Bizarre Soft synth problem (longish!)

[Bosendorphen]

Hi all. I'm hoping someone here or perhaps Mr. Fortner or some other software savvy person could help me with a problem.

 

I've been using IK Multimedia's Miroslav Philharmonik for some soundtrack work (and love it!) but came across a weird problem. I've sent the following missive to the support at IK but thought I'd also post it here since folks are so helpful and knowledgable. TIA.

 

I recently created a sequence in Sonar 2.2 with some tempo changes. The first section is at 140 bpm, then changing to 107. Recording a string part using the Miroslav Philharmonik during the 140 section is fine. (I'm using a looped sound, by the way.) But when I record in the 107 section, no matter how long I hold a sustained note during recording, the playback cuts it off, seemingly in direct proportion to the earlier faster tempo.

 

While recording the part, the notes sustain as long as I hold them and the MIDI data shows the full lengths. It is only in playback they cut short. I played back the MIDI data using my hardware synths and another soft synth, the Proteus X LE and there were no problems with them so it does seem to be an issue with the Philharmonik.

 

As an experiment, I changed the 107 tempo to match the earlier section tempo at 140 and there the Philharmonik playback sounds fine, presumably because the notes are shorter at the faster tempo. Only when the tempo is changed to a slower one do I have the notes cutting off. If they were purely audio I would understand the tempo changing being a problem, but this is MIDI data.

 

As a test I created a NEW sequence in Sonar 2.2 with about 12 measures at 140 then 12 or so at 107. Played some fully looped string sounds of the Philharmonik on both sections. Indeed, at the 107 bmp section, the sustained strings' sounds are cut off after about 76% of their actual length as MIDI notes. Which corresponds to the ratio of the tempo (107/140). So for some reason the Philharmonik doesn't seem to submit to the tempo change.

 

Any ideas?

[Bosendorphen]

Just a quick update -

 

As another experiment I changed the INITIAL tempo of the sequence and sure enough the Philharmonik tracks followed that! So in the other tempo sections if they were cutting off they now had the proper duration; if the tempo was slower than the initial tempo, the notes now LAGGED!!??!

 

I know this is streaming audio but the playback duration and timng is controlled by MIDI data (just like when I played it real time - no problems). Why is this happening? My hardware synths and other soft synths DON'T have this problem. They stay in tempo.

 

Just had to rant and hopefully I'll get some reply from IK soon. Maybe I missed some esoteric setting in the software??? If not, it renders the Philharmonik rather useless for tempo varying soundtrack work. We'll see.

 

Thanks.

[Byrdman]

It sounds like your sequencer software is keeping notes as objects rather than treating on and off events a separate entities, and then making sure that when you change tempo the length of the notes stay the same.

 

That's a pretty neat feature. I would not be surprised if they also have a way to stretch notes to tempo. I'd go looking for such a feature in the menus somewhere. It might be a radio button you click on a tempo change dialog box, or it might be a separate action. If the latter its probably fairly close to "quantize" in the menus.

[Bosendorphen]

Thanks, Byrdman! I'll check the Sonar docs. Funny though, that my other software synths don't respond the same way. They follow the tempo changes. But as you say, it may be something that for some reason is only treating the Philharmonik notes as objects. Sonar treating this plug-in differently for some reason.