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I enjoy playing the Eigenharp through either the built in samplers/sound fonts or via VSTs more than playing patches through MIDI.

In the first case, playing seems more fluid and "real" feeling. Via MIDI, the playing is much more touchy and twitchy. This doesn't really seem to be specific to any patch, except for pads which aren't noticeably affected as one may imagine.

Anyone have suggestions on setting changes I could make in the MIDI Router which may help to even out the differences? Setting decimation to 10 doesn't seem to affect this.

TIA

Randy

Hi Randy

If you're routing over an actual DIN style old fashioned MIDI cable, a decimation of 10 is more like a minimum than anything extreme. Each key on an Eigenharp generates data at around 2000 times a second, and it generates three pieces of data each time. To give you an idea how slow old style MIDI is, it runs at 31.25 k baud, which means it can only ship around one note on every millisecond or so (a little less in a perfect world, but not much less, so only 1000 notes/second at maximum). If you send poly aftertouch this data is doubled, so the note rate is halved if not more, and if you start mapping other controller streams it gets progressively worse. As Chris points out, DIN MIDI cables are really slow - I'd turn the decimation up further if you're playing with much polyphony at all and even then you're going to experience a noticeable latency after playing more than one note. It's not good, but we have to keep in mind that MIDI was invented for the 6502, a 1MHz 8 bit microprocessor. 31.25k was speedy then, this was when a 2400 baud modem was near state of the art.

Years ago (we're talking mid 1980's here) there used to be a great little trick using the slow MIDI cable data rate. Yamaha used to make a DX7 rack mount thing, 3U high with individual DX7's in little vertical modules - you could have 8 of them in one rack. The DX7 didn't have a MIDI 'Thru' port, just an 'Out', so the MIDI data was even slower as it had to be shipped in and out of each module by it's weedy little 8 bit CPU. If one programmed a slightly different piano patch into each module and wired the MIDI in and out of them in series a great (sounds very 80's nowdays) electronic piano sound could be achieved, especially if you panned each module separately - the time delays and sonic spread made it very rich at a time when rich sounds were harder to find. A friend of mine used this (although he might have been using a Fairlight sample of it I'm not sure) when producing Roger Waters's 'Radio Kaos' album, on the track 'The Tide Is Turning'. Listen to that on a nice set of speakers, you'll see what I mean.


John

I will add that I don't think this is a EigenD problem at all, as it is performing very well with all of the VSTs I'm using. As I mentioned, the VSTs are producing fluid playability. It's the synths in the MID-controlled DAW that are twitchy.

I think this is probably some tweaking that I need to do within Reason or maybe in the MIDI Router. As I'm yet unfamiliar with all of the effects of various parameter changes, I wanted to run my question by here as I know there are many knowledgeable folks here.

Randy

Sorry. 'Twitchy' is not a very descriptive term. A better way to describe this might be that the note attack is abrupt. There is a velocity change, but the initial note attack is often much more aggressive than I would like, and more than what occurs when playing the VSTs. I have adjusted pitch bend so it's in an acceptable range.

Randy

Thanks, John. Yes, that gives me a good place to begin. It probably is something within Reason's synths that I can adjust. As some reading here this morning has discovered (if I understand), communication between EigenD and a VST is through MIDI, it would not necessarily point to an adjustment in EigenD. Though it's good to know where in EigenD I could make adjustments.

Randy

OK. I spent some more time with Reason and the Tau today. Here's what I noticed:

Depending on the patch, its default pitch bend range could be anywhere from a semitone to an octave. The "twitchy-ness" I mentioned was noticeable in the patches with an octave pitch bend and not with others. That's what had me confused, as some patches played well and others not.

I reduced the pitch bend range in Stage from 1 to .3 and now have more consistent playability between VST and DAW patches.

Thanks for pointing me toward a solution, all. Appreciated.

Randy