:54 AM   #10
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Hi mink,

OMG there is some buggy stuff goin on here!

I took the test i did a bit further, and changed tempo in reaper from default 120 bpm to 128....every time i hit play in Reaper, my motif started about an eighth note off UNTIL the end of the first loop, where on the next loops it syncs good. EVERY time on first pass only. I did everything...matched tempos...located manualy b4 start to the begining of loop on motif...same thing!!!

I thought weird.. ill try another hardware...broke out my old Roland JX305...same fckn thing!!!

Now i know this doesnt directly relate to your predicament....but its close.

I am suspecting Reaper here as you do. I am going to try some other test by replacing Reaper, but i have to install my old logic. Do you have another daw handy ?

Guido
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Old 04-08-2014, 01:50 PM   #11
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I replayed the same scenario with ableton, and it worked as expected. The mpc ran continuously.

I have found some hint that there are dependencies from the spp implementation in the hardware device. I found this in the manual of the Kenton USB solo :

P 40 Continue = start - (default: on) [note - default was off before firmware 1007]
The following can be selected:
Off [oFF]
On [ on]
- when set to on, all continue messages are treated as if they were MIDI start messages.
- when set to off, continue messages will only be treated as start if immediately preceded by a song position pointer = zero message. Some sequencers use this instead of a start message.
Affects both the sync 24 output and aux output when in clock mode.


So the combination of spp / clock seems to require special treatment .


Question: did the motif stop in recording mode after the first run of the loop or after stop ?
If it stopped after the first run then it is a proper reproduction of the bug ....


Btw thank you for checking

Last edited by Mink99; 04-08-2014 at 01:57 PM.
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Old 04-09-2014, 09:28 AM   #12
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Hi mink,

Yes the motif stopped after the first pass.

I have done a bunch more tests and there is ( I believe) a situation where innacurate spp is sent. I guess I will open a seperate post about it.
I will vote ur bug reproducable based on the no record after first pass.

Guido
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Old 04-09-2014, 10:07 AM   #13
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Thanks

Obviously there is some poltergeist in the area of external syncing / spp etc.

The interesting thing is, you seem to be on a mac, I am on windows, and we have used completely different synths and interfaces.
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Old 04-09-2014, 03:56 PM   #14
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mink99 View Post
Thanks

Obviously there is some poltergeist in the area of external syncing / spp etc.

The interesting thing is, you seem to be on a mac, I am on windows, and we have used completely different synths and interfaces.
Hi,

Yes poltergeist!
No, sorry, I'm on win xp sp3...trying to find time to file a seperate bug report...never seen anything this weird..will get back ....and thanks for bringing this sync thing up and the effort involved .

Guido
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Old 04-22-2014, 06:13 AM   #15
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Thank you for your report and the additional forensics, alas this is basically a duplicate of http://forum.cockos.com/project.php?issueid=2738

First off, I cannot reproduce the behavior you described - all loop iterations will play on my synced hardware(MOX sequencer/song mode) so your device may just react particularly allergic on the data being sent.

But the sync will be off (by 20-50+ms) when looping a section of the song sending SPP, depending on buffer size (which is a known issue), for example:

- continuously after the first loop pass at small block size (=64spls)
- randomly every n (2-8) loop passes at high block size (=1024spls)
- randomly in smaller intervals and with higher offsets at very high block size (=2048spls)
- results may vary a lot depending on the receiving device.

Apart from the loop issue (and your issue seems to be directly related to that), you generally need to correct outgoing clock to the device (usually a negative delay) to get perfect sync whereas there's a direct relation between buffer size and MIDI clock out sync correction - higher buffers allow for higher negative delay figures, small buffer sizes <512spls may not suffice to get the needed amount of negative delay. If that offset was determined and taken into account in the clock out settings in MIDI Devices, sync when not playing in a loop is fine in many cases.
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Old 04-25-2014, 07:11 AM   #16
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Hi,

I, for one, am able to reproduce the issue exactly as described in the OP. If I loop an 8 bar region of an arrangement in Reaper and slave my TR909 playing a 4 bar *pattern* the latter frequently stops it's sequencer when reaper passes the loop point. When Reaper passes the loop point again it will restart and this behaviour then iterates. Drum machines inherently contain pattern based sequencers so I'd suggest to use one of those when trying to reproduce the issue (and test with the device in pattern mode).

