11R Interface Problem ??

[Vercingetorix]

I checked out the the Bias FX track, used Re-amp on the editor and it was working fine. Turned it off and the 11R track was working ok, there was sound being routed thru the Bias FX track, but, seeing as it wasn't armed and/or going to be recorded in any way when using 11R, it's not a problem.

Now I have an Instrument track set up with a Mini Grand insert, now when I click on the VST window with the depiction of the piano with the mouse it works fine, but when I click on the keys of the MIDI controller nothing occurs. So there is a problem there. Does anyone know what do I need to setup/change to try and get it working again? I use a lot of sounds in Xpand in conjunction with MIDI and really need it working again.

I just created a new audio track to use the Microphone, turned the gain all the way up on the Mic on the 11R sound from the Mic is now going through the armed track (and routed through the BIAS track) but there is also a 4 levels of delay (??) occurring, there is no delay inserts on either of these tracks.

Transport is now working and can play audio!

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Vercingetorix

Now I have an Instrument track set up with a Mini Grand insert, now when I click on the VST window with the depiction of the piano with the mouse it works fine, but when I click on the keys of the MIDI controller nothing occurs. So there is a problem there. Does anyone know what do I need to setup/change to try and get it working again? I use a lot of sounds in Xpand in conjunction with MIDI and really need it working again.

One thing at a time. If you are troubleshooting virtual instruments I'd suggest trying to do that in a separate test session with just one instrument track (and maybe one master fader).

MIDI/virtual instruments on Pro Tools suffers from being bit of a kafkaesque experience. Largely due to it's history and MIDI being crafted onto Pro Tools vs. designed from the start (like say Logic Pro). There are several things to check that that commonly trip up folks with virtual instruments, I'll try to touch on all the main ones below...

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Make sure you are inserting the Mini Grand VI (plugin) on an instrument track (not an audio track, not a MIDI track). Pretty sure you got that one OK given the recent discussion, but we've all made the mistake.

The instrument track must be record armed for keyboard events to get to the VI. This is a very common mistake and will cause what you are seeing with the Mini Grand Keyboard UI working but an external MIDI keyboard not working.

Make sure Options>MIDI Thru is checked. This is a very common mistake and will cause what you are seeing with the Mini Grand Keyboard UI working but an external MIDI keyboard not working.

You must have the VI input set to receive on the MIDI channel that the keyboard/device is sending on... or set to "all" which is normally the best option when getting started". (see the next comment).

In the track edit and/or mix window choose to display "Instrument". This shows you the MIDI signal coming into your VI plugin. Make sure in that "instrument" section the input pulldown shows "all" and the output pulldown selector is the Mini Grand plugin. You should see the "instrument" meter move as MIDI events are sent to the VI. Displaying the Instrument info is so very helpful you should just never work with VIs without doing that, but it's not shown by default.. it should be when an instrument track is added, Avid goofed not doing that (then have an option for folks who don't want to have that behavior).

You can test with using the the Pro Tools built in MIDI keyboard, Window>MIDI Keyboard. That's different than the GUI keyboard built into Mini Grand and is more equivalent to an external MIDI keyboard sending MIDI to the VI, but make sure the VI input is set to "all".

You may or may not need to install MIDI drivers to get your keyboard to work. Some software packages that come with keyboards contain needed drivers, some are largely crapware/bloatware you really don't need to install and the keyboard will work without as a MIDI source.

You might find a MIDI utility like MIDI View (https://hautetechnique.com/midi/midiview) is handy for confirming your PC is getting MIDI events from the keyboard. Even if you don't need that now I'd always install a MIDI utility like this on any system I'm using with MIDI gear.

As with most things the Pro Tools Reference Guide explains lots of these things and is really worth reading parts of/searching the PDF to explain new terms or different options/settings. But the Reference Guide sucks for actually getting started with MIDI of virtual instruments. For that video tutorials on YouTube or Groove3 or similar are much better. Try to find one that uses a recent version of Pro Tools.

