Halfway hihat pedal positions suppress hits of rolls

[anttipi]

EDIT: Enabling Reduce pedal CC levels on setting 2 or 3 seemed to help. Still unclear to me why that is? The pedal level reading seems very restless (jumping around a little all the time) so I guess the CC bombardment is overtaxing Megadrum's processor or what? I also get lots of occasional freezing and have to reboot MD.

All hihat pedal positions other than open and closed result in subsequent hits of rolls getting dramatically suppressed. Sometimes only the first hit triggers, sometimes the roll sort of works but most often not. Screenshots and settings file attached.

This is very strange and naturally destroys playability.

The screenshots are from the snare, both depicting similar right hand rolls. Ride is affected in the same way and all other pads too, as far as I can tell. AltFalseTrSupp was disabled in the screenshots but the same behavior happens either way. Pedal and pads are plugged into the default jacks on the ARM MD (with PS board) and everything is setup properly and fine tuned. Running latest FW. Hihat pedal utilizes a hall sensor that operates smoothly across the open-closed range.

(This suppression issue also turns out to be the reason behind the suboptimal performance and feeling of "lagginess" I described earlier in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3164)

[dmitri]

EDIT: Enabling Reduce pedal CC levels on setting 2 or 3 seemed to help. Still unclear to me why that is? The pedal level reading seems very restless (jumping around a little all the time) so I guess the CC bombardment is overtaxing Megadrum's processor or what?

ARM has plenty of power to manage CC messages unless you send them back from PC to MegaDrum. Pedal level restless may only be if the signal from your pedal is restless as well. MegaDrum can reduce pedal signal jumping within certain limits. What kind of a controller is this pedal producing so jumpy signal?

I also get lots of occasional freezing and have to reboot MD.

You seem to have all sorts of problems. MegaDrum freezing? Never saw it in my testing. Maybe you some how managed to send corrupted config to MegaDrum and saved it in EEPROM? Maybe it's worth starting from a default config and configure one thing at a time?

[anttipi]

ARM has plenty of power to manage CC messages unless you send them back from PC to MegaDrum. Pedal level restless may only be if the signal from your pedal is restless as well. MegaDrum can reduce pedal signal jumping within certain limits. What kind of a controller is this pedal producing so jumpy signal?

It's an Allegro A1321EUA-T linear hall sensor with a sensitivity of 5 mV/G triggered with a neodymium magnet on the underside of the pedal. In case it's useful to know, it can output a level range of ~20-530 displayed on the MD's level readout. The numbers on the MD display jump up and down a bit (within a range of up to ~10, fidgeting maybe once every second or two).

After some more testing, it looks like the CC reduction levels are only an issue with New Algorithm enabled, which I happen to like to use. The CC reduction level 3 works well when New Algorithm is disabled. For the heck of it, I also tried enabling Alt Sampling and with it + New Algorithm enabled, even CC reduction level 1 stops the jumpiness altogether (BUT the false aftertouch issue returns with Alt Sampling also, which I'm starting to suspect is somehow related to the CC bombardment).

Any chance to tweak the New Algorithm to make CC reduction to work more efficiently with it?

You seem to have all sorts of problems. MegaDrum freezing? Never saw it in my testing. Maybe you some how managed to send corrupted config to MegaDrum and saved it in EEPROM? Maybe it's worth starting from a default config and configure one thing at a time?

The freezing can happen every few minutes after sending settings several times from MDM to MD.

1. MD stops responding at the start of "Send" from MDM.
2. MD doesn't react to the rotary knobs, MDM also freezes and won't close until MD is shut down.
3. Sometimes after restarting MD and then MDM, MDM displays the red MIDI error, sometimes several times in a row despite closing and restarting the program.

The MIDI port chosen is the correct one and BFD3 is not listening to the same port (BFD3 running or not doesn't seem to affect the freezes in any way - it's configured not to send MIDI out). Also, a few rare times MD hasn't loaded or saved a config: it just won't respond with the usual "Done" when pressing the rotary knob to execute the command and the load/save doesn't execute. All this said, MD has never frozen when actually using it for playing.

I always load and send between MDM and MD only one section or pad at a time to see things actually get through but yeah, it might be something has got corrupted.

[anttipi]

Dmitri, just wanted to add that, on a very positive note, the root cause to all of the issues I've written about recently have boiled down to simply:
- Alt Sampling (now disabled - i.e. solved)
- Insane CC firing (solvable by disabling pedal New Algorithm and using CC reduction. Hoping to be able to use New Algorithm with adequate CC reduction in the future, though!)

The MDM-related issues I don't particularly mind as they never happen during actual playback.

Most importantly, I've already fully setup and tested two profiles.

So... Only the CC reduction issue with New Pedal Algorithm remains. In the meantime, I can leave it disabled and live with it.

[ignotus]

I find it strange that your pedal levels are so unstable. I use an AU1302 hall sensor and the signal is completely stable and only moves if I move the pedal. Maybe the magnet and sensor aren't placed correctly with respect to each other or maybe it's the sensor.

[anttipi]

I find it strange that your pedal levels are so unstable. I use an AU1302 hall sensor and the signal is completely stable and only moves if I move the pedal. Maybe the magnet and sensor aren't placed correctly with respect to each other or maybe it's the sensor.

I've tried with different magnet strengths and different placements/ranges of motion/distances.

The main point to note is that in practice it causes unmanageable issues only with pedal New Algorithm enabled.

The available CC reduction levels are sufficient with Alt Sampling and old pedal algorithm. The result is a linear, predictable and smooth/non-wobbly pedal openness bar in MDM so the hall sensor doesn't seem to be faulty per se.

[anttipi]

It's getting totally weird: I just plugged the exact same pedal setup into my old Atmega and lo and behold! Already at CC reduction level 1, the CC leakage stops as soon as pedal position is reached and movement stops. In other words, behaves as it should do. New Algorithm or not, same thing - it works.

...but not on the ARM!

EDIT: I just saw this Dmitri's post in another thread:

Also I would recommend not to use 'New Algorithm' for now - not too many people tested it.

And of course, Atmega and ARM have their own firmwares. It just so happens that CC reduction works on Atmega in combination with New Algorithm but not on ARM. I have to say, other than the CC issue, New Algorithm's chick behavior seems very good and I'd like to be able to use it. But apparently it's still evolving. BTW, rebuilding the MD profile on top of the default profile did not change anything so it appears my profile is/was not corrupted.

[anttipi]

So as Dmitri says, ARM's hardware should be able to handle continuous CC messages without a problem, so then there must be an issue in Megadrum's code, no?

The suppression of follow-up hits when doing rolls is very pronounced (often only the first hit is registered by MD!), as can be seen in the screenshots, and I find it hard to believe only my Megadrum is behaving this way. Most importantly, rolls in Atmega are not affected at all, even with no CC reduction. Atmega has a trickle of CC messages, whereas ARM lets through a flood (so fast your eyes can't follow).

(BTW, BFD3 requires a steady flow of hihat CC info for proper playback of recorded MIDI so right now I'm forced to manually draw all the CC info in the DAW after recording, which is a HUGE workflow killer.)

[dmitri]

To make sure MIDI CC causes the problem set HiHat pedal mode into Pot and see if you experience the same problem when the pedal is half way down.

[dmitri]

Also, make screenshots of Misc and Levels Pedal settings and a screenshot of Raw MIDI when you experience MIDI CC noise in a steady pedal position when the pedal is pressed half way down.