Just trying Dorico Elements 3.5 for the first time, and I’m experiencing a strange problem - I’m noticing that notes are sometimes missing, after recording MIDI live. I have tried it with MIDI Thru enabled and disabled - same either way.
With Thru enabled, I disable Local Control on my keyboard, and DURING the recording, I do not observe any missing notes.
I’m actually noticing similar symptoms with another notation application, so it’s looking like a system problem.
On the other hand, a DAW (Reaper) is working fine. (although in order to get the best quantization results in Reaper, I have to delay all recorded MIDI events by about 80ms, and THEN do the quantization - that seems like a huge delay to have to compensate for! I am using Reaper’s inbuilt metronome during the recording).
Setup: Dell XPS 15 9560, Ultimate performance plan
Yamaha P-515 digital piano, connected via USB
I am using pure MIDI - no VSTs.
Question: with MIDI Thru enabled, does the MIDI driver do the echoing, or is it done by the application? (I suspect the latter)
Thanks. I’ve already had a look at the MIDI stream a bit in a standalone instrument - Pianoteq, and I can’t see anything wrong.
What I really need to do is capture the raw MIDI that Dorico received, wait for the problem to occur, and then inspect THAT MIDI stream. (I know MIDI-OX can be used for that type of thing, but I’ve never tried it yet)
It would be good if Dorico itself had a raw MIDI dump facility actually.
Interesting! It’s working wonderfully with MIDI-OX running, but as soon as I close down MIDI-OX, I get missing notes again.
I notice “Active Sense” messages are being transmitted by the keyboard - is it possible that MIDI-OX is filtering these out, and those messages are causing the problem for Dorico? (I certainly haven’t tried to get MIDI-OX to filter anything out yet)
If a transmitting device using active sense doesn’t send any other MIDI data for 0.3 seconds, it sends an active sense message to say “I’m still working OK”. That seems harmless enough, but…
If a receiving device that handles active sense messages receives one, it assumes there will be more coming from the same source, and if it doesn’t receive another message in the expected time frame it terminates any notes previously sent that are still playing, assuming the device has been switched off so it will never get proper “note off” messages to end them!
That might account for your random missing notes, if the timing is going wrong somehow.
Usually the best thing to do with active sense is disable it. There should be a setting on your keyboard do to that.
Dorico does have a mechanism for saving a copy of the MIDI that you record, so hopefully that means you can recover the things you recorded, but also if you have a case that isn’t working, you can send to us. Open a File Explorer window and type %TEMP% in the path bar, then navigate to the Dorico 3.5 directory. There should be a subdirectory called “MIDI captures”. What you can then do is create a new solo piano project in Dorico, add a number of empty bars and then switch to Play Mode. You can drag and drop the MIDI file onto the lane in Play Mode.
Given that you had a very high latency in Reaper that suggests that you may need to set a similar latency value in Dorico too, in Preferences > Play > Recording > MIDI input latency compensation. Try recording just playing on the beat and tweaking the value until the notes in play mode are aligned to the barline.
Thanks for the rapid assistance everyone.
As far as I can tell, I can’t disable Active Sense transmission on the P-515 - I’ve tried disabling SYSEX and “System Realtime” transmission, but the messages are still sent.
It appears that in the worst case, I’ll have to run a MIDI filter (such as MIDI-OX) - that is an acceptable workaround for me.
Aside from this problem, I like the look of Dorico so far, and the documentation is excellent.
Dorico does filter out sysex and active sensing so it shouldn’t be a problem. If the capture files that I mention above don’t have any missing notes then that suggests that the MIDI side is fine, and it’s just a matter of setting the latency correctly.
Ok I’ll follow your instructions re the capture files and send to Support. Just btw, the notes are missing even when I play back using “Played durations”.
I don’t think I’ll need nearly as much (if any) latency compensation in Dorico, but I will have a look at that closely.
I have uploaded a project with one missing note. In Reaper, the note IS present. The timing looks good to me - I do not feel that I need to add any MIDI latency compensation in Dorico.
