Preventing automatic record start on DAW transport play

matthew

I wonder if someone here can help me with an issue I am encountering which is causing me to lose my recorded track when I stop and then restart my DAW/Host transport.

I am using Mobius 3 v28, and have it set up working perfectly for a live song-construction workflow. It's really great, and a fabulous way of getting no proper work done for hours at a time. Everything works fine, and I have it all rigged up to a MIDI foot switch controller (a Paint Audio MIDI Captain), and it blows an hardware looper I have ever used out of the water. I'm really impressed with it. Even my wife is impressed. (Though I think the lovely coloured LED rings on the MIDI Captain have something to do with that.)

However... Once I have recorded loops across several tracks and constructed a song I am happy with, if I stop the transport in my DAW (e.g. to stop the drum loop from playing while I go for lunch), when I return at press play, with the aim of adding more layers, Mobius automatically arms the current track to record, deleting the existing loops in the current track.

How do I stop that from happening? I would like it to only arm Mobius to record a loop when I explicitly press record, not on detecting the DAW transport 'Play' signal.
I notice it does not auto-record when a track is empty, when I first press play in the DAW, which I thought might be a clue. I wondered if this is a Switch behaviour, but I can't see anything that looks relevant. I have also tried not synching Mobius to the host, but that didn't seem to make any difference.

My DAW host is Reaper 7.48. I would be grateful for any help or hints. Thank you for reading.

jeff

Wow, that's definitely not supposed to happen. When you say "press Play" are you using one of those Record/Overdub/Play scripts or are you using the bult-in Play function directly?

matthew

Thanks for getting back to me on this, Jeff - much appreciated.

When I say, 'press Play', I'm referring to the play button on the transport in my DAW/Host (Reaper).

The way I have it set up is that I have a drum VST (Groove Agent) on a track in Reaper, which starts playing my drum loops when I press Play on the Reaper transport. Groove Agent sends audio to Mobius., and I also have a few other VST and hardware instruments on other tracks also sending audio to Mobius.

So what usually happens is, I press play on the Reaper transport, causing Groove Agent to start playing drum loops. I listen to the loop for a few bars, then hit record in Mobius, which displays 'Synchronize' and then 'Record'. I built up a number of tracks with multiple overdubs in this way, and everything works great - I can switch between them, overdub, reverse, multiply, undo, redo, etc.

But if I want to take a break and stop Groove Agent, I press stop on the Reaper Transport. If I press Play, Mobius immediately displays 'RecordStop4' at the left edge of the loop meter.

(I did wonder if Groove Agent might be sending some errant MIDI signal, but as an experiment I removed all plugins, FX and VST instruments from Reaper after building my Mobius tracks, before hitting 'Play' in Reaper. But the same thing happens... so I think it is something to do with a message from the DAW/Host rather than a misbehaving plugin.)

As I mentioned before, this 'auto record' behaviour only happens if I have already recorded a track in Mobius. If I have an empty Mobius project, pressing 'Play' on the Reaper transport does not cause Mobius to record.

jeff

Let's start by opening the Mobius Help->MIDI Monitor window. Press stop and play in Reaper and see if anything is displayed in that window.

Next, what state is Mobius in when you press stop/play in Reaper? Is it tooling along playing a loop, or did you put it in Mute or Pause mode?

matthew

Thank you - here is what I discovered>

Mouse click on Reaper Transport Play causes the monitor to display Host: CC 16 10 64

Then pressing the Footswitch on my MIDI Captain to Record in Mobius: The monitor records Host: Note on 14 61 127 (I have set up bindings on CH 14, and 61 is set to AutoRecord). So this looks right.

Then I record some audio into Mobius. The Monitor shows a bunch of MIDI messages on CH 5.

Then I click on Reaper Transport Stop to stop the drums - nothing shows in the Monitor

Then I click on Reaper Transport Play again. The monitor shows Host: Note off 14 61 0 (This is unexpected! I don't think Reaper is sending that message from the transport.)

So at this point, Mobius starts recording, as I have bound that MIDI message to Record.

If I hit Reaper Transport Stop again - no MIDI message recoded. But subsequently hitting Reaper Play sends Host: CC 16 10 64 as expected.

So what I have discovered that

As long as the Mobius track is empty, pressing Reaper Play causes Host: CC 16 10 64 to display.
After I record a loop and stop Reaper's transport, pressing Reaper Play for the fist time causes Host: Note off 14 61 0 and puts Mobius back into record mode.

Something else I discovered though..
If I then continue and re-record my loop, stopping and then restarting the Reaper transport no longer causes this auto record behaviour. I can press Play and see Host: CC 16 10 64 in the Monitor from that point onwards. I never see the errant Host: Note off 14 61 0 message.

So it looks like there is some condition I have set up in Mobius that is causing the Reaper transport Play signal to be converted into an 'internal' record MIDI command. Is that possible? Some sort of Host sync / MIDI setting somewhere?

