As the title says, only recently my virtual instrument synths are going out of tune quite often. It wouldn't be so bad if they all went out of tune together :).
 
At first it seemed like it was only Native Instruments virtual synths, but its also happening in Cakewalk TTS-1.
 
I checked within the Events to see if there was some errant pitch bend or portamento events that were causing sticking, but it happens within midi tracks without any of those events.
 
After performing further checks, I have two systems and the fault only happens on one of the DAW's.
 
Is there perhaps some kind of initialization I can run to reset things? Or if anyone has any suggestions and could be so kind to share them.
 
Kind Regards
Lee 

Do you have any controllers hooked up that might send pitch or modulation information?

Hi & thanks for the reply.
 
No, thats the funny thing, the only thing I have is an Alesis Q61 hooked up by USB, so unless thats malfunctioning.
Tomorrow I'll disconnect that when the problem appears and see what happens.
 
Regards

I've seen a pitch wheel be out of calibration, causing it to not be zeroed when released. You can check for this quickly by recording some pitch wheel movements and examining in the PRV to make sure the last value is zero after you'd released it.

I have had crappy pots on midi controllers start generating spurious midi data that would cause pitch changes, so once determining which one was causing it, I disabled pitch bend entirely on that controller.  Over time, some cheaper components used to keep manufacturing costs down just randomly start failing.
 
I also have had pitch issues on certain synth presets, such as with some Reaktor ensembles, where the zero all controllers setting in Sonar Preferences was ending up setting pitch down by a whole step, until I removed the check from that parameter.
 
Hope you find the demons causing your tuning issues.
 
Bob Bone
 

I've had this as an on-going issue with Native Maschine. I'm finding that the pitch of the various expansion samples arbitrarily drop around a 3rd periodically...and then jump back up at random times in playback of the track...that's in Sonar. I've only had this happen with Maschine, so I don't know whether this is related to your issue.
 
I've had several chats with their tech support to no avail, short of sending the actual Maschine project. They wanted me to use Midi-Ox to check out whether there was data coming from my Kontrol S88 but there was nothing registered to indicate this. 
 
They've just released an update for Maschine so I'll be testing it to see whether this is still occurring.

I have similar issues with a bunch of freeware vsti's from DSK

bitflipper
I've seen a pitch wheel be out of calibration, causing it to not be zeroed when released. You can check for this quickly by recording some pitch wheel movements and examining in the PRV to make sure the last value is zero after you'd released it.

robert_e_bone
I have had crappy pots on midi controllers start generating spurious midi data that would cause pitch changes, so once determining which one was causing it, I disabled pitch bend entirely on that controller.  Over time, some cheaper components used to keep manufacturing costs down just randomly start failing.
 
I also have had pitch issues on certain synth presets, such as with some Reaktor ensembles, where the zero all controllers setting in Sonar Preferences was ending up setting pitch down by a whole step, until I removed the check from that parameter.
 
Hope you find the demons causing your tuning issues.
 
Bob Bone
 

Ok, as 'bitflipper' suggested, I recorded some pitch wheel and modulation changes into a track and they both appeared to be returning to zero/center OK.
 
However, as I was writing this forum message I noticed a kind of 'spiking' on the input of the midi tracks to which my Q61 was connected, so Im wondering if perhaps this would be enough to cause the pitch changes and problems described earlier.

Fabio Rubato
I've had this as an on-going issue with Native Maschine. I'm finding that the pitch of the various expansion samples arbitrarily drop around a 3rd periodically...and then jump back up at random times in playback of the track...that's in Sonar. I've only had this happen with Maschine, so I don't know whether this is related to your issue.
 
I've had several chats with their tech support to no avail, short of sending the actual Maschine project. They wanted me to use Midi-Ox to check out whether there was data coming from my Kontrol S88 but there was nothing registered to indicate this. 
 
They've just released an update for Maschine so I'll be testing it to see whether this is still occurring.

As much as I love the sounds of the Native Instruments, Ive always found them to be awkward and give me headaches and problems with their workings over the years.
 
Ill investigate further and report back. Thanks to everyone for chiming in.
Cheers
Lee

I have issues recently with Arturia V vst synths doing strange thingg, particularly if I took the laptop away from the studio and back again (midi ports were getting mixed up and confused because the midi USB interface would be disconnected.) Back in the studio, sometimes I'd then find midi tracks had three midi in inputs assigned to them and the vsts were getting invisible controller messages. I would recommend checking the midi input settings for the midi tracks driving the vst devices and perhaps temporarily switching off the midi in port on the track (not in the global properties section)to see if it problem is isolated

After recording MIDI look at the event list and see if there are any spurious records. My old A-PRO 800 started generating spurious cc messages (dirty pots ??) These could cause all sorts of issues depending on the VSTi.

Deleting the cc records would correct the issue but ultimately I had to replace the controller.