Tempo Bug

rogeriodec
You'll notice that the notes stop playing when tempo is decreasing, around 20 bpm.
I've noticed this in several projects.
For example, 10 bpm, nothing sounds.
It is certainly a bug.

I tried this file and played it as downloaded. The issue happens here as well , even after shortening the notes a little.

However, I loaded Rapture pro (and used a piano patch) and Truepianos (Full version 1.95) and the issue did not occur - the file played all notes correctly. 

Looks like it may be an issue with the TTS synth itself rather then Sonar's playback.

Not sure what to suggest.  Others may have an idea...

Hello, I wonder if anyone else could emulate this effect, if it is worth submit a complaint to Cakewalk?

I do not know if I can agree with your arguments, because if a note sounds at 30 BPM, it should sound at 10 BPM.

rogeriodec
I do not know if I can agree with your arguments, because if a note sounds at 30 BPM, it should sound at 10 BPM.

If there's anomalous behavior, I'm the kind of person who's more interested in finding out the cause than reflexively posting about some presumed "bug." What you are describing is NOT a bug in SONAR. I will explain it more clearly.
 
First of all, SONAR is perfectly capable of playing back successive MIDI notes at a tempo as low as 8 BPM, which is the program's lower tempo limit. Second, if instead of the TTS-1 you use True Piano, Rapture, Z3TA, any of the SI series instruments, Dimension Pro, etc. etc. you will not encounter the "missing notes." Try it. The problem is not with SONAR or it would affect these instruments as well.
 
I believe the problem is that you are using an older multitimbral synth. You have quantized your Note-On, Note-Off, and tempo changes so they occur at exactly the same time. If the TTS-1 cannot respond rapidly enough - and remember, because it's multi-timbral, it's dealing with 16 instruments at once - then if a tempo change occurs before the TTS-1 can detect the Note-On, SONAR will have already moved further down the timeline, past the Note-On, because you have asked SONAR to speed up. The TTS-1 never sees the Note-On, therefore it cannot play it back.
 
Does that make sense now?

Anderton

rogeriodec
I do not know if I can agree with your arguments, because if a note sounds at 30 BPM, it should sound at 10 BPM.

If there's anomalous behavior, I'm the kind of person who's more interested in finding out the cause than reflexively posting about some presumed "bug." What you are describing is NOT a bug in SONAR. I will explain it more clearly.
 
First of all, SONAR is perfectly capable of playing back successive MIDI notes at a tempo as low as 8 BPM, which is the program's lower tempo limit. Second, if instead of the TTS-1 you use True Piano, Rapture, Z3TA, any of the SI series instruments, Dimension Pro, etc. etc. you will not encounter the "missing notes." Try it. The problem is not with SONAR or it would affect these instruments as well.
 
I believe the problem is that you are using an older multitimbral synth. You have quantized your Note-On, Note-Off, and tempo changes so they occur at exactly the same time. If the TTS-1 cannot respond rapidly enough - and remember, because it's multi-timbral, it's dealing with 16 instruments at once - then if a tempo change occurs before the TTS-1 can detect the Note-On, SONAR will have already moved further down the timeline, past the Note-On, because you have asked SONAR to speed up. The TTS-1 never sees the Note-On, therefore it cannot play it back.
 
Does that make sense now?

Thanks for the reply, but no.
The example I sent attached in post 1 was only because TTS-1 is a standard installation of Sonar.
I use Kontakt, with very recent version (x64 5.5.2).
At the same time my hardware specifications are updated as well, as you can see in my signature.
What about your argument on simultaneous processing, the problem occurs in a slow BPM, with only one channel, ie it gives more response time for processing the events.
And also this did not occur in older versions of Sonar.
Unfortunately I have no other DAW here to simulate and compare.

Could this be related to the PPQN setting? I've never had occasion to do anything below about 40 BPM, but it would seem that extremely slow tempos might warrant higher PPQN values to counter the reduced timing resolution. I'm just guessing, as I have no DAW and don't remember what SONAR's default resolution is or if it can be increased.
 
 

rogeriodec
Conclusion: If you use VST in Sonar, never use tempos below 10 BPM (preferably never use tempo below 20 BPM), or they will not sound.

 
I would be happy to shoot a video that shows otherwise. It's irrelevant that Kontakt worked as expected for you in Sibelius; when I tested your file with Kontakt in SONAR Platinum, the combination worked as expected. What would be relevant is if it worked for you and didn't work for me. The only way I have of knowing Kontakt doesn't work in your system with SONAR is because you say so, and of course I assume you're reporting your experience accurately.
 
