piano damper pedal timing issue

[glennhardy]

I'm having a weird timing thing with the sustain pedal when recording. I have a Mac Pro Quad, OSX 10.6.8, M-Powered 8.0.3, Firewire 410. I have used this setup with Ivory virtual piano for many months now and the problem has either gotten worse (kinda hard for me to believe) or I am just noticing it more.

When recording, sometimes I play a low note and catch it with the sustain pedal as I release the key and move up into a higher register, (with the sustain pedal staying down.) On some of these low notes, even though I time the pedal downstroke slightly ahead of the keypress, the sound drops out without sustaining. I know it's not my timing because when I play back what I have recorded, it plays back perfectly, with all appropriate notes sustained. I can't seem to predict when this happens or which notes it happens on, but it does seem to happen on the same note if I play it over and over. I have recorded with the sustain controller window open, and as I watch the recording progress, the "problem" notes appear to be identical with the others...that is, the sustain pedal goes down at exactly the same place for each note.

I tried the same process with both Ableton Live and Digital Performer, and the problem doesn't occur. I also tried decreasing the HW buffer size, thinking it might have to do with latency. Buffer size change did not affect the problem. Am I missing something?

I'd appreciate any suggestions. Thanks!