Midi CC question

Hermod
1

Hey there;
just a general question about midi CC:

let’s say i’d like to toggle quantisation on/off via Midi CC,
what midi Channel do I need to send the CC’s on?
The ones selected in Hermod’s midi settings for each channel?

AND: I use the gate output of Hermod’s Channel 1 to send a Clock to Pams,
and the CV out on that same channel is used as a CV Recorder/looper.
Is it possible to record Midi CC’s into that channel rather than using up a CV input?
(CV inputs on Hermod turned out to be a really valuable resource :slight_smile:

Thanks for any adwise : )

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yes… the track’s midi channel ( or the active track channel, if its active)
just like other midi data.

I dont really get this question…
yes, you can record cc into a mod track, which will be the cv output,
and then use the gate for things like clock.

broader question is… why not try these things yourself?
eurorack is all about experimentation really :wink:

you seem to be on the right track, and of course, if it doesn’t work as expected, you can always come back here and ask why not.

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Thank you very much for the info! : )

…I won’t be in my studio for a few day’s and am kind of in a planing phase (on paper:) for a live setup.
That’s why I needed to know :slight_smile:

1 Like
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went to the studio to try it :)))
it all woked fine :slight_smile: super dope stuff : )

But now I have follow up question:

I have a Tesseract sweet sixteen (a 16n faderbank in eurorack format) connected to Hermod via USB Host port. I use quite those fader’s USB Midi CCs to control a variety of things in Hermod and all over my Case. Hermod is forwarding those CC’s from the faders via midi to a bitbox and a little external synth. (Micromonsta2 : )
Two of Hermod’s Channels are reserved for playing the two polyphonic voices of Micromonsta2. (it’s multitimbral) 4 Channels are used as monophonic CV/Gate voices to trigger drums.
Now, everything is playing together smoothly. And as soon as I move a fader, some note-off events start beeing dropped and those notes ring on forever. (or until played again.)

So, what’s Hermod’s limit for processing/forwarding simultaneous Midi Events? (CC and Note Events) And is there a certain way it prioritizes midi messages, and if so, can I change that somehow to prioritize note-off messages? : )
How can I troubleshoot this, and find out where or why midi Note-Off Events are lost?

Thank you very much for any help with this :heart:

5

another little heads up on this:
it only occurs, when I move/modulate two or more CCs at the same time.
AND Hermod’s Midi Clock seems to suffer too!
When there are 2 or more CCs changing at the same time, things that are clocked via Hermod’s Midi Clock go out of sync. CCs seem to add up to more and more of an offset in the clock everytime more than two are changed at the same time…

Please, help! aaaahhh!!! gigs upcoming and slowly starting to panic a little : )

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there is no way to ‘prioritize’ midi messages, thats not how midi works - its a serial protocol.

so basically you are using hermod to forward these CCs from usb midi , out to midi din?
(i.e you are not using to generate CV?)

is this causing issues on both bitbox and micromonsta?

due to the way my setups is, my hermod gets a load of CCs that its ignoring, and never seen an issue.
however, I do not use it to forward midi - I have a midi router (like a splitter) in front of the hermod, so messages go directly - Id have to test to see if doing midi thru (?) causes issues.

seems odd, Id have thought we’d have heard more about it, esp. if its disrupting clock as you say.
not sure, how to debug as its all sounds a bit odd… it sounds like a corrupted midi stream, but again, thats seems unlikely we would not have had more reporting that on the forum.

you mention you have the 16n connected to the usb host port…
do you have any other midi input connected to the hermod? (via device/din?)
the only thing, I can think of that could cause this… is a midi feedback loop…
so the 16n sends CC to hermod, which forwards to another device, which then sends it back to hermod
(Im assuming 16n does not recieve midi?!)

this kind of feedback loop, will very often corrupt midi streams (on most devices!) as most things have limited midi buffers.
(unlike the pyramid, the hermod has no ‘local echo’ settings to prevent this)

unfortunately, my only suggestion as the moment is to try to use a midi router/splitter for the CC, rather than go via the hermod - this is also more ‘efficient’

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Hi Mark

Thank you for the reply :slight_smile:

Yes, Both bitbox and micromonsta2 have issues.
Bitbox relies on the midi Clock from Hermod
and micromonsta is missing note-off events from Hermod.

Maybe I can specify my setup a little further:

Tesseract is connected via USB to the Host Port on Hermod.
It does not receive midi, But can act as a CV to CC interface.
so when tesseracts CCs, can be modulated by diverse sources in my rack.

It sends specific CC numbers on specific channels to Hermod to change Effect parameters,
for example Euclidian Fill amount, Swing% etc.
Hermod is also forwarding USB Midi from Host to midi out.
Hermods midi Out goes into a kenton midi Thru and from there to both the Bitbox and Micromonsta2.
(micromonsta receives notes and CC (for cutoff only) on Midichannels 1 & 2)
Some of tesseract’s CCs also control filters and volume of specific things on the Bitbox.
(For this, I use Midichannel 15 only.)

