Ableton Midi CC and AX8 CPU conundrum!

H

hiim_kyle

New Member
Hey Guys,

So I recently stumbled upon an interesting discovery/bug/(I might not know what im doing) when trying to send midi CC information from my computer to control a filter block.
My main patch is maxed out as far as CPU usage goes, it hangs around 86% at all times. I have a filter block in the patch and I want to send Midi CC from Ableton Live to control the Frequency of a lowpass filter. I set the Frequency modifier to "external 5" and I am controlling CC#20 from Ableton. The routing is good, the midi is being send to the modifier and the frequency is being modified.

HOWEVER, there is extreme latency between the information being sent from Ableton and being received by the AX8. I am sending a linear sweep from 0 - 100 and my filter is jumping in chunks to try and keep up with Ableton. If I press play and then immediately press stop, the modifier in AX8 continues to sweep forward to try and catch up to the point where the Midi CC information was stopped.

Now where this gets interesting is I immediately decided to try this exact same thing in logic and the problem is fixed; no latency, smooth sailing. I then reopened Ableton Live and created a new patch with only the Filter block and again, no latency, smooth sailing. The problem seems to occur when the cpu usage of the patch hits around 70%.

So I guess the problem is with Ableton? But it also seems to be with the AX8 as patch cpu directly affects how smoothly the Midi CC information is being received. I've tried tampering with absolutely every preference setting within Ableton and nothing has helped the situation at all.

Any Ableton users out there experience anything like this?
 
I know it has been mentioned in the past (for Axe Fx) that controllers get de-prioritized when CPU load is high. This can cause "jerky" or lagging changes.

One thing to check might be to make sure Ableton is sending only on the midi channel your AX-8 is set to, and that the AX-8 is not set to "omni" for midi channel.
 
philipacamaniac said:
Use MIDI Monitor to spy on the output of both Ableton and Logic, to see if there is any difference in the messages they are sending.

Also worth trying different CCs and different AX8 parameters as a test.
Click to expand...

Hey Phillip, I tried your suggestions but nothing weird showed up in midi monitor when I tested sending the CC data from Logic and Ableton.
Also, changing the modulation source and using different CC values made no difference as well!


unix-guy said:
I know it has been mentioned in the past (for Axe Fx) that controllers get de-prioritized when CPU load is high. This can cause "jerky" or lagging changes.

One thing to check might be to make sure Ableton is sending only on the midi channel your AX-8 is set to, and that the AX-8 is not set to "omni" for midi channel.
Click to expand...

Thats interesting for sure, but doesnt explain why one DAW is handling it better than another. I changed the midi channels on both the AX8 and Ableton (and tried omni) no difference was noticed.
 
hiim_kyle said:
Hey Phillip, I tried your suggestions but nothing weird showed up in midi monitor when I tested sending the CC data from Logic and Ableton.
Click to expand...

So when spying on the Ableton MIDI output and sending a stream of CC messages, you're only seeing CC values from 0-127 on that specific CC on that specific channel, nothing else? Does MIDI Monitor show the stream at approximately the same speed as when sending from Logic (not faster and not laggy)? Something doesn't add up and it seems to be on the Ableton side.
 
When spying on the output, yes, I just see the constant stream of values from 0-127. Both Logic and Ableton are identical.
However, where I AM seeing a difference is when I have MIDI sources - AX8 MIDI selected.
This is sending a constant stream of this depending on where the modulation left off (where I hit stop in the DAW):

15:28:44.805 From AX8 MIDI SysEx Fractal Audio 9 bytes F0 00 01 74 08 39 5E 6A F7

And when I run the modulation a few of the end values change along with the CC data changing. (Logic)
26605-493638db5093cfad5ab850182abcc335.jpg


However, When I run the same CC information through Ableton I get this:

26606-94ef16df7a2d0962bfa1b315961f7776.jpg


These groups of 2 longer lines that read 52 bytes instead of 9. They seem to occur randomly.
Also, when I stop the DAW the values continue to keep changing for a period of time to catch up to where the DAW left off. This does not happen with the readings from logic, they stop incrementing immediately.
 

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Sounds like a MIDI feedback loop somewhere.

Make sure the track in Ableton doesn't have the AX8 selected as the MIDI From in addition to MIDI To.

Screen Shot 2017-02-05 at 4.19.18 PM.png

Also make sure you don't have "Remote" turned on in Ableton settings for the "Output: AX8 MIDI". You should just need "Track" and possibly "Sync" if you want to use MIDI clock.

You shouldn't be seeing much of anything in MIDI Monitor's "MIDI Source: AX8 MIDI" - that's what the AX8 is sending out, not what it is receiving from Ableton. If you have AX8-Edit open, you're seeing the stream of data being sent from the AX8 to AX8-Edit. Quit AX8-Edit and see if that clears up the skipping.
 
MisterE said:
The Ax8's doesn't work well with an external MIDI stream.
Click to expand...

Well that's just not true.

I'm not having any problems at all sending real time streams of MIDI CC from Ableton, Logic, Reason or MainStage, which is why I'm trying to help the OP. The problem with the Gordius is an unrelated issue where it sends exorbitant amounts of data (more than the SysEx streams from AX8-Edit even).
 
philipacamaniac said:
Sounds like a MIDI feedback loop somewhere.

Make sure the track in Ableton doesn't have the AX8 selected as the MIDI From in addition to MIDI To.

View attachment 37912

Also make sure you don't have "Remote" turned on in Ableton settings for the "Output: AX8 MIDI". You should just need "Track" and possibly "Sync" if you want to use MIDI clock.

You shouldn't be seeing much of anything in MIDI Monitor's "MIDI Source: AX8 MIDI" - that's what the AX8 is sending out, not what it is receiving from Ableton. If you have AX8-Edit open, you're seeing the stream of data being sent from the AX8 to AX8-Edit. Quit AX8-Edit and see if that clears up the skipping.
Click to expand...

Tried this with the AX8 midi output source as well as my Scarlett 18i20 output source (which is where I'm sending the midi from). I have played around with every combination of Track/Sync/Remote. I have also tried my Scarlett 2i4 interface to see if the issue was with the interface. No change unfortunately. SO STRANGE.
 
That's unusual for sure. Can you take screenshots of your Ableton MIDI preferences, and also of the MIDI track settings in Ableton (the input and output)?
 
philipacamaniac said:
That's unusual for sure. Can you take screenshots of your Ableton MIDI preferences, and also of the MIDI track settings in Ableton (the input and output)?
Click to expand...

26635-c576b3cd7c864c6cab1a287d3490de42.jpg
26636-52e9169dc1842edf3fc8f572834611f1.jpg
26637-e20659ea267df6f611b4256353928d27.jpg


Definitely unusual!
Let me know if you think of anything else :) thanks a ton for all the help so far Philip!
 

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Old thread I know but did you ever get to the bottom of this? Looking to use the Ax8 solely with Ableton with multiple midi CC stuff for live and don't want to sell my x3 strymon pedals for it if it's not working as smoothly!

Thanks
 
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