H9: Jumpy MIDI response

[jmargulies]

hey all – i've been searching around for an answer to this but can't seem to find anything. 

i'm converting my expression pedal to MIDI (via a DB11 Switch Dr.) and sending CC 7 to my H9, which I've mapped to "Set Expression Pedal Value." 

I've verified that the MIDI signal I'm sending is good quality, but the H9 only tracks it accurately when I move the pedal slowly. In other words, when the pedal is moved quickly, the H9 simply jumps high to low (or vice versa) without any interpolation. This behavior is reflected in the LED display which shows the value jumping. 

Is this a known issue? Something I've missed in the configuration? I have verified that the MIDI signal contains a full range of values by recording it's output into a DAW and viewing the results, in addition to testing it with other devices with good results. 

thanks! 

j

[LA Keys]

This is most probably because your midi pedal is sending too much data too fast for the H9. Some people are using the Moog MP-201 in a similar way but found out that they have to use the "midi governor" setting on the MP-201 to reduce the data rate sent by the MP-201.

There's a link to a full discussion about using an MP-201, which somehow would apply to using any brand of midi pedal with an Eventide stompbox.

http://forum.moogmusic.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=7668&start=0

Note that the last comment says that reducing the midi data rate did solve the problem, which was the same as what you're experiencing.

LA

[jmargulies]

thank you LA Keys! 

that is very helpful, and also a bummer. 

i'd love to hear someone from Eventide weigh in on this to let us know if this is a design limitation of the H9, or something that will be addressed. 

the notion of the pedal sending "too much data" for the H9 seems hard to believe, since a MIDI monitor reveals that the full sweep of the pedal sends exactly 128 messages (0-127 as you'd expect) not exactly a deluge for a modern digital processor…   

I'd say that the "MIDI governor" feature of Moog's no-longer-made MP-201 pedal is the exception rather than the rule with external MIDI control, and it would be great to know if the H9 will ever be able to keep up.

j

[LA Keys]

jmargulies:

the notion of the pedal sending "too much data" for the H9 seems hard to believe, since a MIDI monitor reveals that the full sweep of the pedal sends exactly 128 messages (0-127 as you'd expect) not exactly a deluge for a modern digital processor…  

Well, I agreed that 128 messages doen't seem much but it appear that this is still too much… for the H9. This make me think that most of the processing power is put toward signal processing, maybe leaving not enough for interaction with controls (physical or via midi)…

I'm pretty sure the DSP engineer at Eventide could improve this by having a tighter loop for the midi input. This also looks like bug to me, consider that many peoples are now using midi-control for many features.

EVENTIDE: Could you please consider looking at the MIDI input processing in order to make it more responsive to incoming messages?

LA

[nickrose]

The main issue here is that as Mr. Keys observes, most of the power of the unit goes towards signal processing.

These are stomp boxes, not PCs or rack units with gigaHertz processors.

If you send it 128 MIDI messages back to back, it will process each one in turn, some of them causing display updates or other significant work, and it will not be instant. Obviously it has various tricks to try and speed things up, but there are limits.

[jmargulies]

oops – duplicate post. 

[jmargulies]

hi nick

i certainly understand that take on the situation, but are we really sure that this is a design limitation of the H9?

MIDI is a technology from 1983, designed with the processors of the day in mind and super-low resolution to match. 128 steps is comically low for this day and age! as we all know, in 1983 terms, the phone in my pocket is a supercomputer. 

i'm not saying all this just to be difficult–it's just really hard for me to wrap my head around the H9 being such a poor performer when compared to the synthesizers, effects, ipads, you-name-it, that i have handy. if this was a stompbox from 20 or 30 years ago, or if I was talking about pummeling it with 20 channels of busy automation from a DAW, i'd let it go and get on with my life. 

if this issue is indeed a design limitation of the H9, it's obviously a disappointment. this means that over MIDI, algorithms like PitchFlex are basically useless, and many other expression-based effects are challenged at best. 

thanks and all best!

j

[jmargulies]

nickrose:

If you send it 128 MIDI messages back to back, it will process each one in turn, some of them causing display updates or other significant work, and it will not be instant. 

hey – just adding one more post here in case clarification is needed.

i'm not asking for instant gratification, nor am i talking about experiencing a little latency. i'm talking about a situation where 128 events are getting sent, and only one is getting processed. the jump is from minimum to maximum with nothing in between.   

j

[nickrose]

My guess is that if you send it the 128 values in quick succession, it will process them all as quickly as it can, and only then allow the resulting parameter changes to ripple through. This means that the last one received is the one you hear.

