H9 erratic MIDI behavior

[starkjo]

I have two H9s on my board, which is controlled by the Boss ES-8 switching system. The ES-8 sends out MIDI PC messages to the MIDI-equipped effects I have: a Korg SDD-3000 delay pedal, the two H9s, and an Electro-Harmonix HOG2. They’re in that order. No matter if they’re all on the same MIDI channel or on separate ones, the second of the H9s doesn’t seem to handle the incoming MIDI messages well. Here’s a brief video I shot of the behavior:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDxyYNWPn9U

As can be seen, I switch between presets on the ES-8. Every time it sends out the corresponding PC message, ie preset 1 on the ES-8 is equal to preset 1 on the H9s, and so on. As you can see, the first H9 does what it should, but the second H9 changes to sometimes the correct preset, sometimes not. Sometimes it freezes and its power has to be shut down, sometimes it shouts “no algo”, sometimes it gives a BPM reading.

I know that in the manual you’ve stated, in some terms, that the H9 doesn’t handle much MIDI information well. Is that what’s going on perhaps? Of course it’s highlighted by me changing the presets once every second, which I PROBABLY wouldn’t do that often in a live situation, but if I would, then this could very likely happen – which isn’t good from a reliability point-of-view, that’s why I’m writing. The MIDI clock from both the ES-8 and in the H9s are turned off. The H9s are on MIDI Thru. No MIDI CC messages are being sent either. Any idea what may be the cause of this?

The H9 is still one helluva pedal, thanks for that!

[spaceJam]

I have been experiencing the same issue since the first day I started to use it on my MIDI chain but I wanted to try different things before opening a thread about this, but I will share my experience.

 

The 3 pedals I’m using with MIDI is (in this order): Strymon Timeline, H9 and Space.

If I put H9 or Space before Timeline, there’s LOTS of errors, things work better when Timeline is first in the chain but I still need to manually hit the bypass switches sometimes because they don’t work 100% of the time.

 

Another extremely weird issue I experienced a few weeks in a rehearsal was that H9 got stuck after sending a CC for expression and then a couple of seconds later send a PC. I restarted the unit like 5 times, unplugged everything, using different Eventide power adapters and nothing happened…then a few minutes later by doing nothing, it came to life again.

I want to replicate this again and record a sample but I haven’t had any lucky yet.

 

Then the issue I have when sending a CC for the “Change direction” with the Looper algorithm but I just gave up with that…

 

I’d rather see Eventide fixing all this PROBLEMS rather than creating new algorithms. But I’m pretty sure I’m the minority on this, lol.

[gkellum]

spaceJam wrote:

Another extremely weird issue I experienced a few weeks in a rehearsal was that H9 got stuck after sending a CC for expression and then a couple of seconds later send a PC. I restarted the unit like 5 times, unplugged everything, using different Eventide power adapters and nothing happened…then a few minutes later by doing nothing, it came to life again.

I'm not sure I understand.  You have an expression pedal connected to your H9 and you're the XMT CTL function to send out a MIDI CC representation of the expression pedal's value.  The H9 got stuck and stopped sending CC messages and then after a couple of seconds it randomly sent out a program change which caused a different preset to load on another one of your connected stompboxes?

spaceJam wrote:

I'd rather see Eventide fixing all this PROBLEMS rather than creating new algorithms. But I'm pretty sure I'm the minority on this, lol.

We do try to fix these kinds of problems as soon as we hear about them.

[spaceJam]

gkellum wrote:

I’m not sure I understand.  You have an expression pedal connected to your H9 and you’re the XMT CTL function to send out a MIDI CC representation of the expression pedal’s value.  The H9 got stuck and stopped sending CC messages and then after a couple of seconds it randomly sent out a program change which caused a different preset to load on another one of your connected stompboxes?

 

 

Sorry if I was not clear enough.

 

It was more like this:

 

 

1) H9 is active with preset #2 loaded.