Then there’s a Midi Keyboard (novation Launchkey MKIII) going into Hermod’s midi in.
Playing on Channels 1 to 3 on the Keyboard allows me to either play
one of micromonstas two timbres directly, (Hermod Midi Tru) or play Hermod’s active Channel for recording things. (Midi channel 3)
It does not send clock.

Hermod is the Master Clock.
It sends midi Clock over its midi Output to Bitbox and Micromonsta (for the arpeggiator)
AND it sends Clock & Reset on CV/GATE 1 to Pamelas New Workout.
(but this later part works rock solid…)

That’s all things “Midi” in my live case.
USB device Port on Hermod is empty.
So the midi feedback loop thing doesn’t seem to be it;
I don’t see how Hermod should getting Midi sent back to itself.

And yeah, as soon as two CCs change at the same time
(on tesseract) the Issue appears directly and is pretty reproducable.
Wierdly it doesnt happen, when I use CCs from Launchkey.
so that may narrow it down to something that tesseract is doing.

One very weird thing I found out just today is:
Even if I turn Host to Midi tru OFF, my bitbox is still receiving CC’s from Tesseracts 16n faders
that sends USB midi to Hermod and shouldn’t be forwarded to the midi OUT and Bitbox. and so does micromonsta.
in this case too, the missing note-off events and clock issues are unchanged.

This is quite a mess to debug : (

I contacted mangu from Tesseract maybe he knows something.

BTW: What is a normal and useful update-rate for Midi CCs?
It looks like Tesseract sends the values of all its 16 faders once per millisecond.
Is this crazy much? Is that just spamming my poor little Hermod with Midi events?

8

Update: I Give up.

I tried to merge Midi from my Keyboard and the tesseract. With no USB midi present at all, i’ve got the same problems. I Built a few new Presets from Scratch both on hermod an bitbox for testing and making sure that i haven’t dialed in something wierd. Still the same sync problems.
So at this point, It happens with pretty much everything that generates CC, no matter if i use Midi In, Midi Thru, Usb Host, different controllers. as soon as some CCs are changing, The Clock to Bitbox goes bananas and I lose Note-Off Messages.

I’ll have to try another Hermod…

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that woud be ridiculous if its true…and I would consider it a bug

you only should send midi when it changes. if its using 7bit, thats quantised, so you’d hardly get any updates. if it was using 14bit, then really you’d likely quantise to 10bit since faders are not that accurate, possibly even more even some noise would start causing alot of ‘jitter’

so I think something is ‘wrong’ if you are flooding midi with that kind of data…
id say an update rate of more than about 250 messages/second is still pretty high.
(thats comparing to expressive controllers which have a lot more ‘nuance’ to pass’ :wink: )

even if you were converting CV to midi, really Id not be trying to push data that fast.

but for sure, spamming that much data will likely cause issues with alot of stuff thats reading midi… midi is just not designed for it.

the point here is quite simple… if you spam a serial midi stream, even if it works, you would get more latency (and likely jitter), than just sending the data when it changes.
since if you send when its just changed… you dont have any ‘queued’ data, so it can instantly pass thru, rather than be queued behind a whole load of redundant data.

so Id say this is NOT happening… or its a bug… (no developer would deliberatly do this :wink: )
OR its a feedback loop, and its not really sending this much data, rather the same data is just continuously looping around.

10

Hello there!
I’ve got another update: I tried a second Hermod today and it does the exact same thing.

AND, I misunderstood Tesseract’s update rate of once per millisecond: That is just how many times it looks, if a fader has changed position. It doesn’t send CC updates every milli second! sorry.

But that wasn’t the problem in the end:
I tried a midi Merger in front of Hermod’s midi Input and voilà!
No more problems.
Tesseracts CCs are now going into a merger (via Midi) where they get merged with keyboard’s midi and then going into Hermod’s midi Input. that seems to work so far! No more dropping note-off event, no more losing sync. I’t like a dream : ))

The problem seems to have something to do with Hermod’s USB Midi connectivity. As soon as I have Midi messages (note or cc) coming into both Midi In AND USB Host and both are sent tru, those problems appear again.
I Tried a bunch of different controllers, and it was really happening whenever both Midi Input and USB Host on Hermot receive Midi Data. (and send it out again via midi thru)

Maybe that’s something to have a look at, at some point :slight_smile:

11

perhaps try formulating it into a bug report, and then sending it to squarp via the contact form - after all, bugs wont get fixed unless we help Squarp reproduce them :wink:

it would be particuarly useful to know is it soley related to midi thru?

  • if you record into the hermod, does it appear to also miss notes off?
  • does the same thing happen if using CV?

the other thing to worth noting here is, by pushing thru a midi merger you are actually doing two other things different, rather than just using ‘one input’ - which could be whats ‘fixing’ the issue.

  • altering timing - as midi is serial, a merger is serialising the two inputs streams… thus altering the timing, seen my hermod
  • reformatting - midi mergers will often reformat midi messages - again this is partly due to the serialisation nature - you cant use running status, if you start injecting messages from multi streams.

I’ve actually seen quite a few devices where introducing my mioXM will can either solve problems, or introduce them :wink:

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