Obviously, this will not give you the smooth instant ramp you would like, but is probably the way it works. If it activated the parameter changes after every message, it would become seriously slow.

[LA Keys]

nickrose:

If you send it 128 MIDI messages back to back, it will process each one in turn, some of them causing display updates or other significant work, and it will not be instant. Obviously it has various tricks to try and speed things up, but there are limits.

Well, I should say that I somehow disagree with your response 

Here is what I've tried:

Select "Band delay" -> "Over the Rainbow". Original settings kept: Mod depth and filter type are mapped to the expression)

With an expression pedal (analog) you can easily obtain a Wah effect, meaning that the H9 is tracking the pedal very well.

With my mp-201 sending CC 15 mapped to expression on the H9, the response from the H9 is extremely jumpy.

The first result tell me that the H9 pedal have plenty enough processing power to follow an analog pedal.

The second result tell me that the conversion from CC received to the signal needed (voltage?) to actually control the H9 is very sluggish.

Well, you actually did the hard part right: Making a stompbox that is responsive enough to process an external signal from an (analog) expression pedal and react fast enough in realtime

But, then I could hardly be convinced that converting a CC to an analog value need much processing. This is all that is needed to make the H9 usable with external midi control.

Midi CC to CV conversion is a well known process, require minimal processing power and a rate of 0.5ms per CC could be achieved with "well known" design. In your case you don't even need the extreme precision required for most CV controlled instruments (regarding the Hz/V curve).  This is why I would like your DSP engineers to have a look a it.

LA

[jmargulies]

Once again, LA Keys has explained things very well! 

It seems that someone from the DSP side of things should definitely weigh in on this issue.

j 

[jmargulies]

hey – still waiting for a real response from Eventide on this! 

my concern is that you guys consider this issue settled…if it's going to take some time to look into it, that's totally understandable, but please do let us know that you're doing this.

The more i've worked with this problem, the more it becomes totally impossible to believe that the H9 "can't" do what we're talking about here. further testing reveals that the number of messages it takes to overwhelm the H9 is way less than the full range of 128. 

If Eventide doesn't think it's important enough to improve this behavior, that's a different conversation. Please, let's keep the conversation going and get this resolved!!

[nickrose]

jmargulies:

hey – still waiting for a real response from Eventide on this! 

Please observe my response of April 1st – this explains (maybe too tersely – sorry) what is happening.

The comparison of the analog pedal with a MIDI pedal is not helpful – the problem does not occur with the analog pedal because the pedal only reads this when it is ready, while if a MIDI pedal sends it a huge stream of data there is nothing much it can do – if it were to receive the first CC, process it, update the display, change the audio parameters (etc) and then repeat for the next one, the response would be seriously slow.

Instead of this, it buffers the MIDI until it is ready to handle it, then processes all it has, and only then updates the audio and display. The priority is to make sure the audio corresponds to the latest MIDI value received, however fast it is sent.

You may ask why it does not at least update the audio after every CC, but again, this takes time, so the result would be too slow.

It may be possible to improve this behavior in the future, but will not be trivial – for a number of reasons, the machine works in a particular way.

[LA Keys]

I've tested this again an I'm now very confused by the results. 

I've set my MP-201 to "full blast" meaning that the MIDI output is a fast as possible, with no traffic restriction. ("midi governor set to "0")

Here is what I've found:

MODFACTOR -> Q-Wah -> Vintage Wah : works perfect! Same as with an analog expression pedal…

MODFACTOR -> Q-Wah -> Mumbler: very jumpy response.

