MIDIserver crashing and dead MIDI input?

taximouse · Post by **taximouse** » Fri Aug 29, 2008 7:13 am

I wonder if anyone else has ever had this problem?? Its been going on for me for a long, long time and I think I just found another clue!

The backstory:

- I am remotely controlling Live with a foot pedal, blah blah.
- The foot pedal is hooked up to a MOTU Ultralite.
- MOTU ultralite goes into MIDIPipe, MidiPipe goes into Live.

80% of the time, everything is hunky dory. Occasionally, when I start up the MIDI is dead. I can see the midi signal flash on the LCD of the MOTU. However, according to my trusty MidiMonitor, nothing is coming in on the MOTU port, and in fact...the MOTU port doesn't show up when this occurs so there is nothing to see. (clue)

I can also get this to happen when, like a genius, I spontaneously edit and recompile my AppleScripts right before going onstage. That means quitting and restarting MIDIPipe. When I do this, invariably my MIDI input is dead. (clue)

(I'm using the pedal to control external hardware and this I can always do just fine. Good ol hardware. Again, messages are coming into MOTU according to the LCD.)

Seems like the problem has to be MOTU or Apple or MIDIPipe. I've been trying to sort it out with MOTU for donkeys years. They blame Apple. No one at Apple has ever responded, but the forums say MOTU. Nico, as far as I know, doesn't respond anymore to MIDIPipe questions.

The only thing that gets my MIDI back up is crazy, frantic powering off the MOTU and rebooting my computer, (and WTF, order seems to matter) and its always freaky to do onstage AND sometimes it doesn't work. I have to do it twice. I can also never remember the correct order (MOTU - Computer - MIDIPipe) in these situations. I dread this more than anything.

Well, it just happened again, and I looked in my console. (why didn't I look before??!)

There is this error: MIDIServer crashed
And indeed, the MIDIServer crash log is full of stuff, from every time I have this problem!!

This is the best clue yet. But I have no idea what to do with it.

Does anyone have any suggestions what to do next?

robocop · Post by **robocop** » Fri Aug 29, 2008 9:06 am

MIDIserver crash sometimes...I have the DIGI 002 so it's not a Motu problem..
OSX is far from perfect for Midi&Audio

cheers

taximouse · Post by **taximouse** » Sun Sep 14, 2008 5:27 pm

solved my problem...

its the midi input on the MOTU ultralite.

i had the midi input "die" again (midi in signal flashes on ultralite LCD, but nothing shows up in midi monitor)...so i immediately plugged in my old emagic MT4 to my USB. right away i got midi in.

i replicated the behavior twice and midi in has yet to disappear.

so, now i 've got my midi in through USB, and audio through MOTU ultralite.

kind of a bummer, since i got the ultralite BECAUSE it was all-in-one.

thank you per boysen for suggesting i run the midi via USB and save firewire for audio.