Nord User Forum

I control my Nord modular G2X with my NS3 compact (OS 1.28). My G2X is controled with it's global midi channel.

1/ The Mod wheel has an important latency (between 100 or 200 ms I think) and it's difficult to keep the tempo's band when I have to do fast mod wheel actions (like fast filter open on the G2X).

2/ Worth : The pitch stick seems to have difficulties to send correctly midi messages when used at "normal" or fast action : When I control a sound on my G2X, with a -12/+12 bender range, and I "masturbate" it quickly, only some pitch steps are sent. Impossible to play some parts with this bug... It's the same kind of issue that was on the OSC CTRL with the first NS3 OS.

Do you confirm on your NS3 ?

On 1: I notice also sometimes a latency on the mod wheel acting upon internal sounds; it appears mainly to be first time I touch it, after that it may behave with less latency. So a question: is the mod wheel latency something you mainly notice also when you engage it "from resting state" or is it a constant delay?

It's a constant delay.

Note: There is no latency problem with NS3 internal sounds (or not too much). It's only for midi controled external synth (G2X for me). Same remark for the Pitch stick issue.

OK, thanks for clarifying. I'm sometimes seeing a slight lag on the internal sounds and was wondering if this was the same issue, but apparently it's not.

Actually, I don't think this is a delay in the Stage 3, but the Stage is causing the delay in the G2X. Here's why:

After some investigations (with MIDI-OX MIDI monitor, and recording MIDI data into Reaper), to find the cause to a similar problem with the NS3, an external MIDI keyboard (Korg M3-88), and my Ocean Beach DB-1 MIDI drawbar unit, I have come to the conclusion that anytime you move the wheel, the pitch bender, expression or swell pedal, or use aftertouch, the Stage 3 outputs loads of MIDI CC-messages, at an insane time resolution (which makes no sense, since we're mostly dealing with controllers of a resolution of 0-127, so if you send for example values 64 and 67 one time, or a hundred times in the same time space, it makes no difference at all in practice...). So what this does to any older gear that most probably have a lot slower processor, is that the processor won't keep up processing all the incoming MIDI data, so either you get a delay, since you have to wait for the processor to complete all its tasks, before you here the difference in sound, or it completely overloads the processor, so the MIDI device freezes altogether, and you have to reboot it.

We had a thread quite recently about the OB DB-1 problem. In that case OBDave, as he calls himself on this forum, simply put together a new firmware for the DB-1, that sets the internal processor to a higher clock frequency - and that case was more or less solved.

Then I've also seen a thread with and old Roland U-220 more or less breaking down, when controlled by the Stage 3, with an error message in the display, saying something like "MIDI Buffer Overload" or something like that. I don't know if that problem has been solved, but I believe a incident report was sent to Nord Support.

Anyway, I have also quite recently reported to Nord Support this issue of the extremely intense stream of MIDI messages that the Stage 3 transmits, and the good news is that the team at Nord already seemed to already be aware of this problem, so hopefully it will be fixed soon in an upcoming OS release.

Now alcools, I'm not saying that I'm 100% certain that this is the cause of your delay problems, but it seems likely. What you could do to verify it, is to play a fast run on the keys of the NS3x (while controlling the G2x), and if there is no delay, when only playing the keys, but a considerable delay of the key presses, when you move the Mod Wheel, Pitch Bend, Expression pedal, or aftertouch, then we can almost be certain that this is caused by the dense MIDI stream, overloading the processor inside the G2x.

MrTobbe wrote:Anyway, I have also quite recently reported to Nord Support this issue of the extremely intense stream of MIDI messages that the Stage 3 transmits, and the good news is that the team at Nord already seemed to already be aware of this problem, so hopefully it will be fixed soon in an upcoming OS release.

They seem to have fixed something similar in 1.28... "MIDI: Fixed bug where MIDI Out could get stuck in loop sending data forever."

Thx Mr Tobbe, I wil try your test (but not before one week).

To Anotherscott : I'm in 1.28

anotherscott wrote:

MrTobbe wrote:Anyway, I have also quite recently reported to Nord Support this issue of the extremely intense stream of MIDI messages that the Stage 3 transmits, and the good news is that the team at Nord already seemed to already be aware of this problem, so hopefully it will be fixed soon in an upcoming OS release.

They seem to have fixed something similar in 1.28... "MIDI: Fixed bug where MIDI Out could get stuck in loop sending data forever."

Nope, that's another bug, that I also had some problems with, so great that they got that fixed. What I'm talking about it not anything getting stuck in a loop, it stops as soon as you let the controller go - it's just that where a normal MIDI controller would send let's say send a hundred "samples" of CC0, when you moved your mod wheel for a second or two - in that same time a Stage will probably send fivehundred, or maybe even a thousand samples, for the same movement, over just as long time period.

So no, the problems is not fixed at all, in v1.28.

Do we have the same issue when another synth is controlling the NS3 with its mod wheel or pitch stick ?
Or it is only one direction : NS3 controlling -> external synth

Regards

DanielD71 wrote:Do we have the same issue when another synth is controlling the NS3 with its mod wheel or pitch stick ?
Or it is only one direction : NS3 controlling -> external synth

The Stage 3 probably has a really poweful DSP/CPU, so it has no problem dealing with a huge load of MIDI messages, at least I haven't had any problem with the Stage 3 receiving MIDI, it's only when the Stage 3 is the transmitter the problem seem to occur.