Then I've realised that on the Vintage Wah there's not a single control with a minimum and maximum value??? I see that "Q-Intensity", "Depth", and "Bottom" are mapped to the expression pedal, but although there's 2 dots there's no arc and moving the expression pedal wil not change anything on the display.

I really don't understand what I'm seing there on the H9 control app??? What's the expression controlling if nothing change on the display? And, what are the meaning of those 2 dots on some control if you cannot change their position? And, the circle are greyd, once you unmap the control it is impossible to map it again, although that doesn't change anything…

Then I does indeed works perfect with the midi expression pedal I have…

I've then unmap all the knobs of the "mumbler" but the "bottom". Leaving only a single pot mapped to the expression pedal. Big difference! This presets now works very well with my midi pedal.

It appears to me that in order to be able to use midi for expression you have to limit the number of controlled parameters (pots mapped to expression) to a minimum.

At this point I should say that the results are "acceptable" to me. Meaning that I believe that I could use midi to control expression succesfullly with most presets, maybe sometimes by reducing the number of pots linked to the expression.

AT this point I'm unsure if I changed anything else on my H9 which could have improved the midi response. Any comments about what you're experiencing would be appreciated. If possible with detailed setting your using.

EVENTIDE: I've mentioned in a previous post the fact that the led ring doesn't update with midi expression received. You said that you added this to your "to-do" list.

I would like to add to this that the display on the H9 Control software doesn't update it's "hot bar" (?). I'm talking here about the "slider" below the pots, on top of the bottom switches.  Just a little annoyance, but I wanted you to know.

LA

[jmargulies]

That's really interesting. However, I've been testing with PitchFlex (in which no expression controls are manually mapped – the expression mapping happens implicitly behind the scenes). I'm pretty sure I've also tested with presets with a single mapped parameter and had the same problem, but I'm gonna sit down and test out your experiments shortly!  

[LA Keys]

jmargulies:

That's really interesting. However, I've been testing with PitchFlex…  

I would be very interested if you give me the detail of the algorytm/presets you're using. I would then be able to try reproducing your result and see what can be done.

Humm, I may have found something (just a teaser for now) …I'll  let you know.

LA

[gkellum]

LA Keys:

I really don't understand what I'm seing there on the H9 control app??? What's the expression controlling if nothing change on the display? And, what are the meaning of those 2 dots on some control if you cannot change their position? And, the circle are greyd, once you unmap the control it is impossible to map it again, although that doesn't change anything…

Yeah, that Vintage Wah preset appears to be messed up.  All of the parameters have grey rings around them because they cannot be assigned to the expression pedal. And they cannot be assigned to the expression pedal because SHAPE is set to EXP PDL.  But as you noticed some of the knobs have two dots which seems to imply that they are mapped to the expression pedal.  I think what happened is that at some point in this presets life SHAPE wasn't set to expression pedal and there were expression pedal mappings, but then someone changed SHAPE to expression pedal.  And one is still seeing the old expression pedal mappings even though they're inactive.  We'll have to do something to clean this up…

[KCStratman]

I have encountered that exact same symptom on several presets of different algorithms. I thought ET had purposely restricted the control of some parameters to suit particular algorithms?

[LA Keys]

gkellum:

Yeah, that Vintage Wah preset appears to be messed up.  All of the parameters have grey rings around them because they cannot be assigned to the expression pedal. And they cannot be assigned to the expression pedal because SHAPE is set to EXP PDL.

Thanks for enlighting me!

I didn't realize that the "SHAPE" parameter could be directly assigned to EXP PDL. My bad, didn't had time to dig deep enough into some of the H9 features.

I actually think that once one understand it it does perfectly make sense that it is both disabled and with 2 dots for the reason you've mentioned. Because of this I'm not sure any cleanup is needed.