Also for me everything runs fine when SPP is filtered out of the midi data. I'd also strongly suggest the option to send only START CLOCK and STOP over midi without SPP, peferably on selected midi ports. This will also alleviate another annoying side effect I'm having. If the length of the looped region in Reaper is not an integer multiple of the length of the looping pattern in the external box the latter pattern will start from the beginning when reaper passes the loop point. EG. Reaper loops 4 bars and the box 2.5 bars, the box plays the 2.5 bars, then 1.5 bars of the pattern and then it starts from the beginning again.

I make heavy use of external devices with pattern sequencers and I need to be able to program them while looping a section of an arrangement, and any slaved devices running at that time need to behave as if they're free running. As it stands this is not possible at all and it is a real downer after my initial excitement about Reaper. I was going to buy a license but this issue is keeping me from it.

Kind regards
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Old 07-31-2014, 04:06 AM   #17
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@ollie

While checking other stuff, I also rechecked the behaviour of reaper.

I did the tests again with my mpc2000xl in pattern mode (!) . If I suppress the spp everything runs fine in play mode, if I leave the spp as is, then it starts stops as described.

Maybe one of colleagues has a drumbox or a mpc to revalidate ?

Unfortunately this behaviour is on port level, so that I cannot simply (eh... kind of...) create a filter inside reaper to punch the spp messages out by a simple js.

Before I will have to buy an iconnectmidi to use it as a midi filter, or work with a midiyoke / midiox outbound call, maybe sb should simply rethink of adding the option to remove spp from clock output.

Btw this has nothing to do with the midi delay within reaper, that cannot be shifted to a latency of zero. By using mtc i can get the mpc to be absolutely straight on the beat.

Regards

Kris (that you know as mink)
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Old 07-31-2014, 05:31 AM   #18
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Screen Capture:



on the left meter you will see the Audio input from the MPC
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Old 08-07-2014, 05:54 PM   #19
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Hi guys

Late bump here but this issue is related I think. From my experience with the Akai Max 49, REAPER only sends MIDI clock on playback. Some devices, like the Akai, need continuous MIDI clock or effectively have "no tempo" information. Without tempo, you can't use functions like Note Repeat or the arpeggiator; they only work on playback or record. I have the same problem with a Korg Micro X synth.

So for these purposes we need REAPER to send continuous MIDI clock, even when stopped. I really hope this gets implemented at some point as it would make working with external devices much more usable. Did the OP get any response from Justin or the other devs?

Cheers

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Old 08-07-2014, 11:29 PM   #20
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Hi,

I have found a fr from 2010 (!) where certain issues around midi clock sync were stated....

Ben, I remember when I used an OB12 as my main workhorse, I ran it to the same problem. Rehearsing or arranging without reaper in running state was impossible when there were synced arpeggios. Now the ion that has replaced the obie has autosensing on the clock, which works better.

But I am not sure whether a permanent clock would create problems on other instruments. Sometimes I use a gate device like msy2 or Kenton to create a click for analog sequencers like in the pro one . A permanent clock would then require a manual switching on and off of these devices. To start them correctly would then be the challenge . Sequencers like the korg sq10 or the arp sequencer do not even have a switch for that...

So, we should create a fr , and hope, that the devs do understand, that the gaps / bugs in the integration of midi are one area, where reaper is far behind competition, and that integrating these features would not only be important for a small minority of existing users, but for an amount of future users, who are often stuck with cubendo or other daws, who have their own issues, but where at least basic midi features work.

This fr will contain :

Reaper as midi master :
... Have a working negative delay compensation
... Have the capability to define - per midi port -
... ... Send midi clock
... ... Send midi clock with spp
... ... Send continuous midi clock
Reaper as mtc/midi slave
... Follow midi clock
... Follow midi clock & spp

While chasing midi clock / mtc
... Start recording and re sending clock immediately, if not locked, on internal clock until locked
... Start recording and re sending clock when locked immediately
... Start recording and re sending clock when locked on next full bar

... Follow / ignore spp when repeating

That should be all

Last edited by Mink99; 08-07-2014 at 11:39 PM.
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Old 08-08-2014, 04:02 AM   #21
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http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=89329
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