2) Sent CC for expression through MIDI (which it works really slow, but it’s a known issue with Liquid Foot controllers)

3) 1 second later, I hit a switch in my MIDI controller to sent CC to bypass it.

4) H9 screen got stuck. Signal was bypassed (no wet signal). None of the switches, buttons or MIDI commands worked. Unresponsive.

5) Power cable unplugged and plugged back a few times and it started in the same state.

6) Repeat 4) and 5) a few times.

7) All of a sudden, it works fine again.

 

This never happened before doing the upgrade to the latest version.

I will keep doing the same thing to see if I can replicate it.

 

Thanks!

[gkellum]

starkjo wrote:

As can be seen, I switch between presets on the ES-8. Every time it sends out the corresponding PC message, ie preset 1 on the ES-8 is equal to preset 1 on the H9s, and so on. As you can see, the first H9 does what it should, but the second H9 changes to sometimes the correct preset, sometimes not. Sometimes it freezes and its power has to be shut down, sometimes it shouts "no algo", sometimes it gives a BPM reading.

I know that in the manual you've stated, in some terms, that the H9 doesn't handle much MIDI information well. Is that what's going on perhaps? Of course it's highlighted by me changing the presets once every second, which I PROBABLY wouldn't do that often in a live situation, but if I would, then this could very likely happen – which isn't good from a reliability point-of-view, that's why I'm writing. The MIDI clock from both the ES-8 and in the H9s are turned off. The H9s are on MIDI Thru. No MIDI CC messages are being sent either. Any idea what may be the cause of this?

Well, when the H9 receives a program change message it starts loading the indicated preset, and we have seen that when the H9 is sent multiple program change messages it can start dropping MIDI messages as it tries to load one preset, then another, then another, etc.  I don't think we've ever seen this happen with just a single MIDI program change being sent to an H9 though.  I'll ask one of our testers to see if they can replicate what you're seeing with the latest release.  

When you set up the program changes to send on different channels, presumably you configured your H9s to just listen to their respective channels?  Does your MIDI controller give you an option to order the messages?  The safest thing to do would be to target the last pedal in the chain first on one MIDI channel, the second to last pedal in the chain next and so on.

 

[starkjo]

Hey gkellum,

thanks for your response. To answer your question, yes, the H9s were configured to just listen to their respective channels. I did what you suggested though. I wanted to report my observations back. 

– when all four MIDI-equipped effects are on the same MIDI channel, there are no problems, regardless of their internal order

– when all four effects are on separate channels (1-4 in this case) and the last pedal in chain is first to receive the MIDI PC command, the second to last pedal receives the next MIDI PC command and so on, like you suggested, then it appears that the problem I posted about doesn’t appear

I can still reproduce the behavior I filmed – apparently the deciding factor here is that the last pedal needs to receive its MIDI PC command first. The Boss ES-8 is capable of sending eight different MIDI PC messages at the same time by pressing one footswitch, and prior to this I did not even know that it sends the MIDI messages in order, ie. the first MIDI message is sent first, the second MIDI message is sent after that, and so on.

So in a nutshell, the problem is solved by sending the MIDI message first to the last effect in the MIDI signal chain, but the problem persists if the order isn’t that.

gkellum wrote:

Well, when the H9 receives a program change message it starts loading the indicated preset, and we have seen that when the H9 is sent multiple program change messages it can start dropping MIDI messages as it tries to load one preset, then another, then another, etc.  I don’t think we’ve ever seen this happen with just a single MIDI program change being sent to an H9 though.  I’ll ask one of our testers to see if they can replicate what you’re seeing with the latest release.  

When you set up the program changes to send on different channels, presumably you configured your H9s to just listen to their respective channels?  Does your MIDI controller give you an option to order the messages?  The safest thing to do would be to target the last pedal in the chain first on one MIDI channel, the second to last pedal in the chain next and so on.

