Slim phatty pitchbend

[spin]

Hi all!

I have a problem controlling pitchbend of a slim phatty with master keyboard (a Novation sl mk II). WHen i am sending a pitchbend modulation from the master keyboard, i got a steppish transintions in the sound, very unmusical.
Do you know any solution for this? There is a midi or CV controller that i can use to control the slim phatty pitchbend in a musical way?

thanks in advance for any suggestion!

[EMwhite]

Hmmm... Am going to have to try this myself but based on the Slim Phatty manual, Slim only accepts 7-bit midi for bends (up or down) which, if you have it configured to move a full 12 steps (or half-steps depending on how you count) will indeed result in some noticable stepping.

Certainly the Midi protocl provides for 14-bit pitch bend control, so I've read but I never really paid much attention to it. I have an MK SL II also and like it alot.

If I don't see an answer, I'll play around this evening and get back to you. I have a Tribute, not a Slim but likely the same issue when receiving Midi.

[spin]

Hi! Thanks for reply.

I got this problem only controlling the phatty. If i send pitchbend to a virus ti or a vst on my computer it works right. Probably the phatty requires more resolution because is analog?
This is a bad problem when playing live

[EMwhite]

I like keeping my pitch bend set for the max negative for 'divebombs' but as I said, I have a tribute and as far as I know the wheel is 100% analog so no worries there.

There is actually a 'problem' with the wheel on all of these where the scaling isn't as linear as it should be. I remember reading about it and trying it on mine and only then noticing the issue but it had nothing to do with Midi I don't think.

I would expect the latest code to leverage either SysEx calls between LP and Slims or do ALL 14-bit for the poly chaining functionality alone. I have the Oberheim OP-X VST and really really really don't like the fact that it's only 7-bit midi supported.

But back to your issue; it ought to be simple math to convert from 14-bit to analog, if it is not supported today, I don't see any reason why it cannot be bundled into the next update but I haven't done any programming since 2005 and I have no idea how complex the code base is today / how it can be further extended.

The manual for 3.x as it stands today says that it sends/rec'v 14-bit Midi for #1 (Modulation amount) and for Filter Cutoff only but then I saw a statement somewhere about Phatty code NOW supporting 14-bit for all major/important parameters. I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of it soon enough. If nothing else, I'll ask Amos myself if I run into him otherwise, I'm sure Monday he'll respond after the craziness of the Fest subsides.

[spin]

So the problem is not the 7 bit midi? I don't know what resolution send the novation mk II pitchbend...i suppose it is 7 bit.
Really thanks for your help EMwhite, i really hope that Amos will give us a possible solution!

ps: i have purchased my sl mk ii just yesterday...i would ask you if you have tried the 14 bit cc option on the encoders? I've tried it but it has very strange behavior, the encoder needs like 1000 rotations of the encoder to reach 16383 value from 0 value...so it is completely useless? Have you also experienced this?

[EMwhite]

Indeed I have (14 bit encoders). So I've had mine for about 3 years now and have had issues with firmware; that once I go fwd, I can't go back. I'm not a Automap user but it's a necessary evil in order to flash the firmware of the keyboard.

But you are right, that row of encoders is a major pain in the neck. Looks good on paper.

I've tweaked Minitaur patches, messing with beating parameters in order to perfectly emulate Taurus III patches (the scaling of the T3 is quite a bit different; for starts, the values run from 0..4095 so 12-bit) so I practically twisted my knuckles to bits over the course of 3 days.

I would have MUCH rather preferred to have had a parameter that says "x # of turns = full range" but nope. Sort of reminds me of some of the precision trim pots that they have these days; 22-turns for a full sweep, but at least there, it's for a one time calibration.

[spin]

bad news. Why they have implemented the 14 bit in this way? Is totally useless....no one can turn 100 times a knob to make a filter sweep...And of course using 7 bit on moog is so bad, steppish sweep every time .
Are you using 14 bit to control your minitaur (with 0-4095 range)?

[EMwhite]

Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear. The Minitaur is true 14-bit on many parameters. So the values are 0..16383.

The Taurus 3 on the other hand had 12-bit midi from a parameter point of view (from the panel) which had values of 0..4095 and I attempted to scale the values up what Minitaur could do with a formula for all of the common parameters but it was a fruitless pursuit so in the end I just did it by ear.

I tried and tried and actually stuck with it for a few days, to turn the 14-bit pots to tweak the Minitaur but that Novation keyboard is, as you said, useless for that. Shame really.

