(3rd party issue) Notes “dropped” when generated by MIDI plugins

1. Summary/Title
Notes are audibly dropped from MIDI plugins which generate consecutive notes.

2. Description

  1. Start a new project
  2. Create a MIDI track
  3. Add a MIDI effect plugin which can generate notes, e.g. Atom 2
  4. Add consecutive quarter notes to Atom, up to the loop point, e.g.

  1. Make sure Launch is enabled in Atom and hit play in Cubasis.
  2. You should be able to hear that there are dropped notes as the Atom pattern loops.
  3. To confirm this you can use another Atom instance after this one in the chain to record the output, e.g.

Observations:

  • EDIT: I forgot to mention a very important point that when freezing a track then all notes are present and correct. This includes when I’m using one Atom sending to another Atom in the chain to trigger Atom patterns. I hear problems with patterns being triggered correctly when just hitting play on the transport but everything is perfectly rendered if I freeze the track. I need whatever is happening under the covers when freezing to happen when playing realtime.

  • The same MIDI played from the CB3 timeline records into Atom without dropping notes:

  • I see this issue when using other plugins as the note producer and recorder. For example, Helium as the producer or recorder. ChordJam as the producer and either Atom or Helium as the recorder. Basically any app which can output the same note consecutively can be affected by this issue.

  • I do not see this issue in, for example, AUM. Here one instance records MIDI perfectly from the other:

3. Expected Results
Data generated by MIDI plugins should be transmitted through the MIDI chain with the same accuracy as MIDI being sent from the CB3 timeline. This is especially important when using Atom for pattern triggering as this relies on consecutive notes being reliably sequenced so that patterns are reliably triggered.

4. Actual Results
Notes are either seemingly dropped or their lengths are incorrectly very short.

5. Environment
Air 4, latest CB 3.3, iOS 14.4.2

1 Like

Further testing suggests that this issue is caused by CB3 sometimes getting the order of note on/off confused when passing on the output from a MIDI generator in the effects chain. Here is the output of StreamByter for a note which I can see was “missed” in the recording output:

I have highlighted the notes which I think have been received in the wrong order.

I reported this issue already shortly after release of 3.3. I have this issue with my external sequencer Arturia BeatStep pro. Sometimes notes are dropped. If it happens to a note off message then you have a hanging note. AFAIK the fix for this is scheduled for the upcoming 3.3.1 release.

Thanks @krassmann , fingers crossed!

And the 3.3.1 update is planned to arrive sometime soon…

@LSlowak I’m afraid the 3.3.1 release did not fix this issue for me. The recreate as described in my post still fails. Here is a new screenshot from 3.3.1:

If it helps any then I no longer see the issue when using Helium as the MIDI generator but do when using Atom 2.

I also noticed that MIDI records from the producer plugin to the CB3 timeline correctly. As mentioned in the initial bug report, the track freeze also renders all notes.

Hi @misplaced,

Thanks for your additional report, which helped our engineers to reproduce the problem, which is planned to be resolved in the next update (CBT-2680: Skipped notes when passing from MIDI effect to the next MIDI effect).

As a workaround, does it help to resolve the problem via shortening the notes by a tiny bit?

Best,
Lars

Hi @LSlowak, thanks to you and your team for getting to the bottom of this!

Technically, it does help to shorten the notes but in this scenario the note length is significant as the notes are used as a trigger for Atom 2 patterns. As long as the note is held then the pattern plays so cutting it short would also cut short the pattern being played. In practice this is rarely a problem and so in theory I could work around it by adding a very small gap between notes but for now I am more than happy to wait for the fix from your team.

Hello @LSlowak , I’m having this problem as well and its really getting in the way of me being able to use the app.

I see the last message was back in June. Do you know how soon the update will be released that resolves this issue?

Thanks!

Hi @TwilightSon,

Are you able to share the project with us, to allow our engineers to further evaluate the issue?

If so, please upload the project via Dropbox or similar, and let me have the download link via private message.

Thanks!

Stay well,
Lars

Hi @LSlowak :

Sure thing. I’ll upload it in a few minutes and send it to you. Thanks.

Hi @TwilightSon,

Thanks for your private message and the project download link, which have been shared with the team for further evaluation.

Thanks,
Lars

Hi @TwilightSon again,

As stated in the reply to your private message:
• Audiokit FM2 AU seems to ignore notes during playback
• The issues seems to be unrelated to Cubasis which plays back every note, when the track gets assigned to a different AU instrument (e.g. Phasemaker)

I’ve shared your report with the Audiokit team.

Please make sure to get in touch with them, in order to further discuss the problem and possible solutions.

Thanks
& stay safe,
Lars

I have tested this again using 3.3.3 and I am still seeing this issue. Did the quoted fix make it into 3.3.3?

Thanks.

I also tried that with 3.3 and different AU sequencers. The problem happens with Atom 2 and LK but not with Cykle and Rozeta Rhythm. Note on/off are out of order. Very strange.

Thanks for confirming @krassmann

Hi @krassmann,

I’d suggest to exchange with the app vendors about the issues.
If required, we’re at hand to have them equipped with Cubasis promo codes for testing purposes.

Best,
Lars

@LSlowak I think a couple of issues may have been conflated here. The original bug was accepted as a problem and was reported as being fixed by CBT-2680 but testing shows that the issue is still present in 3.3.3. In the interim period another user reported an issue which was found to be a third party issue but I don’t believe we have come to that conclusion about Atom 2.

Was the mentioned fix included in 3.3.3 and if so then could you please ask your engineers to review the original post with the new build? It is very easy to recreate (you can hear the dropped notes).

Today I looked into this again and I could not reproduce the issue with LK. I don’t know what went wrong during my previous testing but now it was only Atom 2 that I had trouble with. There is something fundamentally going wrong between Atom 2 and Cubasis. Also the looping does completely not work. My Midi monitor was flooded with events by Atom 2 although nothing was running. Now I think this is a very specific issue that only the developer of Atom 2 could resolve with the Cubasis team. Today all my sequencers that I tried except Atom 2 worked fine playing the quarter notes - nothing hanging.