Midi output stopping when rebooting

Elektron Gear Octatrack
1

Hi everyone. I used to be on elektron-users years ago. I could work my md and mnm with my eyes shut but just bought an octa and am having a lot more trouble with the ui. Hopefully someone here can clear this up for me:

This is something that has happened two days in a row. Same thing each time:

I have the sequencer sending midi to an external synth successfully. I press go and the external synth receives the midi and plays the sequence. Later, and the end of a time well spent, I power the octa and synths down and go to sleep. The next day when I power up, the octa no longer sends midi. Everything in the ui indicates that it is the same as yesterday. The sequences and trigs are still there where I left them. For the sake of making fixing this problem easier I am not using the octa to monitor that synth, so when I say it isnā€™t receiving Iā€™ve omitted the possibility that it is receiving and then playing something that I am not hearing. I have also swapped external synths around to establish that the problem is with the octatrack itself. The other weird thing is that it will still receive and record midi from whatever external synth is attached.

If I do a factory reset it will ā€œfixā€ the problem. Donā€™t really feel that that is a sustainable solution though. Nothing else seems to fix it. Iā€™ve tried swapping channels, etc.

Thanks in advance for any tips.

2

Is this the same issue? http://www.elektronauts.com/t/octatrack-midi-and-scenes-problems/3322

3

Thanks for the reply, and sorry for the long response time - things got a bit crazy in life and didnā€™t have a chance to work on musical projects.

At any rateā€¦ no, the thread you linked to does not describe my problem.

Also, things have regressed a bit, and I cannot even get back to midi transmitting in the first place.

Just to set up the basic situation:

Want to send midi out from the OT into my Moog Voyager. Sometimes I can get this to work. Sometimes it wonā€™t. I cannot isolate the variable.

To keep things simple, I am not monitoring or routing the Voyager back through the OT, although I havenā€™t had any trouble with that, I am just monitoring the headphone straight out from the voyager. The Voyager also has a midi receive led, so we have a redundant status indicator there.

Midi cabling has been triple checked.

Midi sequencer track has the correct channel selected. YES I HAVE PUSHED THE KNOB DOWN AFTER MAKING THIS SELECTION.

I have been through many many possibilities in the [FUNCTION]+[MIXER] > midi submenus. This is really me grasping at straws, because on the occasions that I can get MIDI output to work, it hasnā€™t been affected by these options.

I can sequence the voyager with other gear with no problem.

If I replace the voyager with another synth that is set to receive midi on the same channel, it will not receive midi either. Of course, that same synth can be sequenced fine with other gear.

The OT will receive MIDI with no problem. It just wont transmit.

Formerly, I was able to do a factory reset, set the sequencer back up to the correct channels, and then it would at least work until I powered down. After I powered down, I could sometimes fix things by reloading the project, but the state that was loaded on boot did not send midi. Now I canā€™t even get that far.

Please help. Iā€™ve lost some nice stuff from factory resets, but Iā€™m happy to wipe clean and start from zero if I can somehow get a midi setup that will work and work consistently.

4

did you save the part and sync to card before powering down?

as for the midi not being output at allā€¦

1: check output with midi ox

2: replace the midi cable

good luck

5

When it was working saving the part and syncing worked once, but then it was gone after the next restart. After that restart I tried to reload and it didnt fix the problem.

Swapping midi cables does nothing. I tried again because you suggested it, even though I had tried before. These are cables I know work.

Iā€™m on a macā€“no midiox-- but ableton doesnā€™t receive midi from the sequencers either. It does receive midi from me pressing the trig keys when im not in step record mode, but those same key presses do nothing when sent to either of my synths.

6

Ok. So I got fed up with this. Since doing an empty reset didnā€™t fix anything, I reformatted the SD card, then did an empty reset. Things are working now. Saved project once it was working. Synced to card. [Im thinking maybe sync to card is something I hadnt tried before?] At any rate, MIDI out now works and persists through reboot. I have no idea what was repeatedly making it stop, though. If anyone has any clue, please let me know.

Now I have to load all of my samples back on there :sob:

7

ok great. yes sync to card is a must, most important as when you reboot it reads the data from the card. if you are using the supplied card its important to reformat it, strange issues have been reported using the supplied unformatted card i had weirdness at first also. so now you should have no more problemsā€¦ touch android

8

this is not actually true. all changes to the project are cached on the card. everything should be the same as you left it when you reboot (other than the contents of the recording buffers). if itā€™s not, there may be something wrong with the card. sounds like that may have been case for pinklesā€¦

9

Ok. Getting very frustrated now.

Just booted up and the problem is back.

