MIDI panic button?

[Starship Krupa]

Sometimes I get stuck notes with my soft synths. Not blaming Cakewalk for this, it just happens sometimes.

However, when it DOES happen, I want to be able to stop them. I mean all of them, regardless of how they were initially triggered or whatever.

There have been multiple times when I've hit the "Reset MIDI and Audio" button and yes, the sounds stopped, but as soon as I hit the button to restart the audio engine, the stuck notes came back on. I imagine that the existing panic button sends out All Notes Off to every synth track, but apparently not all of them respond correctly to All Notes Off.

Is there some way to have a button or menu command to absolutely, for sure, definitively, terminate all playing notes, short of closing and reopening the project? And I mean, terminate. With extreme prejudice. By any means necessary. If it means sending individual "note off's" to all 127 notes on every MIDI track, so be it. I don't know, I just want all the notes to stop sounding and stay that way until I hit Play again.

[Lord Tim]

IIRC**, hold down Shift when hitting the MIDI reset button. That will unload and reload the driver entirely.

** This info may be incorrect, mind you, I'll wait for a Friendly Smarter Person Than Me to come and correct me!

[sjoens]

For my 90s synth it's called the OFF switch. It loves sticky notes so I'm constantly flipping the switch off&on to shut it up.

CbB "Reset" works 50/50.

1 hour ago, Lord Tim said:

hold down Shift when hitting the MIDI reset button

Thanks, I'll try that one next time.

[Promidi]

Try this and see if this improves.

In Preferences - File - Initialization File (Advanced) add the option PanicStrength=1.

Edited March 1, 2023 by Promidi

[sjoens]

5 hours ago, Promidi said:

In Preferences - File - Initialization File (Advanced) add the option PanicStrength=11.

fixed

[Starship Krupa]

On 3/1/2023 at 5:00 AM, Promidi said:

Try this and see if this improves.

In Preferences - File - Initialization File (Advanced) add the option PanicStrength=1.

As a heads-up, the dialog looks like this:

I have some confusion about Cakewalk's INI files.

According to the documentation, this entry would be under the WINCAKE section in the file C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core\Cakewalk.ini.

But the file that gets edited in Preferences is AUD.INI, isn't it?

Edited March 3, 2023 by Starship Krupa

[sjoens]

Your screenshot is for AUD.INI under Preferences > Audio > Configuration File

Cakewalk.INI is under Preferences > File > Initialization File

Nice that AUD.INI can be opened directly from Preferences

[Starship Krupa]

3 hours ago, sjoens said:

Your screenshot is for AUD.INI under Preferences > Audio > Configuration File

Cakewalk.INI is under Preferences > File > Initialization File

Nice that AUD.INI can be opened directly from Preferences

So does editing the raw Cakewalk.ini file have the same effect as making entries in the "initialization file" preference pane?

[Promidi]

12 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

So does editing the raw Cakewalk.ini file have the same effect as making entries in the "initialization file" preference pane?

Yes

[user 905133]

Interesting: I looked up "panic" in the Reference Guide (Ctrl+F) and found several sections about the Improved Reset/Panic Feature, but its not listed in the Table of Contents or the Index for the Online Documentation.  Its there, just not listed in the Table of Contents or the Index.  So, for somethings, its better to search in the Reference Guide. 

[sjoens]

  

24 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

So does editing the raw Cakewalk.ini file have the same effect as making entries in the "initialization file" preference pane?

Yes. The Preferences window acts as an editor.

This is for the INI file located in C:\Users\spjoe\AppData\Roaming\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core  and not the one located in C:\ProgramData\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core. Not sure why there's 2.

https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=INI_Files.2.html

Edited March 3, 2023 by sjoens

[sjoens]

5 minutes ago, User 905133 said:

So, for somethings, its better to search in the Reference Guide. 

I always use Search first, which may or may not bring me to the ToC.

[scook]

1 minute ago, User 905133 said:

Interesting: I looked up "panic" in the Reference Guide (Ctrl+F) and found several sections about the Improved Reset/Panic Feature, but its not listed in the Table of Contents or the Index for the Online Documentation.  Its there, just not listed in the Table of Contents or the Index.  So, for somethings, its better to search in the Reference Guide. 

New features are not part of the TOC or index.

 

In the distant past, the new features section would be integrated into the rest of the documentation before each major release. With the last versions of SONAR, the integration happened a couple of times.

The CbB doc needs this. The New Section is getting too long to scan easily.

As far as searchable text, the release notes can be handy at times.

 

 

[Wojtek Stecyszyn]

On 3/1/2023 at 8:39 AM, Starship Krupa said:

I want to be able to stop them. I mean all of them, regardless of how they were initially triggered or whatever.

