Sustain Pedal with TruePianos Amber [SOLVED!]

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I have a sustain pedal issue with it as well. If I hold the pedal down for more than 2 bars, I get a gradual crescendo of clicks, pops, and crackling that almost totally obscures the piano audio (sounds like throwing water into a hot oil fryer). Annoying beyond words!

The up side is that it doesn't show up at all in playback.

It does go away, but always returns if you hold the pedal down for about 6 seconds or more.

I've been trying to figure it out for about 2 weeks now. The one thing I can say is that the problem doesn't appear when I use the "stand alone" True Pianos player.

vuterly -- It doesn't seem to be a CPU issue here. If I work really hard at it, I can get TruePianos to choke on my P4 2.8 GHz system while the TruePianos GUI is displayed. However, the pedal problem shows up even when playing a single note. I can't find any TruePiano settings that change the pedal behavior.

I know I can easily work around this problem if I have to. If I really want to use the TruePianos sounds, I can always record the MIDI using another instrument's piano voice and substitute the TruePianos module after the fact. I just wondered if the pedal problem is a TruePianos bug or something peculiar to my system (maybe both).

JD.......... thanx but it happens even if I have only 1 track (truepianos) for the whole song. No recorded audio, no recorded midi. Just sitting there playing the piano. I doubt there could be much controller info going on............... unless you know something I don't, which is WAAAAAAY more than possible. Probable even

I'm wondering henkejs, if you have resolved your issue? I am experiencing it as well, using an old Roland RD250 digital piano. I'm disappointed because TruePianos was one of the big reasons I went with Sonar PE rather than SE. I should mention that before purchasing Sonar, I downloaded the demo version, as well as the demo version of TruePianos (which was Diamond rather than Amber) and experienced the same issue. Standalone TruePianos worked fine, but not in conjunction with Sonar. I had hoped the issue would be resolved (or I'd figure out how to resolve it) with the full version. Any ideas anyone?

Hey John, Thanks so much for taking the time to respond. I'm glad you've been able to resolve the issue for yourself, but bummed to hear that you had to change controllers to do it. I have an old Casio "toy" keyboard that I'll have to try just to trouble-shoot. In my particular situation, this might open me back up to consider other piano software. Keyboard is not my main instrument and the Roland otherwise suits my needs in the studio very well. Strange issue.
Again, thank you for taking the time to respond.!

You are a true prince among men John! It worked like a charm for me, too. Thank you so much! I was planning to contact their tech support too, after I verified that swapping controllers solved it, but you saved me the trouble!
Before I purchased Sonar 8 PE, I tried the TruePianos demo and fell in love with the Diamond module. I contacted support during that time and they were very responsive then as well. I only wish I liked the Amber module for my stuff as much as I liked Diamond. Might have to upgrade to the full version, but I'm sure that's their intention by including it with Sonar, so it looks like their marketing might work in my particular case. Thanks again John!

Hey John,
Thanks for the kind words. Nice job on your tunes as well. Looks like we share the love for one man band recording. I'm overdue to update the studio progress web site. It's pretty much done, but I've been so busy gigging lately that haven't had time to enjoy it as much as I'd like. I am very happy with how it turned out. I will try to remember to notify you when I get the pictures of the completed space uploaded in case you're interested. It was about an 18 month process, but worth it IMHO.

Get this John -- Last week, I finally got around to installing Dimension Pro. The DVD was bad, so I contacted Cakewalk support to replace it, which they promptly did. Last night I installed using the new disk, and am having the exact same sustain pedal problem with Dimension Pro and the Roland RD250 as I did with True Pianos. I reported to Cakewalk technical support, so we'll see what happens. Yet another hint that its time for a new controller I guess. I hope the resolution is as simple as the True Pianos one was. The saga of obsolete gear continues.

Wow, that looks very promising - I'll definitely give that a try and let you know how it goes. Thanks so much Papa!

Looks like that's going to work great Papa! I'll need to use a folder rather than the new single instrument track in Sonar the way it appears to be able to apply the MIDI plug-in, but hey, if that's what it takes I'll gladly do it. Very cool plug-in. I'll have to check out some of the other stuff on that site. I didn't imagine I'd get a resolution so quickly. That's a great find. Thanks again. I owe ya!!!

Bill, interesting that you had a sustain pedal problem with Dimension Pro too. I haven't seen that one myself, but I did run into another curious problem with TruePianos after I installed their registry fix. If I scrubbed TruePianos notes in the piano roll view, they'd keep sustaining until I hit the reset (panic) button. I guess the registry hack fixed one thing and broke another.

Thanks to Papa for pointing out a better solution.

Edit: Thanks also to Geoff for listing the registry key in the fix. I should have included that when I posted the file link.

ORIGINAL: papa2004

You might want to consider the "Sustain Fix" app from tencrazy.com

Papa -

I installed the sustainfix by Tencrazy but I can't get it to show up in the midi FX bin as a selection choice. I tried everything mentioned in the .txt document installation instructions. I then went to the Sonar 8.x Plugin Manager and chose Midi FX but it doesn't show up in the list of all midi plugins.

How did you get it to show up?

I just got a response from Cakewalk technical support. Just to be clear, here is how I described my problem to them:

<Start explanation of problem>
I use an old Roland RD-250s digital piano as a controller and when using it with Dimension Pro (at least with strings, acoustic and electric piano sounds) the sustain pedal is not working correctly. If I hold down on the sustain pedal while I press and release a key, the note does not sustain. However as long as I continue to hold down one or more piano keys (while holding down the sustain pedal) other notes that are pressed and released do sustain. Putting it another way, holding the sustain pedal down will cause notes to sustain until I take my finger off the last key, at which time all notes immediately stop sustaining (just as if I took my foot off the sustain pedal). Also, strangely enough, if I record my playing (via Sonar), everything sounds correct (when played back) according to when I held and released the sustain pedal while recording. So the problem is only when playing "live". I should also mention that I had the same issue with True Pianos, both the trial version (of True Pianos) and the Amber version included with Sonar. True Pianos worked fine when run stand-alone, and only showed this behavior when accessed from within Sonar 8 PE, just as Dimension Pro does. I contacted True Pianos about this issue and they sent me a .Reg file which fixed the problem for their product which contained the following:
REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\4Front\TruePianos\appDefaults]
"noalloff"="true"

I'm hoping there is a similar fix for Dimension Pro, and maybe any other synths I may want to use from within Sonar 8 PE.
<End of explanation of problem>

And here is the response:
<Start of response from tech support>
Thank you for contacting Cakewalk Technical Support. I was able to
look into your issue and found that it has already been
entered into our system as a bug. Hopefully the issue will be
addressed in an upcoming update.

For now, the work around that I've seen is to hold down a key that is
out of range on your key board to keep the sustain active (another guy
I've spoken with used a wedge of paper to keep the key held down).

I apologize for any inconvenience this may be causing you. Let us know
if we can help you with anything else.
<End of response from tech support>

Just thought I'd share for what it's worth!