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Forgot to add, that when this happens, no OSC data at all is received again from that key until it is released and touched again. Other keys continue to send OSC data during that time.

Hi David

We think this issue is probably related to the issue that Stefan experienced (you can read about that here) that we worked on last week. In normal playing this is generally completely unnoticeable (Wayne, Jim and I had to work really hard to get it to happen when we were figuring the problem out) but it's more reproducible on Alpha's with maple keys than plastic or ebony. One has to play with a very light touch indeed to get it to occur, and we found that we had to slightly stroke the keys as we touched them to get it to happen. We suspect that the reason that no-one has ever noticed it before is due to the very small number of maple keyed instruments out there coupled with the fact that only now are people really getting to grips with how sensitive the keys actually are. The fact that you're experiencing it after a break in playing tends to support that thesis.

We found that by adjusting the key debounce window a little we could get to the point where we couldn't reproduce it at all. This isn't to say that it's definitely gone (we haven't heard back from Stefan yet, and he seems to be able to get it to happen fairly easily, he must have a very light touch) but it certainly seemed to make it go away for us. The debounce value is used in the instrument firmware and was not a user settable parameter until now. The 1.4 series does not support setting this, but we've introduced a parameter in the Alpha Agent for 2.0.36 onwards. It's in the open source distribution as well as the commercial release, so you can build your own version to give it a go if you don't want to subscribe to EigenD.

Please let us know how you get on...

John

David, you should take a look at the talk John gave at the Developer Conference where he explained how the keys work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omDbT9Jc4qc

I have bought an EigenD Pro subscription to get access to 2.0.

A couple of questions before I download and try the new version:

Somebody very kindly helped me create a very simple EigenD setup that contains only the OSC and LED control stuff so that I could have a very lightweight EigenD app running in the background. This is for 1.4

1) Can I run the regular EigenD 2.0 to change the debounce value and then go back to using my 1.4 code with the lightweight setup or
2) Alternatively, will the EigenD 2.0 version import that 1.4 setup? or
3) Can I get an EigenD 2.0 setup that just contains the OSC and LED stuff in it

Would appreciate guidance for how to proceed.

Thank you,
David

I actually ran into this issue when I first started using the alpha before I started working with Max and because it was happening with all my plugins, I just assumed it was due to my "beginner" status and figured I just needed to learn to play better.

It was only after I recently started working more seriously on some songs and had this happen a number of times on a single song that I decided to investigate and started looking at the raw OSC data that I was receiving and realized that there was something else going on.

I'm excited to get this issue resolved with the new code but would like to get answers to the questions I posed before I do anything as I still just want to use the OSC environment.

No, I am not experiencing re-triggering....I am experiencing MUTING....i.e, occasionally (but more than once in a song) I will touch a key gently to play a note but that note will just play for an instant and then stop. I have never been able to reproduce on demand, but it just "happens".

While I originally thought it was just me (which is why I had never mentioned this issue until now), these days I'm playing sufficiently with the Alpha responding perfectly fine that it became clear that the glitches were not due to my playing style. That's when I started looking at the OSC data and realized there was a problem somewhere.

I will take another look at the docs and see if the process has gotten easier --- the difficulty in understand how things were supposed to work was my greatest frustration with the software.

Other than this glitch, the Max stuff works absolutely beautifully with the Alpha. I created a few high-level objects to let me define groups and then impose guitar-style fingering for each group and it works great. A couple of other objects let me turn on individual LEDs or entire rows at a time.

Here's an example of my main environment in Max with the Eigenharp and a small novation keyboard as the controllers for a virtual environment in my office.

http://i.imgur.com/6szM4.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/6szM4.jpg

@dhjdhj Muting describes pretty well what I experienced. The key just stops sending any data until you release it and press it again. And I also noticed sometimes, that the note is triggered for a fraction of second before the key becomes muted.

@john I haven't said anything so far, because I couldn't verify your fix yet. The current git version doesn't work for me. For some reason it does not load the audio agent. So no sound is produced. I made a bug report (maybe it's fixed already). And because I heard someone say that a 2.0 release is around the corner, I didn't spend any more time on this. Once I have a working EigenD with the fix, I'll be sure to let you know.

Hey everyone --- I have EigenD version 2.x working with my Max environment and after changing the debounce value from 20000 to 31500 (the max), the problem I was having went away completely.

So I have finally managed to play a song from beginning to end with ZERO glitches.


VERY EXCITING.

Thanks everyone for the help in getting this fixed.

Oh, still lots to do ---- I still need the belcanto commands to configure control of the LEDs from incoming OSC messages.

Also need to add support for those strips now that they also produce OSC

I also haven't decided on the best way to detect initial velocity without introducing too much latency.

(But it's more fun now :-)

I've thought about several approaches, I'm not sure how sophisticated one needs to get.
1) Collect the values for some short amount of time T. Use the maximum value

2) Measure rate of change of the first few (how many?) values to determine what the maximum value will be. Presumably that allows T to be smaller so less latency

3) Use some kind of exponential curve to estimate the value

I don't know whether the OSC data is available/processable fast enough compared to looking at raw USB data.

Would the EigenD developers care to share their approach?