WTF supwit OT & MIDI to TRIGGER units?

I use the OT to sequence a bunch of different gear, synths and midi-cv converters and usually it’s been good but NOW im getting some really weird behaviour since I started to try to use it with midi trigger units…

The Analogue Solutions TR606 MIDI kit and also the Elby Midi 2SDS units won’t work with the Octatrack

These Trigger units work great with the midi keyboards, an alpha juno and also the novation SL. they trigger reliably every time.

With the Octatrack, its really random if the trigs will sound or not and its just plain weird.

I have turned off all LFOs, CCs, pitchbend is center, no arps, transpose or anything and vel is at 127

I have been really frustrated after wasting so much time reassembling these midi to trigger kits thinking they are faulty when its just tthe fault of the OT.

Did anyone else find some issues when using the octo with this type of unit??

i’m going to try to analyse the midi stream but just want to know if you have had some odd midi experience with the OT

?

also, my frostwave midi to cv converter works but the din sync 24 will not work when its clocked by the OT

its gotta be some OT midi bug
cheers

what he said…

please reply? does anybody have a midi drum machine?

i have tried tr808 with chd midi kit installed too… no worky worky with octatracky

it works fine with ableton!

should i factory reset? ok im gonna try that.

or is it buggy midi wise?

no body?

Hi,
I do not know your external gear like the TR-808 but I have connected a LXR-Drumsynth to the OT and it works perfet in sync.

i’ve never had issues with OT and MIDI. i used to use it with a Kilpatrick midi to cv that did note to trigger. i also have used it w/ the LXR drum machine to convert midi to triggers.

sounds like the midi kits are maybe the problem.

Not sure that this will be helpful, but on the regular I trigger my modular envelopes / clock my modular sequencers from the Octa with no issue at all. Also use the Octa to sequence my midi’d gear and clock my korg volca…

My midi to cv’s are an SEM pro and a MFB psu/midi to cv converter.

stupid question, but are you sure its not cable failure? that may explain what seems to be random triggering…

do the modules trigger from midi clock or gate?

[color=blue]Issue is with the byte 2 status byte

[color=blue]its a midi bug in the octatracks midi note off status byte event messages

[color=blue]Byte 2 is the Status byte (event type). The 9 part of ‘90’ is the ‘Note On’ message, and the ‘0’ digit is the channel to which this applies to.

The 8 part of ‘80’ is the ‘Note Off’ message

[li]8 = Note Off
[/li]
[li]9 = Note On
[/li]
The octatrack sends a ‘note off’ with a ‘note on’ status byte

this sucks



That’s odd… why does it trigger note on/off correctly when sequencing synths?

Also i’m confused why it would work intermittently as opposed to not at all

Thanks for all the replies, i have contacted elektron about this.

@ matic

i’m not sure but according to the standard midi spec its broken and i’m suffering bad. lost 2 days work rebuilding and troubleshooting midi kits!

it triggers every second note on or randomly with multiple sequencer trigs.
if i only place one trig it alternates every time the sequencer loops, first pass it plays, second pass it does not… this happens with the midi trigger units.

but yes, the synthesizers seem to cope with it for some reason

the midi clock may be unconventional also…

perhaps a midi guru will chime in…

Does anyone have midi ox or similar to confirm this?

just check the status byte of note on and off…

like this…

event list should read like this (X denotes midi channel)

status … event
9X … note on
8X … note off

BUT for me it reads like this…

status … event
9X … note on
9X … note off

Look up MIDI running status - note on with velocity of 0 == note off. So, 90 3c 40 (middle C w. velocity of 64) can be turned off by either sending 80 3c 40 or by sending 90 3c 00.

(actually, using 80 as note off allows you to send release velocity for the gear that can use that, so that could be once reason for using it - in the example, you can send any number instead of just 40 for the velocity if you use 90 = on, 80 = off).

Defined in the original MIDI spec as allowed since then you can use running status to shorten up the messages even more (drop all the subsequent 90’s)

So, Elektron is doing it OK and the receiving gear either doesn’t understand velocity=0 as note off or it’s not configured to respond that way.

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Thanks oldgearguy, this kind of info really helps to clear the air and cut through the midi voodoo
armed with this realisation I am able to better converse with the software developer and have a much better chance of describing the issue accurately and solving the problem. As you suggest, it looks like the machines are incompatible due to a combination of elektron’s efficient method of not updating the status & using 0 velocity as note off and the trigger kit’s non acknowledgement of this, even though the note off event is not used by the trigger kit, the status is not ignored completely.
a midi filter may be the solution if all else fails but I am reluctant to include more processors in the chain than is absolutely necessary as i need to be able to keep latency down for this project which has a truckload of vintage drum machines running simultaneously over midi.
it just means unless the developer can tinker with the midi handling code, the octatrack will be relegated to the mantlepiece :frowning:

Unfortunately the running status, note-on-with-zero-velocity, has long since become the norm for not off handling. I can’t see Elektron changing this as it’s common practice.

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^^^

Very common and not always obvious of different manufacturers. It also took me a while to realize that my Nord Engine G2 and OT didn’t rely on the same MIDI octave standard. I didn’t even know that it existed different types… tried to sync different things and all of sudden lots of unexpected things happened on my OT.

That’s a good point (once you get the gear to talk at all). I’ve seen up to 2 octaves difference (when looking at note names) across gear.

At the end of the day, if your gear can display MIDI notes as numbers, I suggest doing it that way until you get it set up. MIDI note 60 is always MIDI note 60, whether you call it C3, C4, or C5.