LA

[LA Keys]

I've made some more test with my Moog MP-201. Kept the setting for maximum speed midi transfer and got the following:

From worst to best:

ULTRATAP (all the presets): This is really bad, even with minimal midi traffic it jump from 1 to 100%.  The H9 take appear to take several 100ms to update anything.

Any preset with more than 1 parameters linked to EXP:  Almost unusable unless you slooowly move the midi pedal. The more presets linked the worst it is.

Any presets with one parameter linked to EXP: Works good generally, but will not always track rapid changes smoothly. YMMV.

MODFACTOR with SHAPE set to EXP PDL (ex: phaser wah)  or PITCHFACTOR -> PITCHFLEX : In both  case this is without any parameters manually assigned to EXP.  This is working EXCELLENT for me, even with fast pedal motion.

The last results (pitchfactor/modfactor) tells me than Eventide did in fact quite a good job tracking midi input when it is done without having to manually assign a parameter via the conventional mapping procedure.

Modfactor is doing this via the "SHAPE" pot, while the Pitchflex algo is doing it "internally". In both cases the tracking appear to be excellent and certainly better than what could be achieved via manual assigment of a parameters to exp pedal.

While I'm wondering about how important it is to be able to have tons of parameters to follow the quick changes of a midi pedal, I should say that the most important one (ex wah, pitchflex) appear to be already excellent at following midi.

I still believe that being able to quickly control say 4 parameters with a midi pedal would be a "nice to have", and also that based on the performance of pitchflex or the direct assignment of the SHAPE parameter to EXP PDL (modfactor) there's some room for improvement that could be made especially when there's only one parameters assigned to exp.

I would in fact like to have a comparable "performance" from a single parameters assigment, to the pitchflex or shape -> esx pdl.

I hope that knowing those limitation will help others to tweak their presets in a better way, allowing them to use a mid exp pedal in a satisfactory way, and hopefully Eventide will have a look at this eventually.

LA

[nickrose]

I'd like to look at this issue, since it seems to be causing distress, but I need a suitable pedal for testing – I'm not having luck getting hold of those that have been mentioned as causing the problem

1) Moog MP-201 is discontinued.

2) Liquid Foot people are unresponsive.

Can anyone suggest a specific currently available MIDI pedal that they know causes problems with our pedals.

Please don't say "they all do," or "try a DAW," because I can be fairly certain that if I try any generic solution, it will work faultlessly and I shall be none the wiser.

Equally, using a generic pedal with a MIDI converter will have results partly depending on the characteristics of the pedal.

These problems have only started being reported in the last 6 months, so I suspect it may mainly apply to more modern products.

[jmargulies]

I should clarify something–my experience was that the problem could be replicated with Ableton Live as long as I was sending automation that had one breakpoint per MIDI CC value. 

In other words,  "straight line" automation (a line with one breakpoint at each end) did not recreate the problem because, as  MIDI monitor reveals, this particular automation did not send the full range of MIDI values. It thins it out and sends every third or fourth value. 

For this test, I recorded the automation from my expression pedal (A Dunlop Volume X being converted to MIDI with a Decibel Eleven Switch DR.) I wanted to see if the pedal's output looked particularly weird, or was sending any other messages I didn't know about. It also allowed me to test at different tempos to figure out how fast is too fast.

I would be happy to send you a Live set with the automation I'm speaking of. It would be interesting if you see the same results since you'd be sending the exact data generated by my pedal.

Otherwise, I will post more detailed results, and results of other controllers that can recreate the problem when I have a little more time.

[LA Keys]

nickrose:

I'd like to look at this issue, since it seems to be causing distress, but I need a suitable pedal for testing – I'm not having luck getting hold of those that have been mentioned as causing the problem

1) Moog MP-201 is discontinued.

2) Liquid Foot people are unresponsive

You're interest about solving the problem is much appreciated. You guys rock! I've never seen any other manufacturer taking so much time trying to solve problems reported on their forum.

nickrose:

Can anyone suggest a specific currently available MIDI pedal that they know causes problems with our pedals.

