H9 freezes with midi connection

[Lukree]

When I keep H9 to connected to my midi setup (through iConnectivity midi device, with regular midi cable) it simply freezes after a while. At the same time, iPad application loses connection. I have to unplug the device from current adapter to restart it.

If I remove the midi cable, the device functions properly. No freezes – so I came to conclusion that it must be the midi which makes H9 freeze. Is it the amount of midi data or midi clock, I haven’t pinpointed the reason yet.

I thought that a device of this price range would be more reliable. Luckily I don’t perform live – if I would, I simply wouldn’t trust the device.

Any ideas? Anyone else with the same problem?

[nickrose]

I'm going to guess that for some reason you are flooding the H9 with MIDI data, which is clogging it. If you cannot avoid this, switch it to MIDI THRU, which will reduce the loading.

 

[Ginman]

I have exactly the same problem with my H9. It doesn’t help to switch it to MIDI THROUGH. It still freezes and loose the bluetooth connection after very short time.

(I have 2 H9’s and it’s only the newest one, that is having that SERIOUS problem….)  

What can I do?

 

[Lukree]

Mine worked for a while ok, but lately I have had to keep midi cable unplugged. It’s kinda strange that the device _can_ freeze because of excess (?) midi data. Shouldn’t there be a buffer for that..? It’s better to lose some midi or automation instead of freezing the whole device.

Haven’t had anything similar with other devices on my ~10 midi device setup.

[send_help]

I have the same problem.

I cannot use H9 control via bluetooth while recieving MIDI data. I have to unplug the midi cable to unfreeze the H9

[Lukree]

Eventide, could someone take a look into this as it seems to be pretty common..?

[nickrose]

I did a few tests on MIDI performance. It will handle about 1000 MIDI CC per second. This is pretty much full DIN MIDI bandwidth, so you can't give it any more. MIDI Sysex can handle about 2000 bytes/second. These figures are just for message handling, assuming they don't do anything.

But, if sending it a MIDI message means it has to do something, this will take time and it will bog down if you send it too much. My guess is that this is true of all MIDI units – any suggestions to the contrary are probably not comparing like with like. For example, an H9 will load a program in 100-300mS (depending on the program), so there is no point in sending it 10 or more Program Change messages per second.

To go further, I can't think of any reason why you would want to send a 1000 CCs per second to a guitar pedal. You obviously can do it, but it would make no sense, and it is unreasonable to expect an H9 to handle this. It will recover when the overload has passed, so it is not crashing or locking up.

There is an issue when combining Bluetooth with heavy DIN MIDI traffic – the unit was not designed for this – in particular, it will wait until the message on one channel has been handled before it looks at the other – this may cause lost data under heavy use. Our intention when the unit was conceived was that the BT would be used for programming and tweaking, and not really used during performance. Obviously, we had not anticipated the way things would go.

 

[Lukree]

nickrose wrote:

I did a few tests on MIDI performance. It will handle about 1000 MIDI CC per second. This is pretty much full DIN MIDI bandwidth, so you can’t give it any more. MIDI Sysex can handle about 2000 bytes/second. These figures are just for message handling, assuming they don’t do anything.

But, if sending it a MIDI message means it has to do something, this will take time and it will bog down if you send it too much. My guess is that this is true of all MIDI units – any suggestions to the contrary are probably not comparing like with like. For example, an H9 will load a program in 100-300mS (depending on the program), so there is no point in sending it 10 or more Program Change messages per second.

To go further, I can’t think of any reason why you would want to send a 1000 CCs per second to a guitar pedal. You obviously can do it, but it would make no sense, and it is unreasonable to expect an H9 to handle this. It will recover when the overload has passed, so it is not crashing or locking up.

There is an issue when combining Bluetooth with heavy DIN MIDI traffic – the unit was not designed for this – in particular, it will wait until the message on one channel has been handled before it looks at the other – this may cause lost data under heavy use. Our intention when the unit was conceived was that the BT would be used for programming and tweaking, and not really used during performance. Obviously, we had not anticipated the way things would go.

Thanks for returning back to this.

I haven’t even been specifically sending any control messages to pedal channel, I have had it only plugged in for midi time sync. Can that cause freezing, unstable clock for sync or something? Don’t have the pedal around to test only with clock, though.

Good to know that bluetooth/Midi problem, thanks.

[send_help]

Well that sucks…

(I would like to)

use it to process synth / electronics. I send it midi from a master clock source to sync.

use the control ap x/y controller / change presets while in sync w/ midi clock.

I guess I must make all presets and just use w/ in the box w/ no bluetooth?

Thanks

 

 

[nickrose]

MIDI clock should be fine. The problem is very heavy MIDI use, especially when combined with Bluetooth.

We'll try and improve it in the future.

 

[send_help]

Yeah im sure its too much.

sucks. was a big selling point for me. 

now im 400 + 100$ in alg downloads as a pretty white brick in my setup.

my fault.

thanks for the reply

 

[nickrose]

I'm sorry it's not working for you. If you can give us full details of your setup, we can see if we can duplicate the problem and hopefully fix it.

 

[Keiowas]

Im using my two h9 with the app and when i plug in midi it freezes.
Os there any chance you will solve this? It was a big part of me buying h9. And at that prizetag i actually think midi in out simply should work.

[peterfrequency]

Hi there, I had a problem like this when I tried to receive midi on CC 21. When I changed it to a higher number it stopped freezing all the time. Don’t know why this would happen but it did – and I no longer have any problems.

[nickrose]

peterfrequency wrote:

Hi there, I had a problem like this when I tried to receive midi on CC 21. When I changed it to a higher number it stopped freezing all the time. Don't know why this would happen but it did – and I no longer have any problems.

My guess is that CC21 was already assigned to something else, which caused the unit to slow down..

 

[ramirezdan]

I was running into this exact issue yesterday with the 5.4.0 software a single H9 connected to Ableton Live via USB midi. 

I was trying to send clock to the H9 from Live along with program change messages on clips in Arrangement view. It worked fine for PGM 01-12 or so. Then I jumped ahead and tried PGM 97 and 99. For some reason those show up as NO ALG. Anyway, after hitting that NO ALG message, the unit would make quiet thunking noises and I would need to unplug and plug it in again to get everything working properly.

That said, today I’m unable to reproduce. If I hit NO ALG, I can switch to a valid preset and everything is fine. 

I *think* I fixed it by sending PGM changes to the H9 *without* also sending midi clock. After I confirmed that worked, I turned the clock back on and everything is stable.

If you’re running into this issue and you’re sending clock, try turning the clock source off. I was using the H9 feature to stabilize the clock too FWIW. 

I’m getting NO ALG because I only have 25 presets. I’ve got a core and a max and this is the core. I *thought* that was upgraded due to my MAX purchase, but maybe it needs to be tethered? I hope not. That would suck.

 

 

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