MIDI Troubles in MacBook Pro - "Hanging Notes" Galore - Help!!

[Groovacious]

To all Mac Users who may have experienced MIDI troubles in Apple's MIDI world:

I have started to use a MacBookPro (i7 processor) as my sound module about 2 years ago and have been ecstatic about the fantastic sounds I now could use on stage.

I used a multi-channel MIDI-capable masterkeyboard (various types) (Yamaha Motif series or S90 etc.) to control the various layers of sounds inside my laptop.

The latency is negligible and I began having great fun playing digital keyboards again with the artists I'm currently on the road with.

Then about a half a year or more, trouble started creeping in.
At first, a few notes would keep ringing and would only stop ringing once they were re-played. Using the sustain pedal had no effect on this at all.

This effect has increased to a point now that many songs are blasted by Note-Hangs --- and even certain notes seem to be "Stuck In The Pipeline", at times reappearing out of the blue (and not musically very satisfying to the artist) which is a totally new phenomenon for me.

I have worked for ROLAND as a product specialist and have been around Macs for 15 years, around MIDI itself for more than 27 years.

What Apple's OS os doing with this antiquated application is beyond me.

I welcome your feedback and intensely look forward to a solution that will enable me to bring my computer back into my music performance system.

Stephan Oberhoff
Professional Keyboardist and Music Producer


Specs:

MacBook Pro 2.66 GHZ
running Leopard 10.6.8
Memory 4GB

What have I tried:

Cleaned up all Ram Caches and Cleared P-RAM =NO EFFECT
Trashing Preferences on the AudioMidi Setup.plist (preferences)=NO EFFECT
Used other outboard gear as a Sound Module =NO EFFECT
Used another MIDI interface=NO EFFECT


Note-hangs occur with various types of software synths AND outboard MIDI sound modules.
The also oocur using different types of MIDI interfaces.

As SOON as I use the Mac in the MIDI chain - trouble shows up.

Thanks and good vibes in the studio!

[Groovacious]

just to see if the e-mail notification works !

[Stats 74]

What sample rate are you using? I used to have trouble with outboard gear using Logic and a certain crappy M-Audio Firewire 410 until I started doing audio in 96k instead of 44k. I think that was an issue specific to M-Audio crap, but who knows... worth a try.

The weird thing was the midi notes would hang whether I was recording or just monitoring. Very strange.

Probably not your issue, but another cable to jiggle at least.

[criminallysmooth]

This may be a stupid suggestion but try another MIDI cable? I've had hanging note problems caused by A) failing MIDI cable and B) insufficient power (from a shared USB hub or faulty power cable) going to the MIDI/usb interface or controller.

[Simonator]

This might help you troubleshoot:
s n o i z e : MIDI Monitor

[Altitude909]

if a different midi interface is not fixing it (and I assumed you tried another USB port) than there is some software issue at play..

[Groovacious]

Now I went into my laptop and tracked MIDi straight into GarageBand - there are a good amount of notes being recorded but NOT sounding when in playback !

Check this out:

‪AppleMIDItroubleshoot01‬‏ - YouTube

Tried different interfaces, different masterkeyboards, software synths, outbaord sound modules = SAME DEAL !!

[Groovacious]

I noticed that Garageband's instruments are sensitive to playback errors when they get the type of Sustain messages my keyboard (ROLAND FP3) sends.
The FP3 sends Continuous Controller messages which Garageband does not filter out.
GB only needs 1 MIDI value of 0 to release sustain and only 1 MIDI value of 127 to hold a note.
if it gets more, I get disappearing notes, clicks in certain keyboard sounds and no effect in sustaining sounds such as organs or strings (talking all internal sounds of GB here)

More news on this shortly

[zosthegoatherd]

The only time I an into anything like this was when trying to help a friend set up a kawai k5000 that was spitting out a lot of midi data nothing else was looking for, putting a midi filter on (in software I think) eventually fixed the mess