OB and Auto Channel

Gino · 2023-09-05T01:44:56.917Z

I need someone to set me straight on this…

For the life of me, I can’t get auto channel to work with the ST VST.

In Bitwig Studio I created an instrument track, added the VST plugin for the ST on that track, and added some notes on the piano roll. This works fine if I send notes to most channels, but as soon as I send to CH 14 (what the auto channel is set to), then I get nothing.

Using the latest OB (2.5.4) on a Mac with Bitwig Studio 5.

Should this work? What am I doing wrong?
I swear it used to work

alechko · 2023-09-05T03:51:10.049Z

not sure about ST but it doesn’t work on DN, it’s a known issue, at least on DN. to make it work you’d one more midi channel pointed at the machine’s autochannel and send there not the OB plugin.

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Octagonist · 2023-09-05T11:14:03.943Z

Gino:

Should this work? What am I doing wrong?
I swear it used to work

It doesn’t quite make sense as a configuration, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t work.

Auto-channel is for feeding notes from an external source to the currently selected track - which might even be a MIDI track.

For sure, Ableton here is an “external controller” - but it’s a multi-channel controller that could itself be driving multiple tracks on an Elektron device. Given your DAW probably can do what the Auto Channel does (pick a track, play notes, hear the notes from the desired track rather than the channel the controller was sending on), it makes sense to me that it wouldn’t work over OB. If it did work, the sound you hear wouldn’t be predictable based on what you’re doing in the DAW, which works against the aims of OB.

Thought experiment: Imagine you had two tracks of MIDI in your DAW, one on channel 1 and one on channel 14. Now, on the Elektron box select the track that’s assigned to channel 1. What notes will you hear?

Obviously I’m not able to “fix” your problem with this perspective. I wonder if the design was intentional tho’.

alechko · 2023-09-05T11:40:57.062Z

Octagonist:

It doesn’t quite make sense as a configuration

sure it does, it works if you send it as midi to DN but not to the OB midi channel.

Octagonist:

Thought experiment: Imagine you had two tracks of MIDI in your DAW, one on channel 1 and one on channel 14. Now, on the Elektron box select the track that’s assigned to channel 1. What notes will you hear?

both.

Octagonist:

I wonder if the design was intentional tho’.

I think it’s a limitation of sorts, at least in Live, when you put the OB plugin on a midi track you loose the ability to select where to send midi and the channel becomes Audio channel:

image960×1290 154 KB

same thing happens when you put External Instrument on midi channel, but in case of External Instrument you still have the option to choose where to send midi to:

image1010×1224 181 KB

so I think it’s a limitation of sorts, you can’t make the VST/AU wrapper have the “midi to” menu, so it always defaults to midi channel 1. what I’m not sure about is if for example there was an option in the OB to select the midi out from the plugin itself, would it work? not sure…

it’s definitely not a bug though, it’s just counter intuitive

Gino · 2023-09-05T13:24:34.010Z

Thanks! This makes sense and was how I was starting to think about it.

OB is really custom communication with the device and not really “midi”. For example if you turn a knob in the VST I doubt it’s synchronizing the hardware UI using midi and uses something more compact and direct. So notes might be handled in a more direct way as well, and would explain why auto channel doesn’t work (they are separate I/O layers).

I’ll go back to sending midi to the device vs through the VST. In Bitwig this means using the Hardware Instrument Device to access a midi output, and auto channel definitely works in that configuration. I was trying to optimize my setup, and simply expected the VST to also work.

It does feel like a bug to me, vs a designed limitation. Only Elektron knows
(Just sent a request to support to see what I can learn)

Gino · 2023-09-05T13:34:37.837Z

Octagonist:

Thought experiment: Imagine you had two tracks of MIDI in your DAW, one on channel 1 and one on channel 14. Now, on the Elektron box select the track that’s assigned to channel 1. What notes will you hear?

You would hear both, in fact this is easy to do if you send midi to the ST as an external device (which is how I have it configured now). The drawback I have found is that sending midi through the “Hardware Instrument” in Bitwig adds latency which is what I was attempting to remove by sending notes to the VST.

Octagonist · 2023-09-05T14:09:20.223Z

Gino:

You would hear both, in fact this is easy to do if you send midi to the ST as an external device (which is how I have it configured now).

Sure, you would hear both. But is that useful? Is it more useful than assigning multiple DAW tracks to the same MIDI channel? Pick a different track on the Elektron: now the same data from the DAW goes to a different track in the Elektron. This is not the main use case for a DAW (which is predictable, repeatable sound).

Anyway, it sounds like I’m not seeing the advantage of doing this, and that the rest of you do so I’ll step back from the discussion at this point.

Gino · 2023-09-05T14:35:59.053Z

Got a reply from Elektron, and this is indeed a known limitation. So I’ll go back to using the Hardware Instrument in Bitwig to get auto channel support on Elektron boxes.

They also said it would be very difficult to fix.