midi clock

[simeon]

i have midi clock feeding my eclipse and a few other units in my rack. when i send control change data (which is merged with the clock data upstream of the eclipse) the tempo on the eclipse varies as much as 6-10 bpm in either direction while the cc data is being sent. other units downstream of the eclipse are unaffected and maintain a steady tempo.

if i have any parameters set to t_rate, i obviously get variation while the cc data is being sent. this can cause delays with high feedback levels to "warble" or even re-pitch (analog delay) a few cents sharp or flat. i was hoping that the version 4 software would handle midi clock better, but it seems not to be the case. any chance of a fix for this, because it's driving me nuts!

btw – i'm using a kenton midi merge-4, which is a high quality, powered midi merge box – http://www.kentonuk.com/products/items/utilities/m-merge4.shtml

sim

[IDeangelis]

Hi Simeon

sorry to hear about that.

Please do a test. Could you have the Eclipse connected alone to the MIDI Clock AND CC source?

That would show what is not behaving correctly.

Thanks

cheers

Italo

[simeon]

hi italo. i connected my novation remote zero directly to the eclipse as it can send clock and cc messages simultaneously without merging. the eclipse tempo remained rock steady no matter how much cc data i sent! it must be the midi merger then..dammit…i just bought it to replace my old philip rees one (and it wasn't cheap), because i thought it would do a better job! i should have known the eclipse wasn't at fault. ho hum…will i ever get this to work?

sim

[IDeangelis]

Hi Simeon

I have a bad feeling about this. MIDI is a slow and old serial protocol…so the more stuff you send thru the pipeline the slower you can expect things to work. You may want to try, if possible and easy to do, different MIDI merge units…..

sorry, man!

best

Italo

[simeon]

yes, i know…midi is rubbish….especially clock. i have contacted kenton about my unit…it may be faulty…i expected it to be able to handle a simple task like merging clock and cc data without corrupting the clock data!

thanks fr our help, italo

sim

[simeon]

ok, so i just had an interesting conversation with a tech at Kenton who tried to replicate my problem and couldn't. he said the clock was rock solid when sending controller data at the same time to his test devices. he wondered whether the eclipse wasn't happy about the way the merger was interleaving the midi data.(something about "sometimes data is merged after the first byte, which is allowable, but maybe the eclipse doesn't like it" (sorry, can't remember what he said exactly)

is there anything i can do regarding the eclipse – any secret settings i can change to help?

my novation sends clock and cc data at the same time, but doesn't cause a tempo shift in the eclipse when connected directly, so perhaps it's merging the data in a different way?

have you come across this before? any help or advice i can give the kenton tech with the new firmware he's writing?

sorry to be a pain italo, but i'd love to get this working!

sim

[simeon]

additional info – the tech just came through with this –

To illustrate what I was talking about, a typical controller message
might be

B0 07 20 (CC7 value 20h on channel 1)

merging with a MIDI clock message it may look like

B0 07 20 F8 - the Eventide should have no problem with that

but it could possibly receive one of these other possibilities 

B0 F8 07 20
or
B0 07 F8 20

as it is permitted for real-time messages (clock) to be interleaved
between the bytes of a normal message and this is what could be causing the eclipse problems

he's going to write a firmware update to prevent this interleaving - do you think that might solve the problem?

best

sim

[IDeangelis]

Hi Sim

really hard to say what the quirk may be here. I haven't seen this before simply because MIDI merging is almost an "obsolete" technique these days.

Maybe Nick knows better about the bits.

all the best

Italo

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