I’m new to VCV, but a quick learner. Pretty familiar with Ableton. I have a problem that I cannot seem to find the cause. It relates to VCV Rack Pro VST.
If I hit play on the transport, and there is a note other than C3 (0 volts) in a MIDI clip (in Ableton clip or arrange view), either VCV or Ableton brings it back to C3 the moment the transport stops. In addition to hearing this, while monitoring the voltage of V/OCT - this is viewable:
If I play a MIDI note using my MIDI keyboard, instead of using the MIDI clip, there is no issue.
I tested it on Bitwig and Reaper- no issues. However, other vst synths do not have this issue in Ableton. So I’m not sure if it’s an Ableton thing, or a vcv thing.
It looks like there was a post about this, but it went dead a year ago, and had no resolution marked. Any ideas? I tried VCV Rack 2.4.1 and 2.5.1 - no difference.
The issue is not a critical one, just an annoyance.
First thing, is ableton sends a C3, but if it results in 0volts, that oscillator will output C4, because there is already that disconnect in what is expected in VCV and output in Ableton, known issue, it is related to how midi is used in DAWS. Other than that, I would expect the source, being Ableton is the issue. It is being generated in the midi module connecting the DAW and VST. Yes this VST will behave differently than most, it is not optimized for Ableton and is not always at its best behaved in Ableton. OTOH, if your gate is closed, I suspect it not a real issue.
To @dmirate: It’s Ableton. Believe it or not, different DAW’s and other music software can’t agree whether Middle-C is C3, C4 or C5, because of a vagueness in the MIDI specification. Only thing you can do is add an octave offset after the CV from the MIDI, and then maybe write an email to VCV support asking them to add a switch to the MIDI->CV modules.
The midi spec doesn’t use “Scientific Note Notation” (which was defined after the midi spec was released in an attempt to close the barn door). MIDI specifies notes only by numbers 0 to 127, and doesnt say what the tuning reference is, or if the octave of note 0 is octave 0 or 1.
I’m glad to see this issue being raised, as an Ableton user I’m also irked by this behaviour.
Unless I’m missing something, I feel the discussion around disagreements over the standardization of middle C is derailing from the issue raised by the OP.
It’s possible of course I’m lacking some understanding here of how these subjects are connected.
When writing sequences in Ableton using VCV, this issue is ever present and does harm the experience.
IMO this problem is certainly worthy of addressing and should not go ignored, thank you OP for raising it.
I would think you could sample hold the pitch cv with the gate and always get a voltage instead of 0v, feed that sample hold result to the daw and see if it helps.
If I understand correctly, this would freeze the pitch CV at whatever position it was in when the gate closes?
This would work in many cases but I’m often using release pitch envelopes, such as bending down in the release portion, not compatible with that technique.
I do feel this is just buggy behaviour in the MIDI > CV converter and shouldn’t require workarounds like this.
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