Once you get the controls set up, then switch back to the name display for your convenience.

yeah i noticed that too with the teebeemk3 and xoxbox, just trying to play the same bassline on the teebee with the xoxbox midi out and they were at least 1 octave apart. that ruined my plans for duelling 303 clone comparison and eventual world domination.

thats ok though there are workarounds.

if the thing just doesn’t work at all and you have just blown a bagload of cash on it its really frustrato, hence the desperately eerie vibez at the start of this thread… sorry for that!

anyway iv’e been in discussions all day and dropped the OTs midiox logs in the capable hands of the man and fingers crossed it will be rectified soon.

it’s more than i can say for Elektron who didn’t reply at all

That’s a good point (once you get the gear to talk at all). I’ve seen up to 2 octaves difference (when looking at note names) across gear.

At the end of the day, if your gear can display MIDI notes as numbers, I suggest doing it that way until you get it set up. MIDI note 60 is always MIDI note 60, whether you call it C3, C4, or C5.

Once you get the controls set up, then switch back to the name display for your convenience.[/quote]

Yeah, in my case I have no displays on my G2 engine. So it’s just about patching an conversion. Not really a problem, once figured out.

I hear you, very frustrating indeed. Hope it sorts out for you and you’ll get back on track towards world domination.

If not, I can recommend Midi Solutions Event Processor Plus. Should be possible to reach your goal with that. Don’t know about latency though, but I’d ask them. Great customer support in my experience.

Elektron developers are really busy, they should reply but it might take some time unfortunately…

cheers Neil but can you advise me of another manufacturer that does this? i mean i dont wanna put you on the spot, but i’m troubleshooting here… is it just modern hardware sequencers in your experience? everything else i have used does not have this problem. ableton, novation sl alphajuno… if i can provide more evidence of the need to fix the midi handling its more likely to be done and not shelved. or too hard basketed.
then at least i can say, “Synthesizer Patel told me that it’s fukin normal man, the easytone ‘play in a day’ 50 does the same thing”
:))

I hear you, very frustrating indeed. Hope it sorts out for you and you’ll get back on track towards world domination.

If not, I can recommend Midi Solutions Event Processor Plus. Should be possible to reach your goal with that. Don’t know about latency though, but I’d ask them. Great customer support in my experience.

Elektron developers are really busy, they should reply but it might take some time unfortunately…[/quote]
Thanks Mike, i can assure you my intentions are pure… but my eyes aren’t blue and i don’t drive a VW so don’t worry too much man :wink:
Thanks, yes I do have some midi solutions boxes which are cool maybe just don’t recommend them to the machinedrum owners as the MD midi output does not power them! and like i said with the frostwave quad cv gate/din sync owners can’t use the OT for midi to sync 24 conversion. I guess i’m used to the elektron unconventional midi styles so i immediately pointed the bone at them… my bad
but anyway I stupidly sold my midipal recently which had a midi filter i think.
Yeah i’ve read the complaints about the service/support backlog so I wasn’t really expecting a reply anyway. after all they’ve heard enough complaining from me over the last 11 years about bugs in their software, i would be surprised if they haven’t filtered my support requests to the junk box :slight_smile:

cheers Neil but can you advise me of another manufacturer that does this? i mean i dont wanna put you on the spot, but i’m troubleshooting here… is it just modern hardware sequencers in your experience? everything else i have used does not have this problem. ableton, novation sl alphajuno… if i can provide more evidence of the need to fix the midi handling its more likely to be done and not shelved. or too hard basketed.
then at least i can say, “Synthesizer Patel told me that it’s fukin normal man, the easytone ‘play in a day’ 50 does the same thing”
:))[/quote]
I can’t back it up with a hardware survey that’s just my observations of years of using a lot of MIDI gear and noticing the trend for using that note off method rather than the ‘proper’ way.
Again, it’s all to do with Running Status optimisation to maximise the MIDI bandwidth by reducing the amount of data transmitted to perform a note off command.

Have a read:

http://www.blitter.com/~russtopia/MIDI/~jglatt/tech/midispec/run.htm

Edit: funnily enough, I thought I’d try my Electribe and it uses 8x messages for note off!

To be fair to you, I think in the MIDI implementation standard, the hardware/software should respond properly to both methods - after all, they are both valid. My original comment about not expecting Elektron to change it was not a defence of their adopted method but just a comment on whether I thought it would be a priority item for them. All things considered.

(Sorry for the schizophrenic editing) For balance it’s worth point out that Running Status is part of the core MIDI spec that has been around for decades and as such, MIDI gear is supposed to handle it. Unfortunately, all MIDI implementations are not equal :joy: )

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Hello [url=“http://www.elektronauts.com/users/analogback”]analogback,
I´m not sure if this will help you at all, but I discovered an issue-bug the other day in the OT related to MIDI. If you activate “MIDI Sync Out” strange things happen…

I already wrote a support ticket but haven´t heard from the elektron team yet.

I´ve been working succesfully with a different number of external synths and the OT, allways with success and no issues at all…

The other day I was trying to sequence some external synths, using the internal arpeggiators of the OT Midi tracks, but it didnt work at all, I was getting all sort of weird notes, random triggers and missing 90% of the arpeggio notes…

After messing around with what I thought was the problem… I decided to go to the MIDI settings page… well as soon as I deactivated the MIDI Sync / Send / Clock option it started to work Ok.

It seems like activating the Send Clock option affects the MIDI stream of the OT…
This may be affecting your MIDI stream too?
I hope it can help you!!

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