Well, I'm just about to buy a behringer FCB1010 if this is required but judging by my results and what others reported it seems to me that any pedal that is sending all the 128 CC at about the same rate of a medium to fast speed wah "pedaling" motion will indeed reproduce the problem (trying hard not not wrote  "they all do")… because any pedal that is able to reduce the midi traffic will get better results. I've experienced an improvement with my MP-201 by reducing the midi data rate but I'm well aware that no other known midi pedal allow that, which is why I've set the midi rate to full speed for my tests.

nickrose:

Please don't say "they all do," or "try a DAW," because I can be fairly certain that if I try any generic solution, it will work faultlessly and I shall be none the wiser.

Oh s**t, I think "almost" said "they all do" 

Well, seriously, if you're able to make it work faultlessly using any solution you want I would be very happy. This is being able to control at least 1 parameter linked to EXP (via manual mapping) with a data rate similar to a medium/fast wha pedaling. If you're able to control 2 parameters "faultlessly" according to the following criteria, you will be my Hero!

Here is what I think is a medium/fast pedaling:

3 cycles per second  (This is 180 BPM)

For each cycles you have 255 CC sent with a value of 0 to 128 down to 0.

(This is 765 CC sent per second)

The result should be an audio that is comparable to what you get with an analog expression pedal. (No noticeable  "zipper" (i.e. jump) effect)

nickrose:

These problems have only started being reported in the last 6 months, so I suspect it may mainly apply to more modern products.

Well, it's actually been a year since the "Lag when controlling knob exp via midi"… But then I believe that there's many reasons why very few peoples reported the problem:

– Very few brands are making Midi exp pedal, but I believe those are getting more popular by now.

– Midi is relatively complex, I'm sure most will simply go with analog pedal because of that.

– It's then only a fraction of your customers that will use such a configuration, but I believe this part is growing partly because of it's use with newer DAW that are getting less expensive, thus more popular.

LA

[nickrose]

I fear I will probably not become your hero. My rough guess is that the pedals should be able to track maybe 100 messages per second. Even this is probably pretty excessive in terms of how it would sound. Note that your 765 CC/sec is most of the MIDI bandwidth (31250/10/2 = 1562), so not many things could either send it or receive that rate.

Maybe what I should do is generate a MIDI CC sawtooth and see at what speed it fails to track it.  But, I'm not totally convinced that this is the problem – that is why I hope for a pedal that is known to cause issues. For example, maybe the messages are too close together, or something.

[LA Keys]

nickrose:

I fear I will probably not become your hero. My rough guess is that the pedals should be able to track maybe 100 messages per second.

Nah, the H9 is doing much better than that. I'm sure of it. I've had EXCELLENT results as I wrote previously with all the pitchflex presets as well as modfactor's presets with the shape parameter set to EXP pedal, as long as there's nothing else manually assigned to the exp pedal.

It's maybe skipping some messages but the result is smooth audio enough at fast pedaling (765 parameters per second). This is in fact what the "governor" feature of the MP-201 do. It simply skip parameters evenly. Which is why it in fact work very well with the H9.  

Ok, let's rethink this a bit. The whole idea is to have a smooth audio progression without audible jump (zipper sound). Sending only even or odd values should certainly be fine. Maybe even only 1/4 of the values is ok. I really cannot tell because I cannot see what the H9 is "digesting", but there's a point where the audio result is plain telling me that it's skipping/jumping too much.

It's certainly also a matter of personal appreciation as I'm sure some will hear a little more this "zipper/jumping" effect, other less. But Let's say for now that to me it sounds good with pitchflex with nothing manually mapped and the modfactor with the only shape set to exp pdl, as I wrote before.

nickrose:

Maybe what I should do is generate a MIDI CC sawtooth and see at what speed it fails to track it.

If you do that I would suggest that you compare the following:

– Pitchflex  (nothing manually mapped)

– Modfactor: Only assign the shape to exp pedal, nothing else.

– Then try any (other) preset with 1 parameter manually mapped

– Then add more parameters manually mapped.

