Sustain pedal problem with Xpand and Ivory

[audiopostpicture]

Having issues with sustain pedal information dropping out while recording. Attempting to record a solo piano CD with Ivory, so not a lot going on. Notes cut off even with lower voice counts. Switched to Xpand and the problem was worse. Upon playback the pedal plays correctly, but not during record. Has no one else run into this issue?

ProTools running on a dual 2Ghz G5 with 2.5gb ram, second SATA internal drive for samples. ProTools 7.1cs8, Ivory 1.52.

[emluper]

Just a thought. Usually for me its the most obvious things that I ignore that end up causing the problem. The three things that I can think of in order.

1) Try the sustain pedal on another plug, or with another controller to see if it still works.

2) Buffer setting in the playback engine not set high enough.

3) Is the input to the plug-ins being velocity limited? I've actually done this one with Ivory, and the programming is so precise that limiting the velocity to 120 instead of letting it go to 127 caused some serious problems regarding "vanishing" notes. Now that I think about it, this sounds the most like what is going on.

Hopefully one of these, though they sound obvious, will be the culprit.

Good luck,

Erik

[emluper]

One more thing, are you running 10.4.6? That may help too, at least while running 7.1cs8.

Erik

[audiopostpicture]

Thanks for replying.

1) Well, we did try the sustain pedal with another plug-in - Xpand, and the pedal cut off was a bit worse. Tried a different controller, but no difference.

2) The buffer is set to the default 512. Any higher and the lag makes it unplayable. Tried 256 and no difference.

3) The velocity was limited at the low end to 5. We tried opening it up completely and it seemed to reduce the pedal cut off a little.

4) Yes, 10.4.6.

We are trying to record a basic solo piano part with Ivory, but since the problem occurs with Xpand I suspect the problem lies somewhere in ProTools. When playing a recorded part back the pedal does work correctly. We are using an Mbox and a MOTU micro lite interface. I'm going to swap out the midi interface with an M-Audio 2x2 to see if that helps, otherwise I'm at a loss.

David

[audiopostpicture]

I should also mention that when speaking with Digidesign, it was suggested that I uninstall Pro Tools and do a reinstall. Tried it, and it didn't help.

[Stig Eliassen]

I've had this issue once. Turned out to be a loose connection in the sustain pedal itself. Do you have Local (Control) turned on?

[audiopostpicture]

Well, we tried an alternate controller and sustain pedal and the same problem occured. We only hooked up the Midi out, so local control did not matter. The original keyboard does have Local turned off.

We're trying to record one track of solo piano with no overdubs, and during record the sustain pedal will randomly stop holding several times on each pass. Depending on how we set the parameters, the pedal will cut off very abruptly or hold for less than a second before cutting off. It happens in dense passages and when playing only a few notes. Sometime it happens as soon as you play the first few notes. If we play live without recording, there's a small hint of the problem, but no where near as bad as during recording. We've tried it with and without click; no difference. When we play it back the pedal works fine, and when we zoom into Controller 64 editing it looks correct.

I'm wondering if it could be the Mbox and MOTU micro lite jamming up the USB buss somehow. I'd like to install a USB card, but I'm not aware of any PCIe version in existence. Does anyone have success with a similar setup?

[audiopostpicture]

I replaced the MOTU microlite Midi interface with a Midisport 2x2, and the sustain pedal problems have vanished. Thanks to all who tried to help.

[Stig Eliassen]

That's great.

[audiopostpicture]

Looks like I spoke too soon. It worked for a few days, but now the sustain pedal problem has returned.