Reaper MIDI an octave too low - apparently it's always been like that and I never noticed before!

[WatchTheGuitar]

I have a really odd issue I've just noticed where my Reaper MIDI output is being played an octave lower than the notes I see on screen. Came to light because I had Falcon loaded and the C3 note I had placed in the track wasn't triggering the drum kit to play. I then noticed the on screen keyboard was showing it was receiving a C2 note. When I moved the note up to C4 it started being received as a C3 and playing the loop. It's all very weird.

Tested with other instruments and all have the same issue - MIDI output going out an octave lower.

There's nothing else in the track, nothing obvious. I'm not aware there's a global preference anywhere that I could have set to cause this, but please let me know if you think there is.

Needless to say I tested other DAWs and they're all good, just seems to be affecting Reaper. I haven't had a chance to reboot my PC yet and can't while I'm working (noticed this at lunch) so will have to wait until 5PM-ish to see if a restart fixes the issue. I have restarted Reaper a couple of times, but it's done nothing.

This is using the latest 6.15 x64 build on Win 10 Pro. Anyone else ever had this happen?

[BertKoor]

The counting of octaves in midi is alas not standardized. Middle C is supposed to be note #60. If you call that C3, then note zero is C-minus-one.

Other than that, check octave transpose settings on the keyboard.

[ReleaseCandidate]

The counting of octaves in midi is alas not standardized.

This. Check the 'name' of the note with MIDI value 0.
Or look at Reaper's score view to check the octave the note is in.

[Held]

You can go to "MIDI octave name display offset" in Preferences > Media > MIDI. Set the value to -1 and it should match.

[WatchTheGuitar]

Just to be clear I’m talking about C4 being shown in Reaper’s piano roll editor triggering C3 on instruments on that MIDI channel. I will check out the octave name offset though, could be something I’ve done that has affected it.

[DarkStar]

^^^
Nope, you've not made any mistake. Several DAW and plug-in developers use the MIDI name range C-2 to G8. Reaper's default is C-1 to G9, so altering the octave name display offset to -1 will give you names in the range C-2 to G8.

I think the original naming standard was derived from the names used for the keys on a 88-key piano. Then along came Roland or Yamaha and one of them came up with a different standard.

[ReleaseCandidate]

I think the original naming standard was derived from the names used for the keys on a 88-key piano.

There has never been a standard way of naming keys.

There is the 'classical' naming scheme that goes
,,C (the comma is part of the name) or C2 ... 'normally' C0
,C (the comma is part of the name) or C1 ... 'normally' C1
C or C ... 'normally' C2
c or c... C3
c' or c1 ... C4
c'' or c2 ... C5
c''' or c3 ... C6

[WatchTheGuitar]

^^^
Nope, you've not made any mistake. Several DAW and plug-in developers use the MIDI name range C-2 to G8. Reaper's default is C-1 to G9, so altering the octave name display offset to -1 will give you names in the range C-2 to G8.

I think the original naming standard was derived from the names used for the keys on a 88-key piano. Then along came Roland or Yamaha and one of them came up with a different standard.

Oh OK, maybe never been an issue as I haven't tended to use Reaper before much with instruments that have definite keyswitches. Although I have a number of them, I use Reaper a lot more with audio tracks than MIDI. Just started using it a lot more recently as I have a lot more external instruments connected at once than I used to (Boog, TD-3, Deepmind and now Hydrasynth).

Good to know it's always worked this way.

Oh and, Held, thanks for this tip...

You can go to "MIDI octave name display offset" in Preferences > Media > MIDI. Set the value to -1 and it should match.

Really helps when trying to keep things lined up between DAWs