Nord Electro 2 Rack - Expression Pedal erratic behaviour

[westharp]

Hey,

I sometimes have a strange problem with my Nord Electro 2 Rack. The Rack is controlled via MIDI from a Yamaha Motif ES 7.
At some point during rehersal, the expression pedal (connected to the Motif, sending CC#11 via MIDI to the Electro Rack) sometimes gets "jumpy": when moving the pedal near the bottom position, the volume goes immediately to full power (like an on/off-switch) and doesn't fade in like it should do.

But I can't really replicate this problem. It occurs only sometimes, after some playing time. It's not a hardware problem of the expression pedal - this works flawlessly with the Motif like it should do.

- A reboot of the Nord Electro Rack solves this problem.
- A press of the "Panic"-Button does not.
- A reboot of the Motif does not either.
- The Motif is connected directly to the Electro via a good MIDI cable (different cable, same problem).
- I tried two different FC7s and a Behringer FCV100 - same problem with every pedal.
- When connected directly to the Electro Rack (Control Pedal jack), the expression pedal works like it should do (even when the Electro is in the "MIDI fail"-state).
- The Electro uses the last OS version 3.04.

Did someone else ever have a similar problem? It seems to be related to receiving MIDI CC-Data.

[maxpiano]

Bsed on what you report, the problem seems to be clearly on the Motif: is the same pedal doing fine with the Motif own sounds? What settings do you have on the Motif for it? Have you tri to monitor the MIDI data of CC11 via a computer, to see what the Motif is actually sending?

[westharp]

Yes, the same pedal ist doing fine with the Motif's sounds. And after a reboot of the Electro, everything works totally fine again - so I assume the problem is on the Electro side...
A reboot of the Motif doesn't solve the problem - the Electro's behaviour stays erratic.

I never managed to monitor the MIDI data in this situation...I don't have a computer connected to my live keyboard setup.

[maxpiano]

Have you tried to use a different MIDI cable?

[Mr_-G-]

I agree with maxpiano. You definitely need to know what is coming out of the Motif. If the CC11 bytes are "OK" (i.e. they correlate with the pedal movement when the problem appears), then it is the electro that is misinterpreting the CC stream (or cannot cope with processing the stream, but I doubt it). If they are not OK, (and you see "jumps" in the value when you smoothly change the pedal position) then the Motif is not sending the right message.
It says in the manual (page 9, at the bottom) that the FC7 is not suitable for the NE2. I wonder how then it works "fine" when you connect directly to the NE2 (I suspect that the range is not fully supported?).
Most likely this does not matter as the Motif should be doing the MIDI translation, but to be sure, you need to know what the MIDI CC stream is, to narrow down what the problem is and what values trigger the erratic behaviour. It could be that the MIDI out of the Motif is malfunctioning (but the internal processing of the pedal is still fine and that is why it works with the internal sounds).
Did you check the MIDI cables (again 2 dodgy cables is not impossible).
Intermittent problems are a pain!

[westharp]

Thanks for your replies.

OK, I'll have to check the MIDI CC data from the Motif. But if this data is somehow corrupted, why can the problem only be solved by rebooting the Electro?

I double and triple checked the MIDI cables - they are fine.
Yeah, I know the FC7 is not supported when connected directly to the Electro. But this is due to the limited range because of logarithmic vs. linear pots in the pedal. Nevertheless the volume change is smooth and not erratic. But as you mentioned this is no problem when the Motif translates the FC7 movements to CC data.