Midi > Gate map wrong?

The main thing I noticed wasn’t even the notes yet, but I’m glad it came up as I noticed @Omri_Cohen mention the note was off in that same live stream. While the conversation of that fix is happening, I also just want to mention that the grid of notes in the module itself doesn’t match the grid of outputs as shown in the screengrab. On top of the note confusion, is anyone else seeing the grid mismatch as well? So glad to be back to this community, it’s been a minute.

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With the test I made above with my Keystep, set to middle-C=C4, the grid worked as it should, they matched.

maybe it’s just an issue with bitwig, I was expecting row 1 to trigger row 1 of outputs, row 2 for row 2 and so on

I think the issue is this, as I describe above:

In short: Bitwig, Rack, and everyone else disagreeing on what a specific note is. I know…

yes, my distant memory of the spec is that 64 is middle C, or something like that? It is for sure specified.

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Yes, distant memories, but I do remember facing this issue many times during my ~35 years of doing MIDI hardware and software development. Different vendors define middle C in different ways. I cannot remember the specifics but eventually just accepted that as a fact of life.

By the way, I count up about a dozen MIDI keyboards in my studio around me (literally!). Almost every one has two marks on the keyboard to indicate the middle C may be this one, or may be the other, depending on what the hardware or software I am controlling has chosen. And of course modern keyboards usually have an octave transpose button(s), so I am usually just confused :thinking:

I’m just trying this in Reaper and it works as it should actually. So C2 in Reape is also C2 in the Midi-Gate module…

Yeah, which means that Reaper is in the “Middle-C = C4” camp and therefor matches Rack. I think this will never be solved without being able to switch this in the Rack MIDI* modules, as I describe above.

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Yep - a simple right click menu setting would do the job.

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You can have right-click menus for everything I think. Some knowledge is needed to work with diffent software and hardware following different standards - people learn, and find their own method of transposing the CV - be it using the VCV octave - a formula - or a mixer adding +1 or -1 volts. IMO That’s one of the many beauties of playing with modular systems - getting a feeling of accomplishment by solving the little “glue” challenges.

There’s no way to transpose the signal though between the note the DAW puts out and the note that Midi > Gate displays because that is happening outside Rack. Therefore a right click menu setting would be the only option here I think.

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Actually there is a way - you’d need to transpose the signal before it left the DAW and most DAWs have a transpose device.

But that’s no more intuitive than knowing/remembering to set your notes an octave down to start with.

Let me try and summarize and reframe the discussion, correct me if I’m wrong.

MIDI is a standard for sending digital data in packets between equipment, whether hardware or software. When you press a note on a physical/virtual/software keyboard, including a piano roll in a DAW, what happens is that a “note number” is sent, such as the value 60 (middle-C). So far so good.

Now the trouble begins…

The question arises: So what note (an audible frequency) is note number 60 (or any other) actually? Ideally the MIDI standard should be crystal clear about this but something happened. Either the standard is lacking or ambiguous, or/and some vendors took matters into their own hands and said “well, we decree that note number 60 is a C4” and others said “no, it’s a C3” and others said C5. So now we have a right mess because it means that MIDI equipment and software is not interoperable and users are caught in the middle.

So e.g. Ableton and Bitwig will transmit note value 60 when you hit a C3 on the piano roll, Reaper and VCV Rack and others will transmit note value 60 when you hit a C4, and for some others it’s a C5. So out of the box, when you hit C4 in Bitwig, VCV Rack will say “thank you very much for that C5 note”, and everyone is confused and things don’t work as they should.

As is the case with standards confusion there’s a couple of responses that vendors and developers can have in the face of that:

  • Screw the users, we’re right and they’ll just have to figure it out and find workarounds themselves. Or…
  • Poor users, we need to do something to help them make their different MIDI equipment work together in the face of this situation.

I think answer #2 is the right one unless it’s prohibitively expensive. To help users one of the things various manufacturers have done, is enable them to configure what middle-C means. Whether it’s C3, C4 or C5, and I think that’s what the VCV MIDI modules should do as well. Give users an option to define this so that the various MIDI software and hardware can work correctly together.

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VCV uses International Pitch Notation (IPN) (= ISO 16:1975 ) that’s enough, the finite developer ressources are better used elsewhere - IMHO.

Pardon me, not meaning to be rude but, it seems to me that amounts to “screw the users, we’re right”.

That’s what some “hippies” think about ISO :slight_smile:

Those damn German hippie software engineers and their non-compliant DAWs…

and Yamaha AFAIK

@LarsBjerregaard I just saw your comment on the Ableton video, but I have no idea why it disappeared… Did you remove it? YouTube is doing all sorts of crazy stuff lately…