Thank you for your help with this.

SchrodingersCat

Hi @matthew, I've just installed a trial copy of Groove Agent 5 on my Mac Mini which has Reaper 7.53 and Mobius 3 (Build 41) to take a look.

I've tried creating a simple project in Reaper with just two tracks. Reaper Track 1 is set up with the Mobius 3 VST3 plugin and Reaper Track 2 has the Groove Agent 5 plugin. Audio channels 1/2 from Track 2 (Groove Agent) are routed to audio channels 1/2 in Track 1 (Mobius) and all MIDI signals from Track 2 are routed on to Track 1.

I have enabled "Follow Transport" in Groove Agent so that it starts playing when I activate Play in Reaper. (If I don't do this Groove Agent doesn't react to Reaper starting to play.)

When I set up the routing from Track 2 to Track 1 I used the "routing window for Track 2" pop-up. The line above the section where you set "Audio: 1/2 -> 1/2" and "MIDI: All -> All" has two sliders and then two buttons, the first of which looks like a MIDI socket. By any chance do you have that button selected? (If you do it will be coloured green.)

If that MIDI button is selected, Reaper sends a "CC 16 10 64" MIDI message to Mobius when you press Reaper's Play button. (I think it's actually to do with the Pan setting for the track because if you move the second slider, you will see CC 16 10 xxx messages in Mobius where "xxx" depends on the position of the Pan slider.)

If that MIDI button is not selected, Reaper doesn't send the "CC 16 10 64" message to Mobius when you press Play. You may still see Note On and Note Off messages appear in the Mobius MIDI monitor window depending on how you have set Groove Agent's "MIDI On Off" setting.

I've then tried to create a single 4 bar loop on Track 1 of Mobius which has "Syn Source" set to "Host" in the following way.

Click on Track 1 in Mobius plugin window and click on Record button (in Mobius).

SchrodingersCat

@matthew. Part of the SchrodingersCat message was missing and for some reason I was not able to go back and edit it.

I see you've already responded and yes you are right, it doesn't explain how you're getting the "Note off 14 61 0" message, but for completeness I am adding the rest of my message here:

"
I've then tried to create a single 4 bar loop on Track 1 of Mobius which has "Syn Source" set to "Host" in the following way. (Groove Agent's MIDI On Off setting is "Off" and the MIDI button in Reaper's routing pop-up is not
active, i.e it's just grey)

Click on Track 1 in Mobius plugin window and click on Record button (in Mobius).
"
- Mobius displays 'Synchronize' and then 'Record'
Click on Play in Reaper.
- Groove Agent starts playing drum pattern and Mobius starts recording on Track 1.
- MIDI monitor window in Mobius doesn't show any new MIDI messages.
After 3 1/2 bars click on Record button in Mobius.
- Mobius stops recording at the end of the 4th bar and starts playing its recorded drum loop.
- (Groove Agent is still continuing to play the drum pattern at the same time.)
- Still no new MIDI messages in the Mobius MIDI monitor window.
Stop the Reaper transport by clicking on the Stop button in Reaper.
- Mobius continues to play the recorded drum loop.
- Groove Agent is no longer playing.
- Still no new MIDI messages in the Mobius MIDI monitor window.
Press Reaper's Play button.
- Mobius continues to play its recorded drum loop.
- Groove Agent starts playing the drum pattern again but it is not in sync with Mobius anymore (because Reaper is not forced to sync with Mobius).
- Still no new MIDI messages in the Mobius MIDI monitor window.

I've then repeated the exercise but with the MIDI button in Reaper's routing pop-up active, i.e it's green).

Click on Track 1 in Mobius plugin window and click on Record button (in Mobius).
- Mobius displays 'Synchronize' and then 'Record'
Click on Play in Reaper.
- Groove Agent starts playing drum pattern and Mobius starts recording on Track 1.
- MIDI monitor window in Mobius displays "Host: CC 16 10 64".
After 3 1/2 bars click on Record button in Mobius.
- Mobius stops recording at the end of the 4th bar and starts playing its recorded drum loop.
- (Groove Agent is still continuing to play the drum pattern at the same time.)
- No new MIDI messages in the Mobius MIDI monitor window.
Stop the Reaper transport by clicking on the Stop button in Reaper.
- Mobius continues to play the recorded drum loop.
- Groove Agent is no longer playing.
- No new MIDI messages in the Mobius MIDI monitor window.
Press Reaper's Play button.
- Mobius continues to play its recorded drum loop.
- Groove Agent starts playing the drum pattern again but it is not in sync with Mobius anymore (because Reaper is not forced to sync with Mobius).
- Mobius MIDI monitor window displays another "Host: CC 16 10 64" message.

matthew

Hi @SchrodingersCat, Thank you for taking the time to reply.