There have been multiple times when I've hit the "Reset MIDI and Audio" button and yes, the sounds stopped, but as soon as I hit the button to restart the audio engine, the stuck notes came back on. I imagine that the existing panic button sends out All Notes Off to every synth track, but apparently not all of them respond correctly to All Notes Off.

Is there some way to have a button or menu command to absolutely, for sure, definitively, terminate all playing notes, short of closing and reopening the project? And I mean, terminate. With extreme prejudice. By any means necessary. If it means sending individual "note off's" to all 127 notes on every MIDI track, so be it. I don't know, I just want all the notes to stop sounding and stay that way until I hit Play again.

Have you found the way to do it?

In my case its very long samples triggered by my MIDI controller and I just wish that I could kill it and don't have to wait till the end of the sample.

The RESET MIDI button only pause them and as soon as I start the audio engine back - the sample continue.

On 3/1/2023 at 9:31 AM, Lord Tim said:

IIRC**, hold down Shift when hitting the MIDI reset button. That will unload and reload the driver entirely.

Does not work

On 3/1/2023 at 2:00 PM, Promidi said:

In Preferences - File - Initialization File (Advanced) add the option PanicStrength=1.

Does not work

[Promidi]

1 hour ago, Wojtek Stecyszyn said:

Have you found the way to do it?

In my case its very long samples triggered by my MIDI controller and I just wish that I could kill it and don't have to wait till the end of the sample.

The RESET MIDI button only pause them and as soon as I start the audio engine back - the sample continue.

Does not work

Does not work

Sounds like you are pressing the engine stop button..... 

If you are pressing the MIDI panic button and the notes are not stopping, that's down to the VST. 

Setting panic to 1 should work.  It works by sending a note off for every note.  This works every time here.  So if the VST is not responding to PanicStrength=1 something is really wrong with the plugin itself. 

Just to note.  Make sure you:

­· Have exited Cakewalk while editing the Cakewalk.ini file?
· Are editing the Cakewalk.ini in the %APPDATA%\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core folder (this is for Cakewalk by Bandlab)
. Are adding the “PanicStrength=1” under the [WinCake] section.

[Wojtek Stecyszyn]

16 minutes ago, Promidi said:

Sounds like you are pressing the engine stop button..... 

Nope, Im pressing the Reset MIDI and Audio button.  

Actually tried them both - on their own, with CTRL/ALT/Shift in every combination

So these long  samples (from LOOPTRACK sampler) will STOP when I press Reset MIDI and Audio button but will come back (continue where they left) after I bring the Audio Engine back to work  and they will lats util the end of the sample.  They are only paused. Btw this is the same situation like with long tails of reverbs or delays - when I stop the playback they will stop too, but as soon as I hit PLAY again their tails are continuing to ring until they naturally die (depending on the time set in delay/reverb plugin setting). This is also quite annoying as I need to wait sometimes long time before I can resume playback without these delays and reverbs.

24 minutes ago, Promidi said:

Setting panic to 1 should work.  It works by sending a note off for every note.  This works every time here.  So if the VST is not responding to PanicStrength=1 something is really wrong with the plugin itself. 

I did this in the Cakewalk>>Settings>>File>>Initialization File 

It worked immediately but to be sure I did restart Cakewalk

What it changed is only the time that MIDI reset takes to hit - its longer now, but nothing else. Kills (pause) all sound only for the time when Audio Engine is OFF.

 

[Promidi]

Don't know what to tell you.....  MIDI panic works here every time. (has for ages)

Maybe contact support support@cakewalk.com

[Wojtek Stecyszyn]

Thanks for trying.

I guess I will create a new post about this.

But maybe you can try this - find a sample that is long. Could be from any sampler, or just load a long sample to any sampler and trigger it (so it plays on its own and NOT when the playback is ON) then while its still playing hit MIDI panic (kills the sample)  and then hit PLAY or press button 'Run the Audio Engine' and se if this sample is back.

[Promidi]

With the scenario you have described, the synth would need to respond to CC123 (which is all notes off)

If your sampler allows for a very long release time or responds to CC64, then the note will still sound after playback has stopped.

In that case, the panic should still work....  if the note off events does not do it, then the CC123 should.  Not all synths respond to CC123 > all note off.

I just tried this with Rapture Pro with a long sample.  I used a sustain event, before the note, to cause a hung note after I stopped playback (expected).  Even then, the MIDI panic stopped the note.  When I restarted the audio engine, then note did not resume.  I also confirmed that Rapture Pro responds correctly to CC123.  It does.

So, really, it's down to the individual synth as to how it responds to MIDI Panic..

[Wojtek Stecyszyn]

Can you please direct me to a place where I can learn what CC123 is and how to use it in Cakewalk?