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And these are "virtual instruments" or "VI"s, not VST's. VST is a plugin format from Steinberg. Correct nomenclature and taxonomy helps make good music....

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Vercingetorix

I checked out the the Bias FX track, used Re-amp on the editor and it was working fine. Turned it off and the 11R track was working ok, there was sound being routed thru the Bias FX track, but, seeing as it wasn't armed and/or going to be recorded in any way when using 11R, it's not a problem.

It's a good idea to just mute the Dry Guitar track if you don't want to hear it. They normally would be muted while tracking if you are monitoring the other Eleven Rack rig output track while tracking. And conversely, mute that Rig Output Track if you want to monitor through the amp sim plugin on the Dry Guitar track.

Signals will just never get routed in unexpected ways, they will follow what Pro Tools shows. The Dry track with input set to Guitar In will only receive that signal, the Wet track with input from the Rig L. will only receive that signal. It's easy to get confused by things like tracks not armed to record that are playing back audio that is already recorded on that track. Again you can always be sure by muting tracks you are not using.

I realize I had left LLM (i.e. Options>Low Latency Monitoring) enabled in that session and that could cause confusion. LLM disables plugins on input tracks (any track with a physical input) so will disable the Bias plugin while you are tracking. You would then only hear the very low level dry guitar signal, if you are hearing what seems like amplified guitar with LLM enabled you might instead be hearing the guitar signal through the Wet track. Turn off LLM if you want to monitor through an amp sim plugin, of just in general turn it off now. I should have not left it on.

Another thing when you reamp from Pro Tools is be sure to set the Eleven Rack rig input back to Guitar In when you finish. Its very easy to forget and then tracking the wet track live from the guitar won't work as expected.

Signal routing in Pro Tools is a great thing to study up on. You should have a picture in your mind of the exact signal flow at all times, for all types of tracks, the exact input the signal is coming from, order that the signal goes thought the track fader, through the plugins, where in this flow the track meter is taking it's values from. And then for sends and busses and master faders as well, where things get more complex. There is an extremely good discussion of this in the Pro Tools reference guide, Chapter 50 "Signal Flow by Track Type".

I just created a new audio track to use the Microphone, turned the gain all the way up on the Mic on the 11R sound from the Mic is now going through the armed track (and routed through the BIAS track) but there is also a 4 levels of delay (??) occurring, there is no delay inserts on either of these tracks.

The delay you will be hearing is very likely because you have multiple paths of audio happening. Listen to each track soloed and see if there is reverb on that or if it's caused by different latency on different tracks. Again, you should mute tracks not being used. Also make sure there is no unwanted delay/reverb effects in the Eleven Rack rig.

If it's not something obvious, try turning off or on Option>Delay Compensation and seeing if the problem becomes less noticeable. There are bugs in delay comp and general I/O latency compensation. e.g. To avoid one known issue in Setup>Playback Engine make sure "Ignore Errors" is unchecked. If you show the track Delay Compensation values in the mixer window the compensated value should all be low (or zero) samples... with just the guitar amp sim plugins but if you see large values (hundreds or thousands of samples) thats likely sign of a bug or some other problem (post mixer window screenshots if the values look wrong).

Very unlikely to be the issue: there is very very occasionally a problem that people have with the Eleven Rack where they can hear a (quiet) reverb/delay type effect. This is because when the Eleven Rack is working with Pro Tools it disables the local monitoring that it does internally... how you hear stuff if you just plug in a guitar to the Eleven Rack and play without Pro Tools being involved. Very very occasionally the magic that turns off that local monitoring does not work and you hear both a local monitored signal and the signal through Pro Tools... this is extremely unlikely to happen, and where it has happened in the past may have been faulty Eleven Racks (but if you use a DAW besides Pro Tools this is a more frequent issue).

[Vercingetorix]

Ok sorry, I am just wanting to get this thing solved I have something coming up soon and want to get this thing done I am surprised that everything just stopped working.