Anyway, I'll see if I can get you an answer shortly. Leaving here at 5am to get down to Asheville but I'll certainly try and have a conversation with somebody at a minimum. Good chance somebody like Til will reply prior to that.

[Sir Nose]

I send 14-bit with my BCF2000 to my phatty (stage). The knobs have a configurable resolution, so it is easy to set how many turns from 0 to max. If set for very easy turning (1 turn or less for the full range) you end up getting stepping when turning it fast do to exceeding the scan rate of the encoder. I know the LPs send 14-bit midi for pitchbend. Surprising the slim does not receive it!?!

[EMwhite]

I only had a minute to try this; sitting in airport now delayed 4 hrs en route to Asheville

Appears that Novation is sending a coarse 14 bit pitch bend as follows

0 is all the way down
3fff (aka 16383) is all the way up
0x2000 is centered

What I saw using MidiPal as a monitor is coarse-ish values such as:

(ending up)

2080
20f0
2180
21f0 etc.

So as you can see, each discernable step of the wheel increments the decimal value by 128 so 16,384 div 128 resolution is ... guess what ... 128, it's 7-bit wrapped in a two byte MSB/LSB wrapper.

At least that's what MidiPal shows. It could by wrong but Olivier is pretty sharp so I don't think so.

I will confirm this with a Mac based Midi monitor when I return but one additional thing to keep in mind: Din based Midi is 31.5kbps and with a pitch bend msg being 3 bytes, that's 30 bits of bandwidth required if u count start/stop bits. So if you do a smooth bend across as long an interval as even 1 second you'll produce 8192 messages which would take ~2.6 seconds to traverse the cable.

This is unacceptable! And Midi has no method or read ahead or averaging/smoothing unless the initiator takes the task on before dumping on the wire. (My LP is a tribute so DIN only but I'd like to see another controller try to send the full range of a bend across a USB bus to see how it's handled)

I've buried the Taurus 3, the MP201 and the Minitaur with cc data in the past, was never sure if it was the source, Synth or wire between and all three cases I mention here are end-to-end USB so it's a minimum of 1.5mbit (almost 48x faster than din based Midi if you don't take into account framing, etc)

Afraid I don't have a definitive answer but we're close. It's possible as well that Amos leverages a function call that merely drops midi on the bus and he doesn't have the low level details. But he might. Be back in a few days.

(The Novation is the most sophisticated controller that I have but I may and I'm not aware of software that will convert a Midi cc into pitch bend message but I may be able to convince somebody to code a quick MidiPal app to flood the bus with smooth msgs 0x2000 to 0x3fff and see who misbehaves)

[Sir Nose]

I've heard of some controllers only sending 8-bit when in 14-bit out. But still only sending 7-bit, when put into 14-bit mode, is quite funny.

So, does the slim respond to 14-bit (well 12-bit really) for pitchbend fine and it has just been the controller that is the issue?

A midi to CV converter seems like way to much trouble. Or a CV keyboard controller (pricey). Then you have to deal with the phatty's .97Voct pitch CV in.

[spin]

i don't understand why if i control other synths (korg triton, access virus, many vst instruments) pitchbend responds correctly. Only on phattys it works bad...so the problem is the midi implementation on the moog. Do you think there is the possibility to have a fix in a future realese for this?

[EMwhite]

I chatted with Amos following one of the panel discussions and he says that 14-bit for pitch bend is fully supported in Phatty code.

With regard to your VST example, it's possible that the VST is smoothing values between?

When I get back, I'll do a capture of the midi stream from Phatty, examine, and play back to see if it all makes sense.

[spin]

I am not a technician, but i know that whatever midi controller keyboard you plug to little/slim phatty and send pitchbend message, it will sound bad. I ve tried also sending pitchbend with a virus ti keyboard and other controllers. Same result.

[EMwhite]

Good news/bad news.

The bad news is that my MidiPal Monitor is functioning properly : ) I posted over on the Mutable forum which is quite active and got the following response from Olivier:

"This looks correct. Many, many controllers and synths use a cheap 7 bit or 8 bit ADC to acquire the pitch-bend lever position, so the transmitted pitch bend message will be quantized to 128 steps. Looks like you need to find a better controller to take advantage of the LP’s fine resolution!"

The good news is that if indeed it's a Novation issue, I have a 'secret' contact at a major U.S. based retailer that has a relationship with Novation and may be able to get this addressed or at least confirmed that it's working as 'designed'. Based on this, you may want to swap the Novation back for something else. My comments about about how

I can't speak for other keyboards but I do trust what Amos told me and Olivier has confirmed that MidiPal is indeed reporting the controllers data properly.