Nord User Forum

Hello,

I don't know If Nord is reading the board, but even if they are not the younger synths, NL4 and A1 are not able to play the first sequenced midi note (usb or midi din) when they received a PC message. I use a mpc-X to sequence all my synths (a lot) Nord ones are the only ones to not play a midi note on first beat at the first run of the loop sequence. The culprit is the program message which takes priority over the midi note. As example, to get the first note to be played , i need to nudge about 36 ticks at 95bpm. I wonder how come such beautiful synths can not handle this. I really hope Nord could update them, a firmware hot fix, so those synths act like any others ones (i have a lot, and had a lot more, only NL4 and A1 would do this).

Thanx for reading

Rcmusic wrote:Hello,

I don't know If Nord is reading the board, but even if they are not the younger synths, NL4 and A1 are not able to play the first sequenced midi note (usb or midi din) when they received a PC message. I use a mpc-X to sequence all my synths (a lot) Nord ones are the only ones to not play a midi note on first beat at the first run of the loop sequence. The culprit is the program message which takes priority over the midi note. As example, to get the first note to be played , i need to nudge about 36 ticks at 95bpm. I wonder how come such beautiful synths can not handle this. I really hope Nord could update them, a firmware hot fix, so those synths act like any others ones (i have a lot, and had a lot more, only NL4 and A1 would do this).

Thanx for reading

Its common practice amongst those of us who used to sequence commercial midi file songs to insert a Blank measure at the beginning of a sequence/Song and use that to send program/Control changes,bascially setting up your sounds before the song plays,that would eliminate your issue of not triggering the note data correctly!!! so Bar 1 is used as a count in and to send program changes to set up your synths etc with the correct sounds and the song starts with note data on Bar 2.... problem solved???

I use this method on all my songs,I create all my sequence sections and then chain them together with an extra blank bar inserted at the start of the song i use this for sending any sysex or program changes/Volume pan etc,I use an Akai MPC4000 and always have a blank bar with this data in so I know when i play the song back all the tracks will be sending the correct program changes before the note messages are triggered,there is no need to be sending a program change at the same time the note data is playing.

You will experience this issue with most synths unless they have some kind of patch remain function switching sounds,if your sending note data before the patch has loaded correctly,its just latency,its beyond me why you would want to load a patch at the same time as a note message and not expect there to be an issue with it not sounding properly

Thanx for the answer. I know about the empty measure, in my case, it won't be the solution. The issue is only with nords, none of all my synths (i own now or i owned) do this, so it's surely not that common.

Rcmusic wrote:Thanx for the answer. I know about the empty measure, in my case, it won't be the solution. The issue is only with nords, none of all my synths (i own now or i owned) do this, so it's surely not that common.

The problem is that when most synths or midi sound devices load a new sound from another program they are sent as Sysex data strings which includes all the programs settings FX etc for that individual sound so its a large data amount in relation to a Note message which is only 2 or 3 Bytes,and with sysex there is a lot of extra Data to load,thats why its always preferable to change patches whilst no other data is sent at that time.

in general it shouldn't present a problem but your always going to have an issue with latency if your sending it a Note message at the same point on the timeline expecting it to have loaded all Programs settings correctly before the note is played,hence why a lot of manufacturers now utilise a smooth sound transition within there synths or patch remain function, although this is mostly implemented for Live playing between patch changes, this would in effect sort this sort of problem with cuts offs etc in your way of doing things.

A note message contains a few bytes whereas a sysex string will contain several large packets of data. so I'd be very surprised that many synths didn't have the same issue,I've used a lot of gear over the years but I've never really experienced any problems in my use as I always employ the above method as a rule of thumb to set patches correctly first

Just curios as to why you can't employ the same approach using the MPCx,

Rcmusic wrote:Thanx for the answer. I know about the empty measure, in my case, it won't be the solution.

Hi,
Just curious why you say it won't be the solution. Do you mean that you tried using an empty measure the start to give time for the program change, and the first note still does not sound?
Can you show a dump of the MIDI stream so we can see what is really going on?

I don't want to create an empty measure at the beginning of my looping sequences, that means i have to put loop ON on the fly, my hands are not free for this (and i don't want to use song mode). Right now i own a dozen synths, only NL4 (and A1 as i read it somewhere) would not be able to play the first note when receiving a PC. I owned (and sold a lot of more synths, and never encountered the problem with them too). NL4 is the only synth connected to midi out port A, so that's not a problem in a midi chain. It's just that NL4 (and A1) are too "slow" in this specific regard, which is not making them bad synths, i love their sounds, i just wish they would not have this problem like most of the synths from the last decade. The nord support is aware of the problem, maybe they can take care of it, if not, i'll keep my NL4 anyway (don't doubt about sympathy i have for them). I'm only in a hope it will be fixed. cheers