Little Phatty - infinite sustain

[fafphatty]

Hi guys,
I've been a Little Phatty Stage II user for years -- beautiful instrument.

An issue has developed recently:
While playing the keyboard, the synth will seemingly at random "sustain" a note infinity. When this happens, I can still play notes -- especially legato (due to it being monophonic), but the sustained note continues ringing.
The only method I've found to stop this problem once it happens is to engage the "midi all notes off" function -- which works only temporarily.
Turning the synth off and on again also stops the problem, but this is obviously very noticeable during performance and potentially detrimental to the synth/ the sound system its plugged into.
Any help/ advice would be much appreciated.

[namahshaman]

Are you using any MIDI (IN, OUT, THRU)?

I have had the dreaded stuck-note dilemma a few times before. Once, it was a bad MIDI cable. Another time it was an issue between the DAW and the interface, and another time it was simply the MIDI controller.

Have you tested it with only an audio-out cable connected?

[fafphatty]

Hey!
Thanks so much for your response!
In this context I'm simply using the Little Phatty's audio out --- straight to an amplifier or PA for live performance.
As I said the "midi all notes off" function seems to work as a quick fix -- but the problem inevitably returns.
As a side note --- I do sometimes use the Little Phatty to control some desktop synth modules via midi. The problem of the sustained note still occurs -- however not as frequently.
Thanks again for you help.

[stiiiiiiive]

It's been some time since that but...

... I've just welcomed a Slim Phatty to go along with my Little Phatty. When using the Slim controlled by the LP, I don't notice anything weird except when polychaining, in which case I sometimes fall in the usual voice allocation bug: both will play a note, then none of them, then both etc.
I'm wondering which are the LP and Slim OS versions that optimize the behaviours...

Now the inifinite note problem described above occurs every 2 minutes when I control the Slim with a Clavia G2. MIDI All notes off is mandatory to return to a normal situation. What happens is that a particular note (just played) stays sounding. You can play another one but as soon as you release it, the first one will sound again. Only way to make it silent is to press that very key again. Once it's shut, any key pressed will get you back to the problematic situation.

What is really weird is that it has never occured with the two LP I've successively owned for 6 years now. The OS version of LP I play now is 3.21.690.33. The Slim OS version is 3.21.690.31.
Any insight welcomed

[stiiiiiiive]

I've been investigating on that and found out what could be interesting for others. Summing it up here.

I use a Clavia G2 as a controller and MidiMonitor as MIDI log too. I've tested both Slim and Little Phatty. Tests consist in playing clusters in order to provide a dense MIDI flow to the phatty.

My first test was to monitor what happened when a note got stuck.
G2 controlling the Slim, Slim MIDI out going to MidiMonitor, Slim set for merging what comes in through MIDI DIN in into MIDI DIN out.
No mystery here: I get Note On messages with no matching Note Off. In some occasions, the MIDI Note On message won't occur and no note will be played.
If I use MIDI Thru, the problem does not happen. So it seems the internal phatty MIDI flow process is culprit.

As I had heard the MIDI clock messages had their role in there, I tried to stop the G2 MIDI clock transmission. I definitely made things better as I could not reproduce the problem this way while I can make it happen within 20 seconds with MIDI clock on.
I tried with the LP as a controller and no bug at all. I monitored its MIDI out and observed that it does not transmit MIDI clock. This disolved my suspition of the G2 being a mysterious buggy black box: only the MIDI clock stayed in the root causes list.

Finally, as my Slim is in version 3.21.690.31 and my LP is in version 3.21.690.33, I decided to compare their behaviors when controlled by the G2. The LP does not stay stuck on one note, neither with nor whitout MIDI clock signal received.

Bottom line:
1- Latest version of the OS behaves better.
2- MIDI clock makes it worse.


Now I've been asking MoogMusic and people here where to find latest versions of the OS but had no luck so far.
Still interested in that!