[starkjo]

To be even more specific, I can reproduce the problem (ie. that the second H9 doesn’t ‘keep up’) depending on the order in which the pedals receive the MIDI signal. I’m now talking about a situation where all four pedals are on their own respective channel and only ‘listen’ to that particular channel. No MIDI clock out or anything else. MIDI Thru is used.

I have four pedals:
Eventide H9 #1 (MIDI channel 1)
Eventide H9 #2 (MIDI channel 2)
Korg SDD-3000 (MIDI channel 3)
Electro-Harmonix HOG2 (MIDI channel 4)

The MIDI signal is sent from the Boss ES-8, which is thus first in the chain. The HOG2 needs to be last in chain, as it only has a MIDI in, no MIDI out (go figure why…). As per gkellum’s suggestion, if the Boss ES-8 sends out the last pedal’s MIDI command first, then everything works without flaws when the pedals are in the following order:
1. Korg SDD-3000
2. Eventide H9 #1
3. Eventide H9 #2
4. Electro-Harmonix HOG2

But when the order is H9 #1 – H9 #2 – Korg SDD-3000 – EHX HOG, then the problem appears again. Go figure. Once again, there are no problems regardless of pedal order when all pedals are on the same MIDI channel. And there are no problems when the Korg is first in chain. But it’s that second H9 that doesn’t seem to keep up, and affects the effects after that in addition to itself.

[gkellum]

starkjo wrote:

To be even more specific, I can reproduce the problem (ie. that the second H9 doesn't 'keep up') depending on the order in which the pedals receive the MIDI signal…

Thanks for the detailed response.  I'll have one of our testers try to reproduce this.  It's great that you found a work around, but some of the behaviour you're working around needs to be looked at…

[st.bede]

gkellum, please keep me updated. I am hoping to run an ES-8 and a complex midi chain (including a McMillan Softstep, Source Audio Reflex expression pedal, a and a EHX 8-step. Things are going to get a bit wacky… ES all the PCs and some CCs, the Softstep CCs, and more CCs from the Source Audio).

[starkjo]

gkellum, and other staff at Eventide,
it seems like I have solved the problem. If that’s the case, then the problem was in my end – my MIDI controller (Boss ES-8) sent out MIDI CC message #080 by default on all MIDI channels in conjunction with every MIDI PC message. It was in a submenu on the Boss ES-8 that I hadn’t even discovered. After I turned off the MIDI CC messages, the H9s seem to work great and respond swiftly, without freezing etc. So my fault!

[gkellum]

starkjo wrote:

gkellum, and other staff at Eventide, it seems like I have solved the problem. If that's the case, then the problem was in my end – my MIDI controller (Boss ES-8) sent out MIDI CC message #080 by default on all MIDI channels in conjunction with every MIDI PC message. It was in a submenu on the Boss ES-8 that I hadn't even discovered. After I turned off the MIDI CC messages, the H9s seem to work great and respond swiftly, without freezing etc. So my fault!

Ok, thanks for letting us know.  I asked one of our testers to try to reproduce the problem and he wasn't able to.  I didn't post that back to this thread because I wanted to verify myself before doing so that I couldn't reproduce the problem either… 

[J.Paul]

starkjo wrote:

gkellum, and other staff at Eventide, it seems like I have solved the problem. If that’s the case, then the problem was in my end – my MIDI controller (Boss ES-8) sent out MIDI CC message #080 by default on all MIDI channels in conjunction with every MIDI PC message. It was in a submenu on the Boss ES-8 that I hadn’t even discovered. After I turned off the MIDI CC messages, the H9s seem to work great and respond swiftly, without freezing etc. So my fault!

Hey I am occasionally having a similar issue with my H9 and Nemesis. I’m also using a Boss ES5 and have suspected that the issue was with the controller rather than the effects…..

Where is the CC #80 located on the ES8? Is it an “assign” or is it in another menu??

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