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Frustrations..

Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 7:47 pm
by FearlessFreep
I'm having some serious problems running SL as an AU on a Bus in Mainstage.

It seems like sometimes I will do something, hit a controller pedal or something, and SL will just decide to stop listening to MIDI.

Last time I I hit the pedal I had bound for "pause" and the loop paused, but after that, nothing would work. Neither trig nor mute not pause nor record.

Here's my setup

I'm using MIDI Patchbay to set a patch from my interface device to the SooperLooperAU_in
I'm also using MIDIPipe (http://web.mac.com/nicowald/SubtleSoft/MidiPipe.html) to convert PC messages to NoteOn message to control some changes in Mainstage.

I'm using MIDI Monitor to monitor midi signals (http://www.snoize.com/MIDIMonitor/) and when I hit something on my controller. I notice that I get both the original PC message and the converted NoteOn message. Mainstage handles both; I use some PC messages to convert patches and then some NoteOn messages to change some settings around.

Outside of Mainstage, using Jack and MIDI PatchBay set to send my controller messages to sooperloper_in, everything seems fine.

But in Mainstage, everything will seem cool and then something happens and SL just stops responding to MIDI (or mouse messages...it's weird but I'll press "Record" with the mouse or "Pause" or "Trig" and nothing happens).

There seems to be some magic combination but I haven't figured it out but it's getting pretty frustrating. have a live show Friday ans was hoping to spend the weekend finishing up the touches on my show but it seems like I've spent most of the weekend trying to figure out why Mainstage and SL don't like each other

Re: Frustrations..

Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 8:24 pm
by FearlessFreep
Gah I think I *finally* figured it out, and it's a rather weird combination

OK, I have three channel strips, To have volume set to -inf and I uses the Bus 1 Level to send signal to SL (on Bus 1, based on Sam's video). Those two are for settings I loop. I then use various widgets in Mainstage to manipulate the bus send levels for those Channel Strips. Both of those Channel Strips are used for live instrument parts that I loop (one for bass lines, one for chord/rhythm parts). I have a third channel strip that is used for lead playing. Since I never loop it, iy does not go through BUS 1 and my widgets for controlling it instead control the volume.

and *that* is the issue!

Certain controls in SL will *not* respond if there is no signal coming in.

So if I loop my bass line and then change to my lead patch and solo with that and then hit 'pause' and solo for a few bars and then try to hit "trig" or "record" or even pause "again", SL will *not* respond since there is nothing coming in (since with my lead patch playing I drop my bass patch bus send level to -inf).

The *really* weird part of this is if I hit 'record' and SL doesn't respond for the above reason, if I then switch to my bass patch or something tih a bus send level set decent, then SL will respond to the 'record' I hit before.

SO I think I can work with this now that I've finally figured out what is going on, but I think it's important to note that: SL will not respond to MIDI controller commands if you are not sending it some sorta of signal (even *if* the input threshold is set to -inf)

Re: Frustrations..

Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 2:00 pm
by jesse
You have discovered Mainstage trying to be too smart. What is happening is that it recognizes that there is silence coming from the plugin, and silence on the inputs and has decided not to run it at all! Unfortunately, SL needs to run all the time in order to process events. I recently fixed the problem where this could occur when there was silent input, but maybe I missed a flag that will make sure that the host runs me all the time. I'll look into it.

Re: Frustrations..

Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2009 12:56 pm
by FearlessFreep
"You have discovered Mainstage trying to be too smart"

Yeah, I figured it may actually be a MS->Au plugin interaction issue than something in SL itself.

I'm working around it by just sending all my signals through Bus1

Re: Frustrations..

Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2009 2:17 pm
by aspersemusic
It seems you have a solution already, I just wanted to suggest eliminating all the extra apps you have (jack etc)... you don't need to route with anything other than logic if you don't wish. I know it's not going to fix your problem, but it might make it even easier to work around it.

Re: Frustrations..

Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2009 6:52 pm
by jesse
I think this is purely an interaction between Mainstage and the SL AU plugin. Don't go removing things for no reason.

Re: Frustrations..

Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2009 3:05 pm
by FearlessFreep
I just wanted to suggest eliminating all the extra apps you have (jack etc)...
I'm not suing Jack as I'm using SL as an AU plugin. Other than that, I need everything I'm using.


However I got it all working fine so no problems

Re: Frustrations..

Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 6:07 pm
by markm
I have a similar issue. So... what's the workaround referred to later in this thread?

Thanks,

Mark

[quote="FearlessFreep"]I'm having some serious problems running SL as an AU on a Bus in Mainstage.

I'm using MIDI Patchbay to set a patch from my interface device to the SooperLooperAU_in

But in Mainstage, everything will seem cool and then something happens and SL just stops responding to MIDI (or mouse messages...it's weird but I'll press "Record" with the mouse or "Pause" or "Trig" and nothing happens).

Re: Frustrations..

Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 1:17 am
by jesse
I believe the workaround is to make sure that you are feeding SL some kind of signal all the time, an analog noise floor should be enough... just not digital silence, or Mainstage can decide not to run the plugin at all. SL requires that the host run the plugin in order to handle realtime events. I will eventually look into what is necessary at the AU level to tell the host not to do such "optimizations".