So lets go with the MIDI controller problem first. I am documenting everything so that you can see what exactly I am doing, just in case I am doing something really stoopid.

First thing I did was create a new project and this came up: https://imgbox.com/Nvd0sscR - it looks like this project is not using the Eleven Rack as I left it off when starting up ProTools.

The next thing that came up was a quite a number of tracks must be some kind of default template. Anyway, this surprised me a lot: https://imgbox.com/zDnyNBQK - Project
None of those tracks when the Playback Engine to is changed to 11R are usable. So a pretty much useless template .

This shows the Instrument track I added for the MIDI testing: https://imgbox.com/b2lwnpto

Fixed up the playback engine and project and while most of the tracks are useless I can now work with the added track.

Now I am going to go through the rest of your message and see what happens.

Ummmm - I didn't do anything else just went into ProTools and umm the MIDI controller is now magically working I just don't get it I didn't do anything different then I did last time. But something happenned so that's another problem solved.

Thankyou for staying with me and giving me this guidance it is very much appreciated!

[Darryl Ramm]

Yes, be careful before opening Pro Tools that the Eleven Rack is powered on. And it's a good idea to hold down the 'N' key on the keyboard after you double click on the Pro Tools icon, and hold it down until the Playback Engine dialog appears and then you can select the Eleven Rack... that way you won't go any further with the wrong interface. If its finding other interfaces though ASIO4ALL and you never really use them you can just uninstall ASIO4ALL and stop them every being used. Even if the Eleven Rack is powered on you might still find times where Pro Tools has decided to switch playback engines on you, so just good to check/or stop and fix it if things look wrong, and it becomes second nature.

It looks like you created a session using a template that put all those tracks and signal routing in the session. I'm not sure which template you used. I had pointed you are Eleven Rack templates (which are not there anyhow anymore) only to see the wet and dry track set up, and my session did that as well. Most of these other templates that come with Pro Tools or others provide are useless/don't match what people want to do and are too complex for beginners... they are great to look over and see how people do stuff like bus reverbs and use aux and master fader tracks etc. But when you are working stuff out with VIs for the fist time just create a totally empty session and add an instrument track, and a master fader track (to control final output level). Add a click track if you want one (Track>Create Click Track).

Your instrument track looks correct but you don't have the Instrument panel showing. I'd alway show that. And if you are not using sends just hide that. Here is an example of one with the Instrument panel, and delay compensation panel showing.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lMT...ew?usp=sharing

One trap that gets all VI beginners, is some VIs are stereo only, they only can be inserted on a Stereo instrument track, some (like Mini Grand) are Mono and should be inserted on a mono instrument track (on a stereo track you get two mono instances). With a mono instrument track a VI that is stereo will just not show up on the Insert>Plug-Ins>Instruments list -- a common reason for users to ask "why did all my instrument plugins disappear?". Again make it easy on yourself, and if possible to work with a track in mono do so.

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As to why the MIDI keyboard/Mini Grand suddenly started working, it could be you are seeing a bug that has been hitting some users for the last year or few (I'm not really sure how long it's been going on but it hits some users worse than others, some users seemingly just don't hit it)... the problem is the VI input just seems to be disconnected from MIDI, closing and opening Pro Tools usually fixes it, reassigning the MIDI inputs on the VI may fix it, removing and adding back the VI may fix it. Then some time later it might happen again. While this sounds like what you saw, it's probably more likely on average that other simple mistakes cause the MIDI keyboard to stop working with a VI, esp. just not record arming the VI track. But if you checked all that then it may be this bug.

[Vercingetorix]

Thankyou, thankyou, THANKYOU!!! For being so patient and explaining everything so well at a level that I could understand.

With your help everything is back and working well .

Beir bua agus beannacht!

[Darryl Ramm]

Great!

You should have heard me cursing aloud about how many things in Pro Tools make no sense to new users (or some things are just broken) as I wrote stuff in this thread.