Well, hmmmm. If that's the case then it's a big bummer and a show stopper for MPE support for quite a while. I wasn't aware of that scenario from reading the MPE specs and as our first synth supporting multichannel MIDI has been out for more than two years, we can't change it without breaking it.
It's also the most unintuitive thing I've ever heard. Using a strictly polyphonic controller to play a strictly monophonic synth and have it "jump" back and forth between expressions isn't exactly the most obvious thing to support. Funnily it's most easily supported by a monophonic synth in OMNI mode with, like the thing we used to have before we went through hoops to support exactly those controllers.
Ah well.
Feature Request : MPE support
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- u-he
- 28065 posts since 8 Aug, 2002 from Berlin
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Echoes in the Attic Echoes in the Attic https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=180417
- KVRAF
- 11054 posts since 12 May, 2008
Seems pretty intuitive to me. If you have it in poly mode it plays polyphonically with notes and expression received on different channels. If you have it in mono mode it plays mono with notes/expression on different channels. What isn't intuitive is if you have a synth set to mono and it still plays polyphonically. That's obviously confusing and shouldn't be the case. Strobe, Synthmaster and Equator seem to agree.
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- u-he
- 28065 posts since 8 Aug, 2002 from Berlin
Good on them.Echoes in the Attic wrote:Strobe, Synthmaster and Equator seem to agree.
There you go. Use these instead and we don't need to waste any further time on something that never seems to move beyond draft mode. Win-Win.
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- u-he
- 28065 posts since 8 Aug, 2002 from Berlin
Actually, the MPE draft doesn't say anything about controlling a monophonic instrument. So I don't know where that is coming from.
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- u-he
- 28065 posts since 8 Aug, 2002 from Berlin
Going back to the root of the problem. What if you set ACE/Diva/Bazille/Hive to 1 voice polyphony? Does it still play more than 1 voice if triggered on multiple channels?
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- KVRist
- 311 posts since 8 Jul, 2009
I bookmarked this thread since I got a Roli Seaboard 25 a month or so ago. I'm on the lookout for nice soft-synths and u-he ones are on the top of my list if MPE is supported. So I have to say I was gutted to see your negativity towards this spec. A spec being in draft should not be seen as something negative, especially with standards that are slow to evolve like midi - the fact its even part of a draft spec is almost a miracle and great progress compared to, for example, the state of play when I tried to use an Eigenharp last decade.
As a developer (albeit not of music stuff) I can understand why this stuff may cause frustrations at times, especially when it is something of a small niche right now. But you could look at it as an opportunity and try to embrace it more convincingly. I'd like to become a customer of yours, and even maybe help untangle some of the confusion when I'm slightly more up to speed on the spec and its implications in different situations, but not if you dont really want to embrace MPE.
As a developer (albeit not of music stuff) I can understand why this stuff may cause frustrations at times, especially when it is something of a small niche right now. But you could look at it as an opportunity and try to embrace it more convincingly. I'd like to become a customer of yours, and even maybe help untangle some of the confusion when I'm slightly more up to speed on the spec and its implications in different situations, but not if you dont really want to embrace MPE.
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- u-he
- 28065 posts since 8 Aug, 2002 from Berlin
Sorry, I was a bit on the edge.
We put a lot of work into our implementation of multichannel MIDI. It is very flexible and one can use it for much more than just the purposes MPE is designed for. Being told that this was somewhat wrong was somewhat frustrating, then having to read that there's no spec for this at all was a draining exercise. I should have listened to my guts that the feature request had nothing to do with MPE support at all.
If after all competing products suit someone's need better than ours, because, say, it's a parameter with a different name, then by all means, use these products.
We put a lot of work into our implementation of multichannel MIDI. It is very flexible and one can use it for much more than just the purposes MPE is designed for. Being told that this was somewhat wrong was somewhat frustrating, then having to read that there's no spec for this at all was a draining exercise. I should have listened to my guts that the feature request had nothing to do with MPE support at all.
If after all competing products suit someone's need better than ours, because, say, it's a parameter with a different name, then by all means, use these products.
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- KVRist
- 311 posts since 8 Jul, 2009
OK cool. Is multi-channel/polyphonic cc74 support on the cards with any of your synths? I saw it discussed much earlier in this thread but that was a while ago now.
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- KVRAF
- 23103 posts since 7 Jan, 2009 from Croatia
I think you can already do that with current u-he synths. Or at least some of them?
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- u-he
- 28065 posts since 8 Aug, 2002 from Berlin
Yep, that's still on our todo list. We'll offer it as an alternative to the current Breath/Expression controllers.SteveElbows wrote:OK cool. Is multi-channel/polyphonic cc74 support on the cards with any of your synths? I saw it discussed much earlier in this thread but that was a while ago now.
I do hope that MPE will one day be set in stone. What I read today (examples: No Notes on Channel 1, pitchbend +/- 96 semitones) is not how I remember it from last year.
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Echoes in the Attic Echoes in the Attic https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=180417
- KVRAF
- 11054 posts since 12 May, 2008
Look, I was trying to help by explaining some differences I've noticed in the behaviors of multi-channel/MPE implementations of different synths. If you read my detailed post again you'll see that I said I understand you have not yet fully supported MPE and was trying to point out a characteristic that is present in some synths that have fully adopted it, which seems to be the appropriate behavior (of working mono), contrasted with some that have not fully implemented it and don't seem to have this behavior worked out. I didn't say your current way was wrong, as I know it isn't fully supported, I was offering some information for when you do implement it!Urs wrote:Sorry, I was a bit on the edge.
