[solved] FC-12 starts at Preset Tempo although preset is set to use Global Tempo

I

Ingo

Inspired
The title basically says it: If I switch to a preset that uses the global tempo, the tap-tempo button on my FC-12 shows the preset BPM (and flashes with the preset tempo frequency). The issue obviously resolves itself when first tapping, but the whole point of the "global tempo" use is to start correctly when the preset is recalled.

Note: the correct tempo is used internally, but it is irritating to see the wrong tempo, and worse, it leads to wrong count-ins etc.

There seems to be a similar issue within Axe-Edit's Control block display, but I will re-check and post that separately.
 
I cannot reproduce this. Can you please send me your "System + Global Blocks + FC" backup and preset(s) backup from FractalBot? Then I will look into it more. Thanks!
 
Ingo said:
The title basically says it: If I switch to a preset that uses the global tempo, the tap-tempo button on my FC-12 shows the preset BPM (and flashes with the preset tempo frequency). The issue obviously resolves itself when first tapping, but the whole point of the "global tempo" use is to start correctly when the preset is recalled.

Note: the correct tempo is used internally, but it is irritating to see the wrong tempo, and worse, it leads to wrong count-ins etc.

There seems to be a similar issue within Axe-Edit's Control block display, but I will re-check and post that separately.
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I haven’t seen this.

What firmware are your Axe and FC each using?
 
Thanks for your answers. AxeFx III is firmware 5.08, FC-12 on firmware 1.06. Just re-checked the behavior described above.. I am now sending the files to @BryantP.
 
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I am seeing this too. Same firmwares. Just fired up my unit tonight for the first time. It’s particularly noticeable if you deliberately slow the tempo in the preset and then switch back to it after going to another preset and putting in a fast global tempo on the fc12 the global tempo shows on the front of the axe fx 3 but the preset tempo is displayed on the fc 12 so they are totally out of sync.

Thanks

James
 
However if you enter the tempo using the tap tempo tab of the Axe FX 3 this effect does not occur. It seems the Axe Fx 3 is sending the preset tempo value to the FC12 but actually running the global tempo correctly as set in the tempo settings as “use Global” which is displayed on the front panel correctly. There is a clear mismatch and I suspect the bug is that the unit is sending the preset tempo value when the preset is loaded rather than just following the Global tempo
 
Thanks Bryan. Amazing. As I said I had the fc12 and axefx3 up and running for the first time last night and immediately noticed this. I did a google search and came up with this thread. Absolutely incredible service. Thanks
 
Thanks for your efforts! Unfortunately, in my short testing, it seems that the tempo situation has only become more confusing :( It will take me some time to test various cases, but I believe that now even the sound and front panel display are wrong at times...
 
Hi
Yes thanks but the situation is still not right! Now the FC 12 follows the global tempo but the front panel tempo light on the Axe FX 3 follows the preset tempo even when for that preset it I set to Global. Opposite to what happened before! The sound follows the FC tempo!
 
Ok, that was premature, but the FC12 behavior is only marginally better. It appears that changes in the global tempo are not transmitted to the FC12. So when you change the global tempo in the front-panel tempo menu, or by tapping the tempo know, it does not affect the FC12 display and blinking at all, and it is also not updated after changing to another preset that uses the global tempo.
 
James Cullen said:
Hi
Yes thanks but the situation is still not right! Now the FC 12 follows the global tempo but the front panel tempo light on the Axe FX 3 follows the preset tempo even when for that preset it I set to Global. Opposite to what happened before! The sound follows the FC tempo!
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That's what I thought first, too, but I could not reliably reproduce it.. let's not bring AxeEdit into the equation, which behaves differently again..
The tempo stuff is an area that could, maybe, be improved upon ;)

Something that would be helpful IMO, is if the tempo menu displayed the preset-stored and the global tempo separately, and best each w/ an individual knob. That would at least make some possibly confusing concepts clearer, eg, when you turn one of those two knobs, the other would change to reflect the same value...

I only mention this b/c right now, the tempo displayed there, after you switch to a preset using "Global", seems correct, but the knob position reflects the preset-stored value, as you can see by slightly turning it.
 
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Still hard to reproduce, but def.ly had that right now: Front panel light blinking much more slowly than actual tempo (as per sound and the should-be-effective global tempo value), gets corrected when going to tempo menu.

Edit: It's worse. The sound was wrong as well :/ Got adjusted to the correct tempo after re-selecting the plex delay block in AxeEdit.

Well this is a bit disturbing. It looks as if the whole tempo thing is fragile (at least as soon as global tempo is involved), and either there are some race conditions, or the logic and/or data flow are not really clear.

I typically have AxeEdit III open, should I expect that to interfere with what I see (provided I do not set any tempo in AxeEdit in any way)? I assumed it should not have any effect, but might do some tests w/o it running.
 
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Ingo said:
Well this is a bit disturbing. It looks as if the whole tempo thing is fragile (at least as soon as global tempo is involved), and either there are some race conditions, or the logic and/or data flow are not really clear.
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If you use some very extreme settings for the global and patch tempo is it easier to recreate it and detect it happening? Set global to max and patch to min or something nutty like that.

If yes, post your preset and your system settings.

Ingo said:
I typically have AxeEdit III open, should I expect that to interfere with what I see (provided I do not set any tempo in AxeEdit in any way)? I assumed it should not have any effect, but might do some tests w/o it running.
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Possibly. Axe-Edit slows down the system and it's particularly impactful if you're moving between CPU heavy presets. There's a lot of extra overhead to communicate the state of the hardare to Axe-Edit. Please try to reproduce the problem without the unit attached to your computer via USB.
 
I will definitely leave AxeEdit out of this for the time being, that's made it more manageable (BTW, I only used presets at 60% CPU max). So far, I could not reproduce any issues on the AxeFx itself (w/ USB and FC12 disconnected) -- good! The annoying part is that when I actually do some more editing w/ the editor, that's when any problems are most likely to cause confusion, but it seems that's also when they are most likely to arise at all... :)

Now back to the OT and plugging the FC12 back in: It does not pick up my global tempo 43bpm, but shows and blinks at 120bpm (default). Switch to a preset using per-preset tempo 160bpm, FC shows and blinks at 160bpm. Switch back to preset using global tempo (still at 43bpm, no tapping or changes in between), the FC goes back to 120bpm.

Together with what I wrote above (about changing the tempo at the front panel, in whatever way), it seems what's really missing from the communication with the FC is to transmit any change to the AxeFx's "effective" tempo to the FC client. It looks as if currently, only the change that we are "using global tempo" is transmitted, not the tempo itself!? Or something to that effect. If the tempo is only fetched from the AxeFx at certain times (which could be a bit annoying for home/studio use), that should at least happen when tapping on the FC, when changing scenes, or when changing presets.
 
Ingo said:
Now back to the OT and plugging the FC12 back in: It does not pick up my global tempo 43bpm, but shows and blinks at 120bpm (default). Switch to a preset using per-preset tempo 160bpm, FC shows and blinks at 160bpm. Switch back to preset using global tempo (still at 43bpm, no tapping or changes in between), the FC goes back to 120bpm.
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I can test this. Thanks for the details.
 
Updated to 6.04 and FC firmware 1.09, quick test shows everything works as expected tempo-wise (no AxeEdit checks yet)!

This is fantastic, thanks everybody!
 
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