If I drag the MIDI file onto the lane in a new Dorico project, the offending note is still missing.
The missing note is NN 59, in measure 9, beat 2. (the pattern that I’m playing is obvious)
Looks like I have to contact my Steinberg distributor for official support, so I’ll just use this forum for the time being. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12Jsowy2NgXgOn4KkwXQg9e0dO-Re3RUM?usp=sharing
This does appear to be a latency issue - I’ve opened the MIDI file in Cubase and all the notes look to be about 30ms early. I tried shifting them back by 30ms and saving the file, then loaded that into Dorico and all the notes now appear. So whatever latency setting you currently have in Dorico, try reducing it by about 30ms. I’ve attached the adjusted MIDI file.
There is a bug here, which I’ll log, but experimenting with getting the correct latency should let you get better results.
Regarding support, generally you will get very good support on the forum - there’s a very good community here. Also, I wrote the MIDI import feature, so this report has got to me a lot faster than if you had gone through your distributor. MIDI Capture.zip (1.36 KB)
Thanks Paul - excellent!
I haven’t entered anything in the MIDI latency field yet - it’s at zero. I haven’t tried yet, but given that the notes are early, does that mean I need to enter a negative value? (will it accept that?)
Yes, the field accepts a negative value. But if the notes are early, use a positive value. The field represents the amount of latency that a note needs to align to the beat.
Looking at the documentation, there doesn’t seem to be any way to disable Active Sense.
It’s a bit odd that a modern keyboard is still generating it. It was useful back in the day when MIDI cables were for one-directional data transfer only and had non-locking connectors, and you had a rats nest of identical and unlabeled cables connecting your MIDI devices.
If you were playing live on stage and somebody tripped over a cable and pulled out a plug, at least you didn’t have some notes left stuck on while you were trying to guess which synth in the rack was playing them, because Active Sense killed them as soon as it noticed the cable was disconnected.
But with MIDI over USB cables and wireless data links it is probably past its sell-by date now.
Paul: I’m still getting missing notes - they occur more often playing normal music, because I’m not playing as accurately.
I’ve gone through that procedure you referred to, and I’ve bumped the latency up to 40ms. I’ve also tried varying it up & down, but I always get missing notes, and of course, if I vary it too much, the notes then quantize on to the wrong beats as well. You said there’s a bug, so I’ll see how I go when that’s been addressed. In the meantime this isn’t preventing me from working.
By the way, I suspect as I get more skilled with the package (I’m a raw beginner), I’ll do less MIDI input, and more keyboard & mouse input. However, I’d like to get the MIDI input working as well as it can.
I can upload more test recordings if you like.
If you have any other MIDI files that have missing notes, then please do attach them, along with a note to say which bar contains the missing notes, and I can add to the list to look at.
I’ve found the problem I think. My keyboard has a tri-sensor action, which is meant to simulate the double-escapement of a grand piano. In what is, I think, a pretty ugly hack, it sends contiguous Note-Ons, for repeats where the key is not lifted up far enough. (i.e - for legato repeats, where the dampers don’t fall back on the strings in between)
When the key IS lifted fully, it will then spit out all the outstanding Note-Offs in a burst.
Yamaha has done it like this for a long time I believe.
I don’t see any way to turn this behaviour off.
I’ll be expecting a fix for this by tomorrow. Thanks.
No - it’s not the only problem. Dorico is definitely not detecting these partial repeats, but it’s still missing normal notes.
I think it’s best if I just wait for you to fix the acknowledged bug first, because I’m confident that the problem is simply my sloppy playing, so perhaps when it’s fixed, I’ll see the missing notes, but not in my desired rhythmic position - and that will then be my problem.
The partial repeat thing won’t occur very often I don’t think - I don’t do that kind of repeat very often.
EDIT: just btw, when I tried a Roland FP60, which also has a tri-sensor action, I noticed that it transmitted back to back Note-Off & Note-On pairs for legato repeats. This is much easier for DAWs to handle, but there is actually some logic in how Yamaha do it, IMHO.
