Controlling with Pyramid

[Soundimizer]

Hi,
I tried to control the entire NDLR with Pyramid by Squarp. The problem is that NDLR doesn’t respond well when lots of CCs are coming in simultaneously. Some of messages are skipped in an unpredictable way. It is very frustrating...
What’s your experience in controlling NDLR with external MIDI devices?
Best regards,
GABI

[Jesse Johannesen]

Hey Gabi, I'd love to see if I can help you out with this. Let's start out with a little more info about your setup:
Is the pyramid going straight into the NDLR?
How many CCs are you sending and what are you controlling with them?
give me a little more info about the hardware setup being controlled as well.

I'll probably have you start by simplifying what you're trying to do and add stuff back in until we see where it stops working. I don't have a pyramid on my end but I do have an octatrack and hopefully I can see about trying to reproduce your issue.
Let me know your setup and we can go from there.

Jesse

[Soundimizer]

Hey Gabi, I'd love to see if I can help you out with this. Let's start out with a little more info about your setup:
Is the pyramid going straight into the NDLR?
How many CCs are you sending and what are you controlling with them?
give me a little more info about the hardware setup being controlled as well.

I'll probably have you start by simplifying what you're trying to do and add stuff back in until we see where it stops working. I don't have a pyramid on my end but I do have an octatrack and hopefully I can see about trying to reproduce your issue.
Let me know your setup and we can go from there.

Jesse

Well, I guess I now what’s going on. Actually, NDLR starts “singing” when receives CC 26, chord degree. The problem is I’m sending separate messages for other CCs which are not triggered before, but after. I should reorder the messaging flow. In pyramid I’m sending different CCs in separate tracks. Although  I’m sending for all tracks in their step one the CCs, the order of receiving the messages in NDLR is not “simultaneously” (it can’t be). If CC26 is first, then the other important data is postponed for the next step or lost. It might be useful to be able to have a delay in order to receive the whole messages stream, before triggering CC26. I see no other decent way to be sure that NDLR is receiving the whole setup CCs before triggering CC26.

[Jesse Johannesen]

Hey Gabi, I'd love to see if I can help you out with this. Let's start out with a little more info about your setup:
Is the pyramid going straight into the NDLR?
How many CCs are you sending and what are you controlling with them?
give me a little more info about the hardware setup being controlled as well.

I'll probably have you start by simplifying what you're trying to do and add stuff back in until we see where it stops working. I don't have a pyramid on my end but I do have an octatrack and hopefully I can see about trying to reproduce your issue.
Let me know your setup and we can go from there.

Jesse

Well, I guess I now what’s going on. Actually, NDLR starts “singing” when receives CC 26, chord degree. The problem is I’m sending separate messages for other CCs which are not triggered before, but after. I should reorder the messaging flow. In pyramid I’m sending different CCs in separate tracks. Although  I’m sending for all tracks in their step one the CCs, the order of receiving the messages in NDLR is not “simultaneously” (it can’t be). If CC26 is first, then the other important data is postponed for the next step or lost. It might be useful to be able to have a delay in order to receive the whole messages stream, before triggering CC26. I see no other decent way to be sure that NDLR is receiving the whole setup CCs before triggering CC26.

Ah, that makes sense. Maybe a micro-timing option exists for the squarp? if so you could set the CC26 on the step 2 and instead of delaying it, have it play way early. so it's just after the step 1. Time to dive into the manual!

Good luck,

Jesse

[gehtabba]

hi i got also massiv problems with pyramid and ndlr.

ndlr stand a lone works nice but if i bring it to the pyramid because pyramid is the brain of all.
i got heavy midi messages from the ndlr. (overload cc etc)
i tried a lot of settings ( echo off / omni mode because i use it for the other synths)

there is a huge midi echo and i cant find that. maybe u can help me ?


one question, is it possible to deactivate all the CC messages was send by ndlr? i just want to use the note on-/off .

thank you.

[Jesse Johannesen]

hi i got also massiv problems with pyramid and ndlr.

ndlr stand a lone works nice but if i bring it to the pyramid because pyramid is the brain of all.
i got heavy midi messages from the ndlr. (overload cc etc)
i tried a lot of settings ( echo off / omni mode because i use it for the other synths)

there is a huge midi echo and i cant find that. maybe u can help me ?


one question, is it possible to deactivate all the CC messages was send by ndlr? i just want to use the note on-/off .

thank you.

As far as I know there isn't a way to turn off MIDI CC messages from the NDLR, but it seem a little odd that it would be sending too much info for a device to parse. Can you tell me how your set up is connected so I can think it through and try to help problem solve the issue? Let me know what device is at the top of the chain and how its connected to the next device etc. Also is the NDLR MIDI out going into the Pyramid input while the Pyramid out is going back into the NDLR input? That seems like it could easily have the potential to cause problems. 

The other thing to note is that NDLR passes just about all MIDI info it receives on down stream, so if it's receiving 16 channels of highly modulated MIDI data upstream, that will likely be passed down the line into the next device. 

The only thing that I can think of to solve this "simply" would be to place a midi filter somewhere in the chain and block CC data while allowing Note On/Off data. There are a number of devices that could probably do this (MIDI PAL/ALF/GAL, PC with MIDIOx, even an I phone with a midi dongle) but while I say "simply" configuring such a filter as with any MIDI projects can be a headache, which is why it would be better to see if it's something else with the setup causing the problem, and try to solve it there instead. 

Best Regards,
Jesse