I [FUNCTION] + [MIXER] then navigate to reload project because sometimes this has helped in the past, but when I do this I get the message: ā€œThe Project State Has Never Been Saved. Nothing to reload!ā€

So, what, did I forget to save the project? Well, when I go to save the project as new, the project I created last time is there. So, I select ā€œchange projectā€ then select the only project that is on the card (and I assume the one that was loaded when I booted up if I am understand the OT correctly). Still no midi output. Now I try to reload the project and get the ā€œThe Project State Has Never Been Saved. Nothing to reload!ā€ again.

Ok. I guess this has never been saved? So I save the project. I guess this works, because now I can reload it, but still no midi.

So now I guess I will reformat the card again. Set up midi again. Be sure I save again, resync to card again, reboot and try my luck. Then report back here.

10

[ol]
[li]reformatted card[/li]
[li]empty reset[/li]
[li]set up MIDI track and double check that it is sending midi.[/li]
[li]go to save project and get the message ā€œno set is mounted, please mount one.ā€[/li]
[li]hit ā€œok,ā€ then create and name new set[/li]
[li]confirm that midi is still being output[/li]
[li]successfully save project[/li]
[li]confirm that midi is still being output[/li]
[li]sync to card[/li]
[li]confirm that midi is still being output[/li]
[li]reboot[/li]
[li]confirm that midi is still being output[/li]
[/ol]

Going to leave this here in case I wake up tomorrow and midi goes away again. Then I will know Im not crazy.

11

Ok. No MIDI AGAIN. And this is 2 minutes later than the last post.

Here is what is weird:

After the last post I rebooted again and checked that the midi still worked. No problems.

Then I realize that I have been rebooting just by toggling the OTs power switch. However, after I am done in the studio I usually turn off the power switch on the power strip that all of my synths (including the OT) are plugged into. This is an easier way to turn off 3 synths at once. When I turn off this way the MIDI output stops again. It makes no sense to me that this could be the cause, but it is the only thing that I can find that is correlated.

12

Ok, now I figure I will just repeat all of the steps I have listed above that get the midi restored, then try to power down with a different power strip to see if I can reproduce the problem. But I figure I will just try to reload the project and see what happens maybe I will get lucky as sometimes this has worked in the past. When I go to reload the project I get the message ā€œThe project state has never been saved! nothing to reload!ā€ again. BUT you can see that I successfully saved the project like 5 minutes ago. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?

Ok UPDATE-
Went back through all of the steps (2 posts up) to get it to work again.
reboot by toggling power switch on and off does not stop midi being sent after startup. I tried this 5x to confirm. I also tried just pulling the power cord out of the unit and plugging it back in. I tried powering down the OT, then the power strip, then up the power strip, then up the OT. No problems that way. This didnā€™t stop midi either. but when I power down and back up using the power strip with the OT on, midi stops being sent.

Am I hallucinating all of this?

Ok second update-
I swapped out the power strip for a different power strip and it seems like the problem has gone away (I hope). This is weird because the power strip which was correlated with the problem was a fancy furman one and the replacement is a crappy one that I got for $5ā€¦ Ok, I go back to the furman one and confirm that MIDI has stopped after cycling power using its switch. Now reloading the project works, though. Ive repeated this twice with the same results.

SO now the status is - use the furman strip and if I use that to toggle power then I can get midi output back if I reload the project. If I cycle power with the OT switch or use a different power strip then there is no problem.

SO, I guess the solution is always turn the OT off before I turn off the power strip, but at this point I donā€™t want a solution - I want answers! I mean wtf? Is there someone with an EE degree up in here who can tell me wth is going on? Why is this happening in the first place?

Ok another update -
If I unplug the midi cables and then power cycle using the suspect power strip and then plug the midi cables back in everything is fine.

1 Like
13

Ok Iā€™m no electrical engineer but I would guess the fact that the OT sends power through the midi output is somehow involvedā€¦Iā€™m guessing there might be some residual current left in the cable between the power strip and the OT when the power strip is switched off that does not happen when the power window is closed with the switch on the OT.

A wild stab in the darkā€¦but heyā€¦

14

Many computer systems have ā€˜softā€™ power switches that trigger some shut down routines to make sure everything is okay before powering off. I doubt the OT has that, because the power switch seems like an ordinary mechanical switch. However, the OT power switch is probably between the AC adapter and the device, wheras your power strip is on the other side of the AC adapter.

So, maybe the fancy power strip is doing something that the OT AC adapter doesnā€™t like? It is possible that the AC adapter is doing something strange while it is shutting down or starting up. Iā€™d recommend always using the power switches on all devices rather than a power strip, for both powering up and shutting down. Itā€™s probably not good to expose the OT to whatever is coming out of the AC adapter while it is starting up or shutting down.

15

That sound reasonable. I have had some weird issues like that when starting up Elektron devices that are already connected with MIDI. Usually I switch on each device with itā€™s own switch, from the start of the MIDI chain to the end. Then shut it down in the reverse order.