My project somehow has an event that I can't suppress

[Starship Krupa]

I have a project with two instances of Kontakt Player 7, along with A|A|S Player and Hybrid 3, each synth having its corresponding MIDI track. They are set up as "split," where the synth tracks and MIDI tracks are not tied together in an "instrument" track.

Somewhere along the way, an event has crept in, either automation or MIDI I can't tell because I can't find it. It acts like automation, but I won't be able to say for sure unless I manage to figure out why it's happening.

What happens is that on the first Kontakt instance, Kontakt's master volume gets turned down to -6dB as soon as I start Sonar's transport. It doesn't matter where in the project I start it from, as soon as the transport starts, the volume drops to -6dB. Once the transport is rolling, I can open the plug-in UI and set the volume wherever I want and it will stay where it is, but as soon as I stop the transport and restart it, boing, back down to -6dB. It can loop all day long and be fine, it's just the act of starting the transport that makes the volume drop.

I've been poking at and beating on this project for a couple of days now trying to get this not to happen.

Your first thought was "simple: he has somehow put in an automation lane that controls that parameter in the plug-in."

That was my first thought as well, so I turned off the reading of automation and it persisted. Then I examined automation lanes both in the MIDI track and the synth track, and while I did find that automation had somehow been written for the MIDI track's volume parameter, I deleted all of it and it still does this.

I've examined the MIDI event list for the track, automation (which if it were that would be a bug, seeing that I turned of automation read).

So I'm tossing it out to the hive mind: what could cause a synth parameter to change every time the transport is started?

The other instance of Kontakt Player behaves just fine, the synth's volume stays wherever I set it.

I'm going to save the project as it is and then create new tracks, copy the MIDI data to the new track and delete the "haunted" track(s) and instance of Kontakt Player. I doubt the issue will survive that.

The only reason I'm asking at this point is out of curiosity. Is there something obvious that I'm missing? Keep in mind that I have two instances of Kontakt Player going and one of them is behaving normally. I never even moved the plug-in's volume control until after I noticed that the track was playing back at a lower volume than I expected. I turned automation off. Nothing weird shows up in the MIDI event list for that track, just the expected notes.

[Sock Monkey]

I have often had this happen.   Say,  Ample P bass  which I want it's level control knob at  1.0 in it's GUI but It goes to 1.6.  ?? like you resetting it will not stick.   It's some sort of hidden midi data that I've never been able to find  and the reason is it is the midi tracks Header to blame.  

 One solution is I have to turn the Midi track level down to 64 and that seems to fix the issue and now the GUI level shows as 1.0. I believe that this is because the track header settings will always overrule any other midi data.  And it's data is basically hidden.  Well it's not really hidden it's right there in the track header. But the case of the volume level is not as obvious if you never touch the fader! 

Example. 

Ample P bass in a Instrument track open the GUI and observe the default setting of the level control For me it will be 1.0.  

Observe that moving the fader of the instrument track does not interreact with the GUI level. It is an Audio setting, not midi. 

Insert a new Midi track.  Set output to the instrument track. 

Observe the track default level of the fader is set at 101. Just click on that and watch the Level in the GUI will jump to 1.6.  Now moving the midi tracks fader will set the Master level of the instrument in the GUI.  So once you touch that fader it becomes active. Otherwise it is ignored. 

You would now have to remove the midi track to re gain control via the instruments GUI level control.

A simple solution is to re- add the instrument as a simple instrument track and drag the midi data to the instrument track. Delete the midi track. Now the level stays put.  But often we need multiple midi tracks so in that case you will need to make sure you set the level with the fader.  

So see if adjusting the Midi track fader changes the level and sticks. 

Edited August 5 by Sock Monkey

[Bristol_Jonesey]

Might be worth checking to see if you've got Ripple Edit enabled. Though if you did you'd probably have other weird stuff happening.

[OutrageProductions]

Some Kontakt instruments default to -6dB output. Check preferences in Kontakt for the output level and/or set the level in the instrument in Kontakt (wrench) and <save as> custom preset. If that solves it, you can <save> and overwrite factory patch, but any updates will negate & revert.

I've had that issue with Abby Road kits and the Scarbee basses. Took forever to figure it out years ago.

[SirWillyDS12]

2 hours ago, OutrageProductions said:

Some Kontakt instruments default to -6dB output. Check preferences in Kontakt for the output level and/or set the level in the instrument in Kontakt (wrench) and <save as> custom preset. If that solves it, you can <save> and overwrite factory patch, but any updates will negate & revert.

I've had that issue with Abby Road kits and the Scarbee basses. Took forever to figure it out years ago.

This ^^^... Also in the Kontakt, Settings -> Engine. there is check box for default volume for new instruments or volume reset, can be set at -6db or 0db, if -6db is checked (default) your instruments can revert to -6db regardless of what they were "saved" at... If I remember correctly what causes the instruments to revert to -6db is if it is set in Kontakt at -6bd and CbB or Sonar has the option  Zero Controllers When Play Stops enabled... Edit -> Preferrences -> Project -> MIDI... I'm pretty sure that all the default templates have this option checked... I created my own project templates and unchecked that option on all of them...

Another thing, the midi track velocity\volume control will set the volume in Kontakt... If you moved the "slider" and it is no longer set to default (101) or disable control it will change the volume of the instrument in Kontakt... I always disable the control and use the output audio of Kontakt for fine tuning volume or automation...

[Starship Krupa]

21 hours ago, Sock Monkey said:

the track header settings will always overrule any other midi data.  And it's data is basically hidden.  Well it's not really hidden it's right there in the track header. But the case of the volume level is not as obvious if you never touch the fader!

14 hours ago, SirWillyDS12 said:

in the Kontakt, Settings -> Engine. there is check box for default volume for new instruments or volume reset, can be set at -6db or 0db, if -6db is checked (default) your instruments can revert to -6db regardless of what they were "saved" at...

Both of these. Thank you!

The MIDI volume faders on the tracks control that volume control in the Kontakt instrument. My Kontakt is set to initialize at -6dB, so "0" on the MIDI fader=-6dB in the instrument.

Once I whacked the faders up to 127, that took the volume up to 0dB.

In light of this, the question should be "why wasn't the 2nd instance also doing it?"

And my answer is "who cares?"😄

I got it working correctly, with your help I figured it out, and all is happy again. If I run across the phenomenon again, I'll know where to look.

[bitflipper]

The easiest and most reliable solution is to add volume automation to the MIDI track, even if it's just a single data point at the start of the song. That way, you'll always know where the volume is going to start out regardless of other factors. It's easy to edit in the PRV if your initial choice turns out to be too low/high.

When adding a Kontakt instrument, my standard procedure is to open the Instrument Settings and set the cc7 range to 0dB or +6dB, and to bump up the DFD buffer size. The latter has nothing to do with volume, but both are steps that I end up doing so often that now I just set them up from the get-go.

 

[Sock Monkey]

It took me a long time to finally figure out that the track header ( and the advanced midi setting strip)  is the boss. The other sequencers I grew up like  Dr T these events were always at the  beginning of each song via the events list. In those days it was all hardware synths so often Sys ex. stuff too. 

Back when I had this issue  for the life of me could not find where the data was that was messing with all the midi tracks. Classic example is change a program,  level, or turn off the effects  inside TTS-1 and as soon as you hit playback it reverted. You'd look in the events list and find the effects but not the volume or the program change?   I would often just copy the midi to a new track and that would fix it because that track was fresh and I hadn't touched the level yet.  But then later it was back! I figured Sonar was just a terrible sequencer and was missing stuff on the events list.  Duh!