However - Kontakt played back the file you provided exactly as expected in my system, so the only provable conclusion I can come up based on my experience with at least a dozen instruments is: when driving the TTS-1, you don't want to mix tempo changes with multiple simultaneous MIDI events when creating extreme tempo changes (on a percentage basis) in the lowest possible tempo range allowed by SONAR. (If I remove any of those conditions - e.g., don't create extreme tempo changes, change some event start times so they're not simultaneous, etc. - then the TTS-1 works, too.)
 
As in these tests we both used SONAR Platinum, played the same file, and tested with the same instrument - yet you had problems and I didn't - that would certainly tend to indicate there's a variable other than the file, the instrument, or SONAR. What that variable is, I don't know because once we get to the hardware, driver, and system level, there are likely hundreds of variables.
 
Again, if you need a video, I'll gladly provide it. The only downside is that will preclude my doing a Friday's tip of the week, because I will need to spend the tip time on doing the video instead. But if you believe your conclusion is universally applicable, I can show very easily that it is not.
 
Perhaps I'm the only person who experiences flawless performance under the conditions you specify, but I know enough about computers to realize it's often naive to extrapolate an individual's experience to all users. I can only report on my own experience...just as you can report only on yours.
 
If others commonly mix tempo changes with multiple simultaneous MIDI events when creating extreme tempo changes (on a percentage basis) in the lowest possible tempo range allowed by SONAR, perhaps they could chime in with they've found so we can have a bigger data set than two people with different experiences.
 

A couple more questions...
 

• Are you using Kontakt in multi-timbral mode, or as a single instrument?
• Were you running your older versions of SONAR where you didn't experience this problem on a slower computer?

 
I think a major difference is I tested this on a laptop that doesn't have the power of your machine. This is why I think perhaps that with SONAR's recent optimizations and a fast computer, the tempo is processing the tempo information so rapidly that SONAR has already jumped ahead on the timeline before the note-on gets read. This is just speculation, I don't have the ability to test this. I did notice with the TTS-1 that nudging notes slightly ahead of the beat (so it wasn't simultaneous with the tempo change command) seemed to solve the problem with it, which would make sense if the issue was SONAR needing to read the note-on first, before the tempo command told it to jump ahead on the timeline.
 
This is why I also wonder about multi-timbral instruments. I know "computer MIDI" is much faster than physical MIDI, but isn't MIDI still a serial protocol, even inside the computer? Hmm...
 
It may seem silly that I'm taking an interest in anomalous behavior that I can't reproduce, but sometimes pursuing something will uncover other unanticipated issues you'd never find any other way. 

Anderton

• Are you using Kontakt in multi-timbral mode, or as a single instrument?

 
I use Kontakt in both cases.
 

Anderton
 

• Were you running your older versions of SONAR where you didn't experience this problem on a slower computer?

 

 
Exact. As I said before, I use BPMs below 10 to simulate a Fermata, and allow the MIDI stay intact for later use in Sibelius.I have old Sonar projects containing BPMs below 10, it means that they worked many years ago, of course with much slower computers than my current computer.

brundlefly
I don't see any reference to the MIDI Prepare Using buffer in the thread. This setting would clearly be relevant to dropped MIDI notes at very low tempos. In most cases, I would recommend setting this to the old default of 500ms, which seems to work well in most cases, but it might need to be quite a bit higher to accommodate tempos of 10BPM (6000ms between beats!).

Hi, I tested here with 500ms, 600ms and up to 9000ms but apparently had no effect.

I don't have the full Kontakt, but I tested your demo project using Kontakt Player 5.5.2 with several different instruments, including Alicia's Keys, and E.P. and Guitars from the free Factory Sample library, and did not encounter any dropped notes.
 
TTS-1 drops one note, C5, but, as Craig noted, moving it just one tick earlier or later allows it to sound as expected. Increasing the MID Prepare Using buffer did not help, but routing the MIDI through an external MIDI loopback eliminates the problem, so it's definitely related to buffering of MIDI-driven soft synth audio.
 
I've encountered a few other cases of persistently dropped notes in specific projects with specific synths at specific times and tempos. It's rare, and it's not always at especially low tempos. The only solution I've found in those cases is to nudge the note or change the tempo a hair.
 
On that basis, I would agree there's a bug here, but it's not a showstopper.
 
Dave