Polyphony note stealing solved

[tull]

We had a problem with major note stealing and a tough time figuring out the solution. Using Combi mode we had eight timbres on midi channel 1 and eight timbres on midi channel 2. Channel 2 midi data was being received from an external MIDI controller keyboard.

There were only two timbres unmuted on channel 1 though and only one timbre unmuted on channel 2 so effectively only three timbres / programs being used.

We found that when we played the external keyboard on channel 2 and then hit more notes on channel one on the krome keyboard it would steal the notes and cut them out from the second keyboard.

It appears to be a design flaw that we discovered because the muted channels are also eating up sound engine resources and causing these dropouts. When I change the muted channels to a different channel like midi channel 16 all of a sudden the unmuted channels had no more note stealing. Unless there's a reason for these muted channels to be generating audio like for some other routing that I can't think of, I can't imagine why this design makes any sense.

Anyways take away is that for any of the 16 timbres in a Combi, make sure that if they are receiving midi data that you're going to be using the sound out of them. Otherwise simply change those timbres to an unused midi channel so they are not receiving midi data and firing up the sound engine. It's like night and day. Our normal setup is a split on channel one between two timbres like piano and bass and then a third timbre that's on midi channel 2 for strings or horns or something. Since we are only using three timbres total it seemed very odd to us to be running out of polyphony but sure as hell we were. Simply change all the midi channels for unused timbres to a midi a channel that's not receiving any data and you'll be gold. I hope this helps somebody else and I bet it applies to Kronos and others also.

[dfahrner]

Useful info, tull...a minor point: the word you want to use is "timbre" (pronounced "tam-brah", from the French), which in English means tone or tone quality; not "timber", like a log...I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK...

df

[tull]

thanks, I updated the spelling. Used voice recognition for the orig post. Thanks.

[bpoodoo]

Simply change all the midi channels for unused timbres to a midi a channel that's not receiving any data and you'll be gold.

Good suggestion, and good practice in general I'd say to map each track to its own MIDI channel, unless you're intentionally layering them.

Another potential solution to ensure internal sound engine resources are not used for a given track is to set the track's status to OFF, EXT, or EXT2.