Misbehaving MIDI

[abacab 1,976]

Here is a new attempt, done with the TTS-1 instruments using the original GM file without edits. In all fairness to TTS-1, I thought I should give it an even shot with my last attempt where the TTS-1 instruments were substituted.

Used separate audio outputs from TTS-1 for the guitar, bass, and organ, and put 3rd party FX on them. Guitar: Amplitube 5 > Fender 2 - Clean and solo [4x10 '65 Super Reverb]. Bass: Amplitube 5 > Bassman Round 1 [Fender Bassman 300], Organ: IK MixBox  [Rotary].

Used a console plugin on the master bus to level it up. IK Lurssen Mastering Console.

 

Believer TTS-1 + FX.mp3

[John Vere 598]

Good job. I realized I removed the fake vocal and the guitar lik because I use this as a backing track. Yours seems like it’s playing slow?  The Combi F is totally the correct instrument 

[abacab 1,976]

I noticed that Glenn's track was slowed down a bit. Did think the original MIDI tempo was a bit fast and considered doing that. He nailed the combo organ!

[John Vere 598]

Yes it was Glens I noticed slower. I’m on my phone I’ll listen to your tts1 version later when I can sneak into the studio 

[Glenn Stanton 205]

it's 132 BPM, the original is 160 BPM. so definitely slower. my pro band many years ago covered it and we did the reduced tempo - more danceable and we could extend the guitar solo a bit.

[John Vere 598]

Mine is at 163 same as the downloaded file I guess.  

Good job on the TTS-1 Version @abacab  Still sounds like the TTS-1 but a most passable mix for sure. I see you kept that B2 snare, I could never figure what that  sound was for, electro snare for Disco? 

In a way it's too bad the TTS-1 does not have the full 16 channel output. You could then put the drum kit using channels 10 through 16 assign kit pieces each of those channels and process the sounds a bit that way. 

I wonder if Michael is following our total side track of his thread?  Hope we didn't scare your off. I think our intentions are all for the betterment of mankind and music      I guess the OT was the TTS_1 and you got some of us messing around with it now. I think I'll try a TTS-1 makeover version too.  Been a long time since I opened those "other" GUI windows were you can edit stuff.  

I'm going to stick to TTS-1 and only use the Pro Channel see what I can do.  

[John Vere 598]

Well weirdly enough that didn't work. I opened the original midi file again, and when I hit play Cakewalk crashed!! I haven't seen that for ages.  

I got the Fatal Error box and before I could read it Cakewalk closed with a bang. I've heard this about the TTS-1 but never had it happen before.  

So I tried again and its fine?  

 

[abacab 1,976]

34 minutes ago, John Vere said:

Good job on the TTS-1 Version @abacab  Still sounds like the TTS-1 but a most passable mix for sure. I see you kept that B2 snare, I could never figure what that  sound was for, electro snare for Disco? 

In a way it's too bad the TTS-1 does not have the full 16 channel output. You could then put the drum kit using channels 10 through 16 assign kit pieces each of those channels and process the sounds a bit that way.

I didn't intentionally "keep" any particular instruments sounds, I just left all "as-is" from the original MIDI file GM, so they are the assigned instruments. Made no MIDI edits or any other alterations to the original file. Just saved it as a Cakewalk project and messed with effects and TTS-1 outputs. Left piano & drums on output 1, and put guitar, bass, and organ separately on outputs 2, 3, & 4.

[abacab 1,976]

18 minutes ago, John Vere said:

Well weirdly enough that didn't work. I opened the original midi file again, and when I hit play Cakewalk crashed!! I haven't seen that for ages.  

I got the Fatal Error box and before I could read it Cakewalk closed with a bang. I've heard this about the TTS-1 but never had it happen before.  

So I tried again and its fine?  

 

I didn't mention it earlier, but I encountered some weirdness while I was auditioning VST FX presets with the TTS-1 multi outs enabled. I encountered garbled audio sometimes on the instrument I was playing as I changed VST FX presets. That corrected itself  when I stopped and restarted the transport. I finally bumped up my ASIO buffers and shut everything else running on the PC down, as I was also seeing fairly high CPU use across all cores. I got one Cakewalk crash and an audio engine dropout, but finished what I was trying to do..

[abacab 1,976]

I'll have to say, based on that experience yesterday,  that I wouldn't recommend trying to do any complex projects with TTS-1. It's just too old and doesn't appear to play well with the new Cakewalk. Not sure what's going on, but I sense a general instability that I don't get with Kontakt Player or SampleTank Max.

So I will just continue to keep using TTS-1 to open and audition GM files, then swap it out with current VSTi's. That's what it's very good at, and I've never had any problems in that regard.

[John Vere 598]

4 hours ago, abacab said:

I'll have to say, based on that experience yesterday,  that I wouldn't recommend trying to do any complex projects with TTS-1. It's just too old and doesn't appear to play well with the new Cakewalk. Not sure what's going on, but I sense a general instability that I don't get with Kontakt Player or SampleTank Max.

So I will just continue to keep using TTS-1 to open and audition GM files, then swap it out with current VSTi's. That's what it's very good at, and I've never had any problems in that regard.

Wow. I had another crash! And these don't even ask to save before closing. Just a good old fashion "poof" no more DAW.  I never get a chance to read the dialog box but this last time I pretty sure it was the tts-1  Were are those crash dumps stored?  This one happened when I tried to insert a second instance with multi outputs.  All I lost was I had renamed the tracks and coloured them. 

