Extraneous midi output data - KymaControl or Kyma?

Question

Hi, I'm sending midi out of Kyma via KymaControl's vPacarana routing to Ableton where it gets send to my Moog synth.  Everytime I run a midioutput sound it plays for a split second, then sends a bunch of extraneous data including a cc7 zero message which causes my Moog to go to zero volume...once I manually turn the Moog's volume knob back up it works.  

I've been using midi in Ableton for years and am confident the problem isn't anything between it and the Moog (and the Moog is not sending midi back into Ableton). I've verified the issue is midi coming in from kyma by recording the midi and you can see from the screenshot the extraneous data.  In this instance this is the generic 'MIDIOutputController' prototype sending midi.

KymaConnect seems to be working in all other ways - any ideas? Can anyone else reproduce this or is midi working as expected for everyone else?

 

Answer 1

From the Edit menu > Preferences, Performance, set External Controller to none (It sounds like you may have MotorMix enabled).

Comments

Ah of course, I forget Motormix sends on channel 1. Presumably I can set the midi output of my sound to send on 2 and then it won’t interfere with the motormix? !

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Yes, setting the Kyma Sound's MIDI output channel to other than channel 1 will work, provided you also change the Ableton track's MIDI input channel from Omni to the same channel.

Answer 2

It is worth noting that any of the bi-direction MIDI VCS control surface drivers will send MIDI that is merged with MIDI that a Kyma Sound is sending. So not only does the MotorMix VCS driver send on MIDI channel 1, but the BCF2000 driver and the Echo driver can also send MIDI on various MIDI channels. All of this MIDI data is sent by the Paca(rana) to all connected MIDI devices, including USB, FireWire, and MIDI-over-OSC. So KymaConnect's vPacarana, as well as any of its active EXT Midi ports, receive all of this data.

The VCS sends MIDI whenever a VCS widget that is mapped to the active control surfacechanges. A complex VCS, for example a step sequencer with vertical sliders for each step value, can generate a good deal of MIDI data when a snapshot changes. Also the MotorMix VCS driver periodically sends two somewhat large SYSEX commands about once every minute to refresh the LCD.

The VCS MIDI data and the MIDI output from Kyma Sounds compete for the same MIDI bandwdith. When the VCS driver sends at the same time as a Kyma Sound the added VCS MIDI may introduce timing jitter in the Kyma Sound's MIDI output. So for timing-critical Kyma Sound MIDI output it is best to disable the VCS control surface driver.

Comments

Thanks! I do have some large VCS so I’ll give that a shot and see if performance improves. It would a shame to lose VCS control though; no point having midi output if I can’t control it! Cheers