Weird MIDI sustain pedal issue

Software Instruments V Collection
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#1

I’m hoping someone has ideas, as I haven’t yet heard back from support on this and it’s making my plugins unusable. I’ve used Arturia plugins in the past without issues; this problem is on a fresh install of Arturia plugins on a new computer:

I am playing Arturia V Collection 8/9 instruments, running in Reaper, from my Roland Juno-2. I know the correct sustain pedal information is making it into Reaper, as I have recorded it.

Here’s an example of the problem:

  1. Start record in Reaper.
  2. Depress the sustain pedal (detected and recorded in Reaper).
  3. Begin playing whatever – same note over and over, same chords over and over, different notes/chords… (all notes are detected and recorded in Reaper).
  4. Less than 30% of the notes playing will sustain while I’m playing.
  5. Notes that do sustain stop sustaining when the next notes are pressed.
  6. Release the sustain pedal (again, detected and recorded in Reaper).
  7. Stop recording.
  8. Play the recording back and DIFFERENT notes will sustain/fail to sustain. However, on subsequent playbacks, the same (different) notes sustain/fail to sustain.
  9. Changing instruments results in identical sustained/un-sustained notes during playback (provided the instrument supports sustain) as #8.

I am not seeing ANY sustain problems with any of my non-Arturia plugins. They all work exactly as expected. Also, if I sent the MIDI data from Reaper back to my Juno-2 hardware synth, all notes sustain correctly.

Any ideas of how to continue troubleshooting this are appreciated.

#2

Hi @ttemusic . Welcome to the community.

I have not tested like you have.

It’s also not easy to discuss all applications at once.
But let’s say we take Mini V4 and:

  1. set it to Poly 3
  2. Then press 2 notes and keep them depressed with your fingers.
  3. Depress hold.
  4. Then tab one voice and release it - it’s okay as you now hear 3 voices playing.
  5. Then tab another voice and release it - that’ll be the 4. voice. Then it steal one of the voices you still have depressed with your fingers instead of stealing the note that’s released -like i would like to be able to have the behavior. (The voice allocation setting does’nt matter.)
    (Mini V4 is’nt the only application that have this behavior.)

When you tab the same note over and over again, then perhaps voice allocation settings can have something to do with the behavior. There for example can be a difference between a Reassign and a Rotate setting. A Reassign setting should not multiply notes playing, when you tab the same note.

Can this stealing behavior and voice allocation settings have something to do with your issue?

The set number of voices can have an impact - also on when the behavior happens. So perhaps check that.

Just in case: Perhaps also check the envelope settings. Do you for example have full VCA sustain?

Just some things to test.

#3

I don’t believe that polyphony has anything to do with it.

During a recent test, after I depressed the sustain pedal, the first two notes did not sustain but the third did. The following twelve notes did not sustain, then three in a row did.

If it was a polyphony issue, the notes would sustain until all oscillators were active, then they would start dropping off in FIFO order.

#4

And thank you for the kind welcome.

#5

Hi again @ttemusic ,

Do you have the issue, when you use Arturias applications in standalone mode outside a DAW?

It’s good you have contacted Arturia support.

It’s possible the “sensitivity” for the pedal or what i shall call it is too tight in the applications. But it can also be about something else.

#6

The standalone applications behave the same way.

What’s driving me nuts is that the plugins HAVE to be seeing the sustain – or they never would. And I’m only depressing the pedal once at the beginning of the test and releasing it at the end.

If I play 100 notes, only about 15 to 30 of them will sustain. And like I said, once they are recorded, the ones that sustain or don’t remain consistent across the Arturia plugins.

Non-Arturia plugins and my hardware synths do not exhibit the non/random-sustaining behavior.

They just work.

#7

I hope Arturia will take a good look at this.

#8

Arturia support did reach out to me, but I managed to figure it out.

  1. I added MidiView to the computer my DAW was running on.

  2. I began testing and discovered that CC 123 (All Notes Off) was being received into the DAW any time I released all keypresses on my Roland Juno 2, regardless of whether or not I had pressed the sustain pedal.

  3. Once I knew what to search for, I quickly found this article:
    Possible to filter MIDI in events? All notes off hit sustain - Ableton Forum

The problem that was posted: “I’m trying to use an old Roland RD1000 stage piano which has great action (but old sounds) to trigger Live instruments.
For some reason, it sends a midi “all notes off” when the last key is lifted even if the sustain pedal is down.”

The response: "Yep, it’s really annoying. All the early Roland midi synths do it.

Roland interpreted the ‘all notes off’ part of the midi spec literally and thought it meant all notes off on the controller. Whereas it was meant to be all notes off on the sound module. So because of that the early midi computer sequencers had a dedicated CC123 (all notes off) input filter." :face_with_monocle:

The solution that worked for me (using Reaper) was to search ReaPack, where I found the “MB MIDI Event Filter” plugin. For each channel running an Arturia synth, I have to place the plugin in the FX chain, upstream of the synth, and set “Control Change filter #1” to “123”.

Definitely an edge case, as there probably aren’t too many of us using 80’s-era Roland synths as MIDI controllers. :man_shrugging:

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