Logic Pro 11 turns off Sequential sound

[markwilkins]

I'm wondering if anyone might have some insight into this. I have somewhat recently upgraded Logic Pro X to Logic Pro 11. One of the results of this is that something in my MIDI setup is causing all sound to turn off on my Sequential synths sometimes (both the Prophet 6 and the Trigon 6). The other synths do not share this fate.

In the middle of the MIDI connectivity is a hardware device: mioXM. It allows me (with minimal grousing and grumbling) to route MIDI from pretty much any device to any other device (hardware or software). I mention this mioXM device because it does, in theory, allow for any message from anything to get to another device.

Specifically, I think it is allowing some kind of "stop making sound" message to be sent from Logic Pro 11 to the P6 and T6. After a lengthy debugging session, I find I am able to reproduce it easily by opening Logic Pro 11 and then closing it. Closing it is somehow (apparently) getting some MIDI message to the P6 and T6 that effectively bricks them (from an audio standpoint) until I power cycle them. This is happening even though I am not aware of any active connections from Logic Pro to the mioXM hardware.

- Any idea what kind of CC message might be doing this? I played with the "midi note off cc123" message. I can send that message to, say, the Trigon-6 and it does cut off the notes. But the next note I play works. cc120 (sound off) doesn't seem to affect these synths ... but maybe I am not able to repro that by manually sending cc120.

- Aside from what might be causing this, do you have any idea of how I could "restore" the audio without a power cycle? With the P6, it is no big deal. Just clickety-click-off-on and it is working again. The T6 is much slower to reboot and typically is out of tune for a short time (e.g., a minute or two), so that is kind of painful. I would like it to just have a "make sound again" button.

[LPF83]

I'm wondering if anyone might have some insight into this. I have somewhat recently upgraded Logic Pro X to Logic Pro 11. One of the results of this is that something in my MIDI setup is causing all sound to turn off on my Sequential synths sometimes (both the Prophet 6 and the Trigon 6). The other synths do not share this fate.

In the middle of the MIDI connectivity is a hardware device: mioXM. It allows me (with minimal grousing and grumbling) to route MIDI from pretty much any device to any other device (hardware or software). I mention this mioXM device because it does, in theory, allow for any message from anything to get to another device.

Specifically, I think it is allowing some kind of "stop making sound" message to be sent from Logic Pro 11 to the P6 and T6. After a lengthy debugging session, I find I am able to reproduce it easily by opening Logic Pro 11 and then closing it. Closing it is somehow (apparently) getting some MIDI message to the P6 and T6 that effectively bricks them (from an audio standpoint) until I power cycle them. This is happening even though I am not aware of any active connections from Logic Pro to the mioXM hardware.

- Any idea what kind of CC message might be doing this? I played with the "midi note off cc123" message. I can send that message to, say, the Trigon-6 and it does cut off the notes. But the next note I play works. cc120 (sound off) doesn't seem to affect these synths ... but maybe I am not able to repro that by manually sending cc120.

- Aside from what might be causing this, do you have any idea of how I could "restore" the audio without a power cycle? With the P6, it is no big deal. Just clickety-click-off-on and it is working again. The T6 is much slower to reboot and typically is out of tune for a short time (e.g., a minute or two), so that is kind of painful. I would like it to just have a "make sound again" button.

Have you ruled out a MIDI volume message being sent to the synth?  I've found there are a number of ways that can happen, for example some MIDI controllers have a touch slider and all it needs is an accidental touch in the wrong place for a synth to go mute all of sudden depending on other set up factors.  I'm not a Logic user so I'm unsure how to give specifics on troubleshooting but in Ableton for example I'd drop a MIDI monitor on and see if CC07 is coming in on the Prophet 6.

[markwilkins]

Have you ruled out a MIDI volume message being sent to the synth?  I've found there are a number of ways that can happen, for example some MIDI controllers have a touch slider and all it needs is an accidental touch in the wrong place for a synth to go mute all of sudden depending on other set up factors.  I'm not a Logic user so I'm unsure how to give specifics on troubleshooting but in Ableton for example I'd drop a MIDI monitor on and see if CC07 is coming in on the Prophet 6.

Good thought. The CC07 might be a possibility. I had been focused on the “sound off” and “note off” messages. I will try to spend time this evening looking at that. I *think* I can send that message with automation from Logic. Using a software “MIDI Monitor” app on the Mac, I can see that Logic does send a bunch of messages at shutdown, but they seem to be benign (sustain, mod wheel, etc.). I suspect I might need to spy on the data between the mioXM hardware and the synth; not sure what I would need for that.

[markwilkins]

@LPF83: Thanks to your suggestions, I figured out the problem and the solution. Your suggestion of the MIDI monitoring and the other potentially problematic MIDI messages helped me isolate it. I had forgotten that I had the "MIDI Monitor" app from Snoize installed on my Mac. That proved to be key in figuring out the "bad" MIDI.

I studied the messages sent from Logic Pro when shutting down, and there were not many different ones to consider. It turns out that CC04 (Foot Controller) was the culprit. If I simply plug in a foot controller to the volume port on the back panel, I can "fix" the sound-off problem by moving the pedal.

The permanent fix (at least for me) appears to be to disable that message in Logic Pro 11: Main menu \ Settings \ MIDI \ Reset Messages \ "Control 4 (Foot Control) to zero" in the "External MIDI" section of that dialog (uncheck it). That seems to prevent those messages. I will see if this is a long term solution or if other things were going on. But this seems promising.

Anyway - thank you very much for chiming in with thoughts. Pair debugging sometimes works magic.

[LPF83]

@LPF83: Thanks to your suggestions, I figured out the problem and the solution. Your suggestion of the MIDI monitoring and the other potentially problematic MIDI messages helped me isolate it. I had forgotten that I had the "MIDI Monitor" app from Snoize installed on my Mac. That proved to be key in figuring out the "bad" MIDI.

I studied the messages sent from Logic Pro when shutting down, and there were not many different ones to consider. It turns out that CC04 (Foot Controller) was the culprit. If I simply plug in a foot controller to the volume port on the back panel, I can "fix" the sound-off problem by moving the pedal.

The permanent fix (at least for me) appears to be to disable that message in Logic Pro 11: Main menu \ Settings \ MIDI \ Reset Messages \ "Control 4 (Foot Control) to zero" in the "External MIDI" section of that dialog (uncheck it). That seems to prevent those messages. I will see if this is a long term solution or if other things were going on. But this seems promising.

Anyway - thank you very much for chiming in with thoughts. Pair debugging sometimes works magic.

Glad that you got it worked out!