Hi all,
After a lot of testing, I have found a workaround that has completely eliminated the sustain pedal issues for me.
This write up will specifically address set up in DAW mode using the AUX input, as DAW integration is one of the main reasons most of us bought this controller, and we are all familiar with the sustain pedal input on the Arturia trying to emulate a continous pedal by sending all the values between 0 and 127 to the DAW on each pedal use.
The same settings I cover below can be applied to the pedal settings in user mode. I am using a KEYLAB MK3 on Firmware 1.1.1 and Logic Pro 10.7.9.
Some background:
Aside from the obvious sustain issues (missing notes, weird, laggy note behaviour), I noticed that when using a sustain pedal via the AUX input and configuring it as such, my DAW was treating it as a ‘Damper’ pedal, and notes were playing softer and couldn’t reach full velocity while the pedal was depressed. This lead me to dive deeper.
Using a MIDI monitoring tool, I have found that when the following conditions are met in DAW mode with the pedal plugged in via the AUX input:
AUX PEDAL IS SET TO USE MIDI CHANNEL ‘ACTIVE’
AUX PEDAL IS SET TO USE MIDI CHANNEL ‘2’
AUX PEDAL IS SET TO USE THE SAME MIDI CHANNEL AS SET GLOBALLY ON THE KEYBOARD, AKA the ‘ACTIVE’ MIDI Channel (Set when pressing and holding the ‘MIDI Ch’ button and pressing a key that corresponds to a MIDI channel number.)
That the keyboard sends an extra ‘OFF’ signal on Channel 2 when the pedal is pressed and released.
I have concluded through extensive testing in different scenarios that this is the cause of the issue for me.
The workaround:
My workaround is as follows and you can make the changes you see fit depending on how you use MIDI in your own environment:
In this case, we will use Midi Channel 1. Make sure your keyboard is set to use this by pressing and holding the ‘MIDI Ch’ button and then pressing the first C key ‘labelled 1’ on the keyboard to change the active channel.
Plug your sustain pedal into the AUX input
Press the Settings button
Press the Global button
Select AUX PEDAL
Set TYPE to ‘Switched Control’
Set MIDI CHANNEL to 3
Set OPTION to ‘Gate’
Set CC NUMBER to ‘64’
Set OFF VALUE to ‘0’
Set ON Value to ‘127’
Now play around and see if the issue is gone for you.
I will share my findings with Arturia via my support ticket but please let me know if this works for you as well.
As long as you’re not using Channel 2 or the Active channel for the pedal, the above should work.
Best of luck, and I look forward to hearing your experiences with this workaround.