The first two tests should have about the same result. Then even with a single parameter assigned to any other presets appear to have inferior result. There is the real problem I believe.

You can still be my hero if you're able to have the same response with 2 parameters manually mapped, compared to the first 2 tests (pitchflex-modfactor).

But, I would be really happy if only 1 manually mapped parameter would be as good as the pitchflex or modfactor results.  I understand that there's certainly a limit about what could be done and truly appreciate your effort but hope that a single parameter mapping could provide better result.

LA

[jmargulies]

FWIW, this is one of the automation ramps that I tested with at a few different BPMs. it might be tricky to see from the grid, but the sweep is just shy of a quarter note. 

at 130BPM (1/4=461ms) the response is perfect

at 140-150BPM  there's some zippering in the middle

at 160BPM (1/4=375ms) there's no perceptible slide, just sounds like a jump 

this is when testing with the Octave Flexswitch preset of PitchFlex.  my experience lines up with what LA Keys is saying. Ultra tap the worst, multi mapped expression controls next, unmapped expression the best. but I still get unexpected jumps, even when i'm trying to be mindful. i suspect that my (rather loose moving) dunlop pedal can hit some high speeds that other pedals with more tension will not.  

my offer stands to send MIDI files generated from the pedal in question….hope this is helpful! 

[DeanStel121]

I use a Ground Control Pro and 2 x Ernie Ball VPJR.  When the Ernie Ball is direct into the H9, works perfectly.  When mapped through the GCP to send CC02 and the H9 "Set expression value" is set to 02, the H9 will not respond at all to the VPJR.

All other CC mappings from the GCP to the H9 are perfect.  No lag, no issues.  Only the Expression CC will not work.  I tried set to many different CC values and matching the two devices.    

GCP Exp 1 and 2 send messages are one in MIDI track software and with Vox Tonelab, Axe FX, M5 and Torpedo Cab pedals.  Neither will affect any parameter on any preset.  including Vintage Wah or Pitchflex.  I have an upgraded H9 to H9 Max.  

Hope this is of some help.

[LA Keys]

DeanStel121:

I use a Ground Control Pro and 2 x Ernie Ball VPJR  …  When mapped through the GCP to send CC02 and the H9 "Set expression value" is set to 02, the H9 will not respond at all to the VPJR

This should somehow work, but only if you slowly move  the pedal. The problem appear to be that the H9 is not able to respond fast enough to relatively fast motion on the pedal. If you go slow it should respond.

Mr Nickrose: Did you had a chance to test with a MIDI generated CC sawtooth like you mention on a previous post. I believe that some of us really hope that this issue could be resolved…

LA

[nickrose]

I'm afraid that my earlier explanations were correct. This means that it will not be trivial to speed up the response, and there is little point spending time to confirm this.

Note that H9 and recently manufactured 'Factors are faster than earlier 'Factors by about 30%. H9 is significantly faster than TF, but you lose the DSP+FX delay spillover.

When we made the initial design decisions for these pedals, people were not using MIDI for demanding control of stompboxes as they do currently, so our focus was more on sound quality rather than MIDI response.

We will keep this in mind and do what we can, but it is not as simple a thing as some would imagine.

[DeanStel121]

Thanks LA.  Tried slow and very slow, but no response at all on the H9.  Not even skipping.  My H9 does not respond to CC for the expression.

[nickrose]

If the H9 does not respond to DIN MIDI at all, make sure that the USB is disconnected. Otherwise, check the settings. Put RCV CH to omni. Try using the LEARN feature (see UM for more details).

[DeanStel121]

Thanks.  My H9 does respond to all other CC mappings and PC mappings correctly and instantly and with no issues.  It is only the CC mapping to Set Expression Value that it does not respond to at all.  Not even slowly.  I'll try learn mode.  Would auto calibration have such an effect?

[LA Keys]

I really think the problem is not the H9…

I would suggest a few things:

Try setting 2 switches on the GCP to send different values (0-127) for the same CC you've set for expression on the H9. Then push one switch at a time on the GCP and see if the H9 respond… If the H9 respond then something else is wrong in your setup.

