Synth or workstations accepting triple sensors midi input?

[Kurt W]

Think it"s time for a post dedicated to how synths, workstations or vsti"s handle midi input from a (master)keyboard with triple sensors action.

 

I have a Kawai MP11 and a Nord Stage 3 Compact which does not react to retriggering from the middle sensor of the MP11. Having monitored the MP11 I have confirmed that it sends information from the middle sensor. The way it"s done is to send a new midi Note On without a Note Off for the preceeding sounding notes. When the the key finally is released above the upper sensor the MP11 sends Note Off for the inital key down plus the number if retriggers on the middle sensor. Example initial key down plus two retriggers will result in Note On, Note On, Note On, Note Off, Note Off, Note Off.

 

The NC3Compact will in this case only react in the first Note On, not for the retriggering. Setting local off and looping midi out to midi in on the MP11 will on the other hand play the same note three times.

 

When I originally contacted Nord support they first thought it would work but after sending them a midi file from my MP11 they confirmed my findings. They would however not promise to make changes to handle this.

 

Tried to raise this requirement in other related posts with total lack of interest or response.

 

Is it only me that is interested in using a triple sensors action keyboard to play other keyboards, will vsti"s handle triple sensors input, is there a lack if midi standardization?

 

Happy for any feedback!

[PianoMan51]

I had a similar issue with keyboards vs tone generators years ago with a VAX77 vs Omnisphere. This was about poly aftertouch.

 

The VAX would send a poly aftertouch value, but when the Note Off message was sent, then what? Well, the next time I played the same note the tone generator would still be set to the last aftertouch setting from the previous note. No good.

 

I contacted both companies. Omnisphere people said they would think about it. The VAX guys responded with a fix that day. The fix was to send a poly aftertouch message of zero each time a Note Off was sent. Makes sense to me.

 

So, based on one real world example, ask your keyboard mfg to put a Note Off before the retriggered Note On.

 

BTW, an aside: I think the poly aftertouch fix was the last sfw version on the VAX. This was after a few years of all the oohing and aahing about poly aftertouch, especially on this forum. The fact that it didn"t actually work correctly made me wonder just how much poly AT was being used.

[Markyboard]

 

The VAX would send a poly aftertouch value, but when the Note Off message was sent, then what? Well, the next time I played the same note the tone generator would still be set to the last aftertouch setting from the previous note. No good.

 

I contacted both companies. Omnisphere people said they would think about it. The VAX guys responded with a fix that day. The fix was to send a poly aftertouch message of zero each time a Note Off was sent. Makes sense to me.

 

That makes no sense to me. On any given key isn"t the Poly AT pressure sensor set to 0 by the time the key is released enough to pass through the note off sensor?

[AnotherScott]

So, based on one real world example, ask your keyboard mfg to put a Note Off before the retriggered Note On.

...which largely defeats the purpose/function of having the middle senosr in the first place. Unless the sustain pedale were down, you would no longer be able to retrigger a note without silencing it first.

[PianoMan51]

 

The VAX would send a poly aftertouch value, but when the Note Off message was sent, then what? Well, the next time I played the same note the tone generator would still be set to the last aftertouch setting from the previous note. No good.

 

I contacted both companies. Omnisphere people said they would think about it. The VAX guys responded with a fix that day. The fix was to send a poly aftertouch message of zero each time a Note Off was sent. Makes sense to me.

 

That makes no sense to me. On any given key isn"t the Poly AT pressure sensor set to 0 by the time the key is released enough to pass through the note off sensor?

Yea, you"d think, but I captured the MIDI data and the VAX responded to the Note Off without resetting the poly AT. Then they fixed it.

 

I forgot to say: the VAX had a settable AT delay to help from triggering AT-based sounds from inadvertently happening during a Note On event. Perhaps this got in the way of zeroing the AT value on release in the pre-fix software.

[PianoMan51]

So, based on one real world example, ask your keyboard mfg to put a Note Off before the retriggered Note On.

...which largely defeats the purpose/function of having the middle senosr in the first place. Unless the sustain pedale were down, you would no longer be able to retrigger a note without silencing it first.

Maybe. But would we really hear anything in the audio stream if for a half a millisecond the original note were turned off before the next note (ie repeated) were to start? My VAX story wasn"t speculative. But this suggestion was.

[Markyboard]

 

That makes no sense to me. On any given key isn"t the Poly AT pressure sensor set to 0 by the time the key is released enough to pass through the note off sensor?

Yea, you"d think, but I captured the MIDI data and the VAX responded to the Note Off without resetting the poly AT. Then they fixed it.

 

I forgot to say: the VAX had a settable AT delay to help from triggering AT-based sounds from inadvertently happening during a Note On event. Perhaps this got in the way of zeroing the AT value on release in the pre-fix software.

 

Ah, ok. I thought I wasn"t understanding something but I imagine bugs in the software can do just about anything. I latched onto this because I"ve posted recently about aftertouch (Poly or channel) being one of the few controllers that always return to 0. This in my view makes it somewhat limited for musical phrasing and such.

 

That software bug sounded like it had potential for connecting the last AT value from one held note to the next. This presents its own complexities but I can dream.

 

Thanks for clarifying that issue.

[AnotherScott]

I have a Kawai MP11 and a Nord Stage 3 Compact which does not react to retriggering from the middle sensor of the MP11. Having monitored the MP11 I have confirmed that it sends information from the middle sensor. The way it"s done is to send a new midi Note On without a Note Off for the preceeding sounding notes. When the the key finally is released above the upper sensor the MP11 sends Note Off for the inital key down plus the number if retriggers on the middle sensor. Example initial key down plus two retriggers will result in Note On, Note On, Note On, Note Off, Note Off, Note Off.

 

The NC3Compact will in this case only react in the first Note On, not for the retriggering. Setting local off and looping midi out to midi in on the MP11 will on the other hand play the same note three times.

 

When I originally contacted Nord support they first thought it would work but after sending them a midi file from my MP11 they confirmed my findings. They would however not promise to make changes to handle this.

 

Tried to raise this requirement in other related posts with total lack of interest or response.

 

Is it only me that is interested in using a triple sensors action keyboard to play other keyboards, will vsti"s handle triple sensors input, is there a lack if midi standardization?

I wonder what Kawai is doing differently from others? Because lots of people seem to be successfully using other three sensor boards (like PX5S) to trigger a Nord Stage.

[Kurt W]

I wonder what Kawai is doing differently from others? Because lots of people seem to be successfully using other three sensor boards (like PX5S) to trigger a Nord Stage.

 

Could we be sure that these users really have tested retriggering from the middle sensor? And why should the Kawai VPC1 have a different implementation than the Kawai MP11?

 

When I sent a midi monitoring file from Logic Pro to Nord their first test initially showed that the retriggering worked on NS3. But after further inspection they found that this was due to that the midi player they used automatically added midi Note Off if the original midi stream did send Note On without a corresponding Note Off!

So what they actually heard in my example was three complete triggerings of the same note, not an initial note with two retriggerings from the middle sensor. After correcting this they also found the same as I found. The midi sequence with two retriggerings will only result in one single activation of the note, you will not hear the two retriggerings.

 

Hope others with triple sensor actions (PX5S/VPC1) can confirm if they are sure they have this working with a NS3C.

[Reezekeys]

It should be easy to test any piano if you can manually enter notes into a midi sequencer program. Enter two or three note-ons of the same note without note-offs, a second or two apart - you should be able to hear if the note retriggers.