We put a lot of work into our implementation of multichannel MIDI. It is very flexible and one can use it for much more than just the purposes MPE is designed for. Being told that this was somewhat wrong was somewhat frustrating, then having to read that there's no spec for this at all was a draining exercise. I should have listened to my guts that the feature request had nothing to do with MPE support at all.
If after all competing products suit someone's need better than ours, because, say, it's a parameter with a different name, then by all means, use these products.
I'm just reporting the way the other fully supported MPE synths behave in MPE mode. If you want to say that the way other fully supported MPE synths behave in MPE mode has nothing to do with MPE, fine, I won't argue with that, there's no use. I did not reference the spec at all, I based my assessment of the correct behavior on both what was intuitive and obvious (poly mode working polyphonically and mono mode working as mono) and on the behavior of synths with official MPE support, including one that was designed specifically for an MPE controller (equator) and instruments designed for an MPE DAW (Bitwig), and I bet if you check the Logic instruments, they will be the same too.
This is not a feature request. I own two of your synths and am selling both (not because they aren't good but because I am drastically reducing my instruments to focus on only a couple), so this won't even benefit me! I was trying to friggin' help because I'm a fan of the instruments and want them to be as good as possible. But I really don't really don't give a damn at this point. Good luck.
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- u-he
- 28065 posts since 8 Aug, 2002 from Berlin
Well, you obviously haven't understood how our concept works and you implied it wasn't implemented "properly". It's mono per channel, which is an extension of that "just mono" of the synths you mention. They seem to do it right because they have the minimum implementation of MPE whereas we strive for a superset.Echoes in the Attic wrote:which seems to be the appropriate behavior (of working mono)
If you want mono overall, choose 1 voice polyphony. Simple.
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- KVRist
- 311 posts since 8 Jul, 2009
It's not unusual for specifications that involve numerous interested parties (eg many software and hardware makers) to take years to evolve before initial version is finalised and set in stone. And that is even without any 'political' delays or issues relating to official industry bodies. This sort of collaborative effort to standardise can seem tedious and slow but it's probably the only way to get a final result that is flexible enough and its better than everyone just going their own way.igoramos wrote:Why is the MPE specification still in draft mode at this point anyways? What is the hold up?
I've just looked into the history of the MPE spec and will be making a more detailed response to another post on this issue very shortly.
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- KVRist
- 311 posts since 8 Jul, 2009
Thanks very much for the detail. I guess I might convert the cc74 messages to a different cc using other software in the meantime, as it is likely I will want to buy at least one of your synths before you implement this. I dont suppose it is possible for you to give an idea which of your synths is likely to get the support first is it?Urs wrote:Yep, that's still on our todo list. We'll offer it as an alternative to the current Breath/Expression controllers.SteveElbows wrote:OK cool. Is multi-channel/polyphonic cc74 support on the cards with any of your synths? I saw it discussed much earlier in this thread but that was a while ago now.
I do hope that MPE will one day be set in stone. What I read today (examples: No Notes on Channel 1, pitchbend +/- 96 semitones) is not how I remember it from last year.
As for the spec changing, I just did a bit of work studying this. I'm not sure which version you are looking at but I just found version 1.25a which is interesting for several reasons:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vpj ... l3e1clv7vt
1) There is a revision history at the end of this document which is quite revealing.
2) This version does seem to have evolved a fair but compared to the version 1.1 which I've commonly seen linked to in the past. In particular, talk of zones and support for 14-bit stuff.
3) The fact that the spec we can currently get access to publicly is frozen at 1.25a, and the work has now moved to the world of a Working Group of the Midi Manufacturers Association which seems to have been established at the end of 2015 or beginning of 2016.
Given the additional requirements that point 2 raises, and the inability of non-members to presently discover what the MMA MPE working group has been doing (ie we cant see how the spec is evolving), I dont blame you for being put off!
Given this present state of affairs my recommendation to software synth makers who are interested in this stuff and have already implemented very nice polyphonic multi-channel stuff in their products, is not to worry too much about trying to support every last detail of the spec at the moment. Just do a few additional things like cc74 and being able to choose the pitch bend range, ie the suff that is necessary to support the couple of MPE hardware controllers that are somewhat mainstream this year, and leave the complicated, unclear or likely to change stuff for some future appropriate time. After all some of the iOS etc synths that call themselves MPE-compatible dont, as far as I know, support every aspect of the 1.25a spec as I understand it, but they still do enough to be useful to owners of suitable hardware.
If people get frustrated here its probably just because your excellent support for multiple channels makes your products tantalisingly close to being highly practical when used with these controllers, and people who fall in love with these expressive controllers want to unlock the potential with as many synths as possible and get distressed by stumbling blocks.
Speaking of blocks, although they are presently being marketed as devices to be used with their iOS app, Roli Blocks are coming in a few weeks and can be used as MPE controllers transmitting midi over usb (and bluetooth on os x) to computers. Dont know how good they are yet but they offer the prospect of sub $200 MPE so if they arent rubbish then things could get interesting in this space. Thats partly why I chose now to join in the discussion on this thread.
