So hoping to sequence midi from digitone but appears to be unusable. Used four Oct devices, mapped inputs to midi pitch 1-4, outputs to panel. Works for a few seconds until voice 4 gets stuck. Additionally, monophonic voices seem a crap shoot with intermittent dropouts. Can someone explain the voice allocation ? Is it cyclic or first available ? Is there a midi panic ? Just purchased the AIO expander and hoped to use meta as a simple midi to cv. At this point I wish I would have gotten an Oxi. Sorry to dampen the meta mood - but I’ve really had trouble finding a niche for this. I don’t require oscillators, have plenty of filters, still lacking a simple midi to cv interface, don’t care for sequencing when I’ve got a digitone, and spending hours on this and generally find getting answers difficult because of navigating a forum with coding fan boys. About to cut my losses and throw the $800 modules in the trash. Cut me from the forum , whatever. For this module to appeal it must be good at basics - not trying to fulfill a wish list for free stuff. I’m wondering how often I need 16 lfo’s.
Respect to 4ms for quality tech though - I can see the components on the expander are high quality.
I’m sorry you’re having trouble! I feel like you’d be more likely to get help if you’d describe the problem without the name-calling. Just a suggestion. Good luck!
Hmm - I feel the opposite, that attitude more than solutions is what I get here. “You must not be aware of X” or “You have not researched the forum”. How about the possibility that answers regarding meta are opaque ? Leading one to conclude an elephant in the room? I pursued samplers, and gave up. There were problems. I pursue midi, and give up. I pursue wavetables. And give up. I ask the question - why does the ribbon cable on the AIO have a 3" restriction? No answer. My suspicion becomes ringing on the interface because of poorly designed termination. When I got the meta, there was an actual hardware problem. What answers did I get (prior to Dab Green responding) ? You must not be capable. Read thru our convoluted instructions and see from the masters. Have I got a bit of empathy for spending 10’s of hours here and gotten nothing ? Be honest and tell me if the instructions on this thing are clear for most, or just mainly programming speak for a few. Was it too much to ask to have a midi to cv thing working ? And good luck ? Nice.
Edit: The elephant in the room might be such an effort to port all of vcv rack (better left to a laptop) is hurting meta from having an identity, especially compared to competition.
Sounds like you’ve had a bad experience with the module and on the forum! I’m sorry to hear that. I’ve had a different experience – I have found that when I’ve asked questions clearly they’ve been answered, and when I’ve reported bugs most of them have been fixed, although that does sometimes take some time.
I wish I could help but I don’t know the answer to your questions about the MIDI implementation. It’s true that the MetaModule firmware is in rapid development right now, and the sampling and MIDI capabilities are among the areas where the most progress is happening, which means that the documentation is not always up-to-date with the firmware.
Good luck! Which is to say I wish you success with the MetaModule and all your musical endeavors.
You definitely can use the MetaModule as a simple MIDI to CV, so this is supposed to work just as you were trying to make it work.
…But… I think you found a bug that’s been lurking in the past few versions! I tried making a similar patch from scratch and it acted strangely. It turns out that when we added support for MIDI channels, we broke the automatic polyphony number detection if some MIDI mappings were set to respond to specific MIDI channels (instead of “omni” or all channels).
I’m preparing a bug-fix firmware release right now, it’ll be v2.0.10. I can totally understand your frustration at it not working especially when just getting started. I’ll post the fixed firmware link here (should be later today)
Great ! And as far as the other issue regarding data cable to AIO, I didn’t actually confirm it doesn’t work. Moved it next to Meta now but prior error may have to do with something else. It was recognized but didn’t function but might be operator error.
Thanks for the quick reply - I was planning to reconfigure today and use vcv sequencers but would much prefer the digitone. I have been frustrated but holding in there - I can see use cases but they pretty much involve creating logic machines interfacing to logic machines in my rack, if you know what I mean. And this doesn’t happen overnight hence the frustration in not getting something simple now. The AIO has a lot of parts in it for the $$, btw.
I just tried, and my sample patch that failed before, works now. Let me know if it works for you too.
Yeah the AIO works best if it’s next to the MetaModule. I’d recommend putting it on the left or right side if you can, and if you have a Wifi Expander, putting that on the opposite side.
The next round of expanders coming soon (button, knob) have extra circuitry that lets their cables be much longer, so they can go anywhere.
Okay, some problem still. Four note chord from digitone, everything is great. After 10min or so went to change chords and no go. Took a while of troubleshooting because reset didn’t fix things, until I noted that digitone needs to be off until meta boots.
Still some problems apparently. Patch has 4 Oct’s and a midi-cv. Midicv is only sending clk out to panel - thought was usb host issue so sending constant clk might change things. Things only got worse. When I send the first note out from the DN midi connection is lost including clock.
It was saved from meta. Using expander outs but doesn’t make difference. My midi comes from digitone2, thru midi-to-usb host, to usbmidihost-to-usbmidihost, to meta. This setup has always worked for me. Until now the only midi to meta I had was sending a clock and transport control, of which worked flawlessly. split.yml (1.4 KB)
What devices are these? I’m playing the patch and it works as intended (including the clock output), but I’m just using USB-C MIDI, no other adapters in between the controller and the MetaModule.
In the Working MIDI devices thread, someone reported that the Digitone worked “but only with a specialised Din > usb3 cable.”. I don’t know if that’s a thing included with the Digitone or Digitone 2?
It might help in finding the issue to first simplify your setup as much as possible. We’ve had good results from cheap DIN5 to USB adapters like the “ESI MidiMate eX” reported in the above thread. I use this one when I need to USB MIDI Adaptor. These adaptors present themselves on the USB side as a MIDI device (not host), so that’s perfect for using with the MetaModule (which always is a MIDI Host).
Can you try going from the Digitone || through an adaptor like that one, and then directly to the MM with nothing else in line? You should be able to connect MIDI IN and MIDI OUT to the DIN->USB adapter, in case you also need to send MIDI back to the Digitone.
Another thing that can be simplified is to disconnect the AIO. If it’s faulty (or the cable between the MM and the AIO or some noise in the system, etc) then in the worst case the main MetaModule can fail to detect if a jack is plugged in or not. So removing the AIO from the system (disconnect it from the MM) will take one potential source of error out of the equation.
Oh, that cable is not even costly ! I’ll try it and get back. The usb stick I use is nonhost usb midi, but I do question whether it pulls power from the meta and seems to pull power from the usb midi host thingy. One thing odd about my setup is I have different power supplies - some modules run on battery - mixer, filters. Perhaps some interference so yeah I’ll try simplifying. Thanks.
£15 ish. If it doesn’t work Amazon will probably refund you. There are lots of equivalent products on the Amazon store so just get whatever is similar and available on your local store.
I couldn’t get the DN to work with the MM using USBmidi.
Thanks - ordered this and hopefully will resolve the problems. Looking for some overlap between DN!!'s advanced chord seq’ing and it’s midi, but might be disappointed - if midi tracks can’t be layered with it’s synth tracks it might not be so wonderful.
I wasn’t actually using DN usbmidi, but since you mentioned it I won’t waste time trying it. It was DN Din midi going to midi-usbhost conversion (had this device to support a casio keyboard lacking din midi), then since this device is a usb host, had a usb host-host stick ( had this device lying around from a RaspPi piano key light project). Problem I suspect is, midi to usb is running off a separate wall wart than meta module. I actually have 4 or 5 different supplies running altogether, and don’t have a case made of metal, so might need to look into a central grounding scheme. But it all works other than the midi, apparently, so no hurries.