Or better: Use a midi software (midi-ox on PC) to see if the GCP is in fact transmitting the correct value.

(Auto calibration has nothing to do with this)

LA

[DeanStel121]

Many thanks again for the responses LA.  I tried assigning the instant access switches and they did trigger either full on or full off on all H9 algorithms, as set by the H9 parameters set to use expression pedal (that is what they are supposed to do).  In fact when there are multiple parameters set to the hot switch on the H9 the GCP switches set all parameters to their full on or full off limits, as programmed.  

But the EXP still as no response on the H9.  So I used Midi Monitor (Mac guy) and got the correct 0 and 127 from the switches as well as 0-127 nice and smooth from both the GCP Exp pedals (I have 2 connected).  So the GCP is sending the correct data.  The same set-up works just fine with a Vox Tonelab, Axe-FX Ultra, Line 6 M5, and a very old Yamaha voice unit.  Pedal does exactly as programmed.  In fact just re-assigning the channel lets me access these other units and they work perfectly.

Interesting..

[jamongrande]

Jumping to this thread from http://forum.eventide.com/cs/forums/p/9487/45312.aspx#45312

Im having the same issue with a v5 Pitchfactor (older unit). Of interest to Factor users, I reverted back to v3.5 software (I don't use H9 control, but rely on multiple midi controllers). I, able to get better response when adjusting multiple parameters simultaneously with the expression in the older software. The PitchFlex still jumps, though I don't have to move quite as slow. 

Given that I'm not using H9 control and can't say I hear a significant difference in the v5 algorithms' sounds (that was the update I was really hoping for), I might keep 3.5 for now. 

the next workaround will be to send the expression stream through another device that will translate it into the PF expression control. Perhaps that little bit of latency will improve the PitchFlex response. I'll post my results once done. 

joe

[Lati]

Is this still an issue? I can see in website that H9 has “full MIDI compatibility”, if cc messages don’t work properly, I would say that this is false advertising.

[rorytheherb]

Lati wrote:

Is this still an issue? I can see in website that H9 has “full MIDI compatibility”, if cc messages don’t work properly, I would say that this is false advertising.

I’m not sure it would qualify as false advertising, but it sure is a disappointment. Quoting nickrose: “When we made the initial design decisions for these pedals, people were not using MIDI for demanding control of stompboxes as they do currently”

the question then becomes: Why did Eventide implement half-baked features? 

[Lati]

I’m not sure it would qualify as false advertising, but it sure is a disappointment. Quoting nickrose: “When we made the initial design decisions for these pedals, people were not using MIDI for demanding control of stompboxes as they do currently”

the question then becomes: Why did Eventide implement half-baked features? 

[/quote]

Well, since the midi problems are still reality and people nowadays expect full midi compability when stated, perhaps Eventide should revise their information in the website.

[kenhan]

i’m glad i saw this thread as i’ve just experienced this. i’ve connected an expression pedal to Source Audio Soleman to send midi expression. i was hoping to be able to use the expression pedal for multiple pedals via midi. i was very disappointed that this was unusable for h9. and reading the previous post i’m left wondering if this is the case with other company’s midi function as well.

[JCR]

H9 Firmware H9_4.8.0 was the last version that handled midi data without hickups. You could send PC’s to it, set three or more parameters values to a different value, for example mix, decay and feedback at the same time and all was handled ok, including setting the expression pedal by midi messages.

Starting from firmware H9_5.0.1 the H9 has problems handling midi data received from an external device. You can not send PC’s and set several parameters at the same time anymore. A PC and a CC to enable/disable the H9 is handled, but nothing more. It seems that they cut down the midi processing time a lot and the midi behaviour is flawed ever since. I have mentioned this several times to Eventide, but it has not improved very much. If it was not for the newer algo’s I would put back version H9_4.8.0 right away.

Please Eventide: make the H9 a worthy midi pedal again as it was with firmware H9_4.8.0.

 

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