Lost/Missing Midi CC Messages

[sefable]

Hello,

I have a MIDI track with 109 midi CC Messages recorded on 42 different envelopes (Modulation, Breath, and so on..) in a time span of 300ms.

When I set the output to an external Midi port and play the track, the number of received events on the external midi port is not always the same. It varies between the right number and bellow it.

I tried using Cakewalk to see if the issue comes from Ableton or another component.

In Cakewalk, all the CC events are consistently recorded.

In Ableton, I did another test: The track with the CC Events, has its output set to "2-MIDI", a second midi track in Ableton.

Recording the CC events on the Midi Track 2 works systematicaly.

I am hoping either for:
- some sort of hidden configuration or one I did not see
- some more ideas of tests I could run to narrow down the issue

Thanks in advance

[TLW]

I might have an idea about what might be happening, but first I'd appreciate it if you would clarify something for me rather than type a lot of words which might not be relevant.

You are sending MIDI from Live to a hardware MIDI device, right? Is it one device or several and how is the MIDI connection being made? DIN, USB...?

When you say Cakewalk consistently records the events how are you getting the MIDI events into Cakewalk?

[sefable]

Thanks for your help!

I am sending the MIDI from Live to a Processing (https://processing.org/) application.

I am using a virtual MIDI port with loopMidi or loopBe30.

There is only one consumer of Midi events and that's the Processing app.

In order to see if the issue was with my application or the virtual MIDI port or windows, I tried using Cakewalk.

Cakewalk is set-up the same way as Ableton, with a MIDI Track output set to the virtual midi port.

All events are received in my application when I hit play in Cakewalk. But I don't want to use Cakewalk..

[TLW]

Sorry, but if everything’s happening “in the box” I’m afraid that rules out what I thought might be going on which was to do with how hardware and wires handle MIDI.

I used Cakewalk, back when it was Cakewalk Sonar, for many years before switching entirely to Macs a few years ago and its MIDI handling was usually excellent, among the best I’ve seen.

I do wonder, though I’m away from home so don’t have access to my DAW at the moment and can’t check this, if Live’s MIDI record or other quantisation is resulting in it dropping CCs when they fall outside the quantisation grid.

Usually the problem DAWs have with CCs is when there’s too many points in the CC envelope for them to cope with - which is why they often have a function to thin out CCs. And you do have a lot of CCs going on at the same time...

[sefable]

The hypothesis regarding quantization is interesting, I did not think about that.

However, I have at most 2 CC events per envelope.

[hoffman2k]

You should join the Live beta program. Or hold on for a little bit.
Check out some of the recent changes to how CC's are handled. Incidentally, (N)RPN seems to record/playback properly now too.
https://www.ableton.com/en/release-notes/live-10-beta/

The key ones are:

Fixed a bug where steps in MIDI CC envelopes were incorrectly imported from MIDI files.

Previously, CC messages received in a track input might erroneously affect a clip that is playing back on a different track, even if that track was not armed. Also, Live no longer filters out "duplicate" CC messages.

On Windows, MIDI CC, Channel Pressure, and Pitch Bend events are now sent out smoothly via MIDI at buffer sizes of 128 and below.

[[jur]]

Bookmark.

[[jur]]

Are you on the beta program?
There were some midi-related fixes recently that might probably fix the issue described here.
You can join the beta program here, or contact support@ableton.com about your issue.

[EDIT] Ok, Angstrom already said all the important stuff!! [EDIT]

[sefable]

Thanks for your help.

In the mean time, I ended up adapting OSC Midi send device (from the connectivity kit) to send MIDI CC messages via OSC.

No messages are lost.