I've never had an issue with TTS-1 since way back when CbB first was released.  Might be this new release is leaving pour old TTS-1 in the dust. 

I wonder if I can port over my Cubase HALion. It's a very nice sounding GM player. But then I probably need my elicence dongle every time I use it away from my main DAW. 

[abacab 1,976]

13 hours ago, John Vere said:

I've never had an issue with TTS-1 since way back when CbB first was released.  Might be this new release is leaving pour old TTS-1 in the dust.

I had the TTS-1 issues while running Cakewalk 2020.11, so it's not just the latest release of Cakewalk.

I've never had any issues before while just leaving multi-out disabled.

[Glenn Stanton 205]

i can say that the 5-6 times i've tried TTS-1 i was underwhelmed by the UI and usefulness. i much prefer individual instances of SF and sample players, the exception may be Kontakt which i'll limit to no more than 4 instruments per instance. could be the low horsepower PC i've had, but i like individual intuitive direct players for soundfonts and wav files.

[John Vere 598]

Well I gave up Seems I cannot add multi output instances of it. Either nothing happens or Crash. Big waist of time. 
Interestingly I googled VST General Midi players and there is really nothing made in the last 6 or more years. The most popular was Rolands Sound Canvas VST which I’m pretty sure tts-1 is modelled after. 
One person on KVR said that Synth 1 has a GM patch so I just downloaded it and will try later. 
 

[msmcleod 2,161]

1 hour ago, Glenn Stanton said:

i can say that the 5-6 times i've tried TTS-1 i was underwhelmed by the UI and usefulness. i much prefer individual instances of SF and sample players, the exception may be Kontakt which i'll limit to no more than 4 instruments per instance. could be the low horsepower PC i've had, but i like individual intuitive direct players for soundfonts and wav files.

Have you tried setting this option within Kontakt?  It solved all of my CPU load issues with it:

 

[Glenn Stanton 205]

yeah, the Kontakt settings are all good, i just like to limit the number of instruments per instance because i'm set in my ways 🙂 

[chris.r 689]

4 hours ago, abacab said:

I had the TTS-1 issues while running Cakewalk 2020.11, so it's not just the latest release of Cakewalk.

Over a year ago when I had a new, clean Win10 and Cakewalk installs, I had recurrent Cakewalk crashes when trying to copy a TTS-coupled MIDI track from one project to another with TTS-1 already loaded. I can't replicate it now, but the issues was present back then already.

[abacab 1,976]

Just out of curiosity, I moved this MIDI song that John provided over to Reaper to see what TTS-1 could do over there. As far as I know, Reaper is among the few other DAWs that can use DXi plugins, which is what TTS-1 is rather than VSTi.

I got the MIDI tracks opened in a new project there, and inserted TTS-1 as an instrument on a new track. Then routed the MIDI tracks to TTS-1.

During playback the first time, all TTS-1 audio output went silent about halfway through the song. Stopping and restarting the transport did not restore audio, and neither did saving, closing, and restarting the project. Restarted Reaper. Still no good.

I had to delete the track and TTS-1, and re-insert a fresh instance of TTS-1 to get the audio to resume.

I'm beginning to wonder if DXi may be meeting it's end of days on Windows 10?

Disclaimer: I'm usually not using Reaper much for anything. I know the basics, but not an expert! Use it mostly as a test DAW, as it is usually bulletproof and the routing is very accessible and transparent. So when I encounter weird plugin behavior in Cakewalk or other DAWs I usually see if I can reproduce it in Reaper.

Edited January 30 by abacab

[msmcleod 2,161]

2 hours ago, abacab said:

Just out of curiosity, I moved this MIDI song that John provided over to Reaper to see what TTS-1 could do over there. As far as I know, Reaper is among the few other DAWs that can use DXi plugins, which is what TTS-1 is rather than VSTi.

I got the MIDI tracks opened in a new project there, and inserted TTS-1 as an instrument on a new track. Then routed the MIDI tracks to TTS-1.

During playback the first time, all TTS-1 audio output went silent about halfway through the song. Stopping and restarting the transport did not restore audio, and neither did saving, closing, and restarting the project. Restarted Reaper. Still no good.

I had to delete the track and TTS-1, and re-insert a fresh instance of TTS-1 to get the audio to resume.

I'm beginning to wonder if DXi may be meeting it's end of days on Windows 10?

Disclaimer: I'm usually not using Reaper much for anything. I know the basics, but not an expert! Use it mostly as a test DAW, as it is usually bulletproof and the routing is very accessible and transparent. So when I encounter weird plugin behavior in Cakewalk or other DAWs I usually see if I can reproduce it in Reaper.

I suspect its an issue with TTS-1 rather than DXi in general. The technology behind DXi's is still widely used in Microsoft products, so if it was fundamentally broken, you'd see issues with video playback and audio playback in a bunch of apps.

Unfortunately TTS-1 is a Roland product, so there's not much we can do to fix it.

[Kevin Perry 398]

1 hour ago, msmcleod said:

I suspect its an issue with TTS-1 rather than DXi in general. The technology behind DXi's is still widely used in Microsoft products, so if it was fundamentally broken, you'd see issues with video playback and audio playback in a bunch of apps.

Unfortunately TTS-1 is a Roland product, so there's not much we can do to fix it.

Not include it?