Animations in the Engine page not always appearing

Software Instruments Synclavier V
#1

It looks like the timeline and harmonics animations in the Engine page work very inconsistently. The timeline animation (dot running between the frames) almost always works, the harmonics animation almost never works.
I could find only a few semi-consistent behaviours.
Sometimes it seems that the harmonics animation works as long as there is one note playing but as soon as all notes stop, the next note pressed has no animation. However, when the following notes stop, the corresponding configuration flashes and disappears. Sometimes, not always, it is possible to make the animation work again by selecting a different frame. Also, sometimes the animation appears again at some random note and it works as long as the last note pressed stops.
The timeline animation not appearing is a more serious issue, in my opinion, but less frequent. I could find no regularity here. By clicking random stuff it starts working.

To be precise, I know that by double clicking a frame only that frame plays, so this is NOT what I am talking about. For the timeline to be animated I think at least frame 1 has to be active, so all the cases I am talking about have at least frame 1 active. Also, I always make sure that the partial is active in the mixer page.

Does anyone else have the same issues?

2.13.2.5305 running as a plugin (single instance) in Logic 11.0.1
Mac OS Ventura 13.7.4

#2

Hi @IlFilippo. Welcome to the communuty.

I can confirm there are animation issues.
I suggest you contact Arturia support through your account.

#3

Thank you, I will do so.

#4

Update: I have contacted support, a preferences reset did not solve the problem. In the meantime I have come up with a couple workarounds and maybe some hints to what could cause the problems.

This is a long one, and I am not sure it will help anyone, but here it goes.

  • Timeline animation. When the progress along the timeline is not shown: 1) isolate one frame by double-clicking on it; 2) de-isolate the frame by double-clicking again on it. This usually reactivates the timeline animation. This bug rarely occurs, but an example of this happening is in the “Naked Planet” factory preset, apparently only when switching to partial 3 after playing some notes while viewing e.g. partial 1. By the way, the loop end setting there, at least in the version I have of the preset, is one more that the last frame. Apparently one frame was removed without adjusting the loop end frame. The fact that this is sometimes not adjusted automatically might be another minor bug. I don’t think this is related to the animation problem because I have tried to save a version with the loop end corrected and because for the animation not to work you have to first play some notes with another partial selected. I might be wrong.

  • Harmonics animation. Harmonics animations stop working as soon as all notes stop. The next notes are not animated unless the following procedure is followed. When harmonics are not animated, the last state is briefly flashed as the note stops. If a new note is pressed at about this moment, the harmonics animation is reactivated for as long as there is a note playing. The animation stops again as soon as all playing notes stop and must be reset as described. Something I noticed is that the (magenta?) lines that indicate the state of the harmonics in the animation are often very faint. In the answer to Arturia Support Iargued that maybe the brightness is supposed to be proportional to the note velocity. I now think that this is not the case, rather the brightness is set to the value at the time of pressing the key. Since my “reset procedure” requires to press a key while the last state flashes (and then fades), this would imply that pressing the key exactly as the note stops would give the maximum brightness, while pressing it later would give a gradually decreasing brightness, until, after a second or so, it would be set to zero, so no (visible) animation at the next note.

In both cases, it seems like some parameter is not reset correctly when switching view between partials or at as a note stops. In the case of the harmonics animation I even started to think that it is a desired behaviour but I don’t think so.

So that’s it. I hope Arturia will fix this because I love this plugin.