I have taken a look at that setting, but the midi button wasn't selected in the Groove Agent routing window.
So I tried creating a simpler project, without Groove Agent or any instruments: just my MIDI Captain controller and Mobius. So even with that minimal setup (so not actually recording any audio into the loop), I get this:

Press play in Reaper: Host: CC 16 10 64
Press the 'AutoRecord' button on my foot controller:: Note on 14 61 127
Record an empty 4 bar loop, then let the loop play for a couple of bars
Press stop in Reaper: nothing appears in the MIDI monitor
Press play in Reaper: Host: Note off 14 61 0 (so my track enters recording mode.)

I think CC 16 10 64 might not be the problem per se, as that shouldn't be affecting Mobius,. (I have no bindings on CH 16. ) To my mind, this issue is the unexpected generation of the Note off 14 61 0 when I press the Reaper Play button after recording my loop. If Reaper , or a VST instrument, is transmitting messages on CH 16, why is that causing Mobius to generate - and react to - a message on CH 14?

I will keep experimenting though! My original theory was that it was something like Groove Agent, or some instrument or plugin sending control messages, but having stripped everything out of my project, and removed all unnecessary MIDI devices and configs, it is still happening.... so now I'm not so sure!

Thank you again though for your thoughts on this.

jeff

matthew Sorry, I didn't read the entire thread before my last reply.

This is really puzzling. I just ran through a few tests and don't see any MIDI events that didn't come directly from my hardware controller.

Some interesting things about that "Note off 14 61 0". You don't normally see just a Note off by itself, it should always be preceded by a Note On. Even if this were coming in out of the blue, Mobius should not be responding to a Note Off with a Record action, it should only act if it gets a Note On first. So that's probably a bug but it doesn't explain where that Note Off came from.

One possibility is that the Mobius MIDI input queue isn't getting flushed properly and a Note Off from long ago is getting stuck somewhere, and doesn't come through until the Reaper transport starts. I've never seen that before but anything is possible. Some things to try: In the Mobius MIDI monitor, verify that matching pairs of On/Off are being received while Mobius is being recorded or playing before you stop the Reaper transport. If you stop the Reaper transport and the Mobius MIDI Monitor doesn't show all NoteOn's with matching NoteOff's then that final NoteOff is getting stuck somewhere.

While both Reaper and Mobius are playing, send any other MIDI event to Mobius besides Record, like turning Overdub on and off, or using Mute. Then Stop and Restart the Reaper transport. If the MIDI monitor shows the event for Overdub then there is something about the last MIDI event that Mobius received that is being delayed or duplicated. If it's always the Record event then something else is going on.

It's a long shot, but seeing a NoteOff without a matching NoteOn is something you might see with a sequencer that is trying to be smart about closing off notes it thinks are being held. Try changing the event for Mobius record to a CC rather than a Note. Another long shot, MIDI Captain is a relatively smart device that can both send and recieve MIDI, try to prevent it from receiving any MIDI events so it won't think it needs to do something without actually pressing a physical switch.

jeff

"Then I record some audio into Mobius. The Monitor shows a bunch of MIDI messages on CH 5."

It is unusual to have MIDI messages being received while recording audio into Mobius. My best guess, is that MIDI is being routed into Mobius from one of the other plugins. I know it's a pain, but try re-running the experiment with the other plugins removed or bypassed one at a time. Or if any of the other plugins are MIDI generators, try to prevent them from doing that.

I can't think of anything within Mobius that would cause the reception of "phantom" MIDI events from the host. Not that there can't be a bug there, but I've never seen anything like it before and several people use Reaper.

Also, are you using any Mobius MIDI tracks or have the Mobius transport configured to send MIDI clocks? If Mobius is sending MIDI out for any reason, it's possible there is some kind of loopback happening which confuses the MIDI pipeline.

matthew

jeff

I feel like I am edging closer to working this out...!

I found that my track routing for my MIDI controller was configured with MIDI input monitoring on, so I have turned that off. Mobius is no longer receiving the CH16 messages, nor the CH 5 messages, when I am playing.
However, it still shows CH14 61 0 in the MIDI monitor window (and puts the track into record mode) if I stop and start Reaper's transport after recording a track.

I'll did try a minimal setup with just Mobius and my MIDI controller - no VSTs, instruments or FXs. When recording an empty loop with no audio this still happened - the track begins auto recording afterI stop and start the Reaper transport..
So next I tried an even more minimal setup with just Mobius. Again, I recorded an empty track, stopped Reaper, restarted and.... it didn't auto record.
So the culprit looks like my MIDI Captain controller. I'll delve into its configuration, and how its host track is set up in Reaper, and hopefully find the issue.
Thank you for pointing me in the right direction!

SchrodingersCat

jeff The Groove Agent plugin seems to be configured to send the MIDI associated with the drum pattern as well as the audio for the drum pattern. If I remember correctly, when I first installed the plugin it defaulted to sending both MIDI and Audio and I had to explicitly tell it not to send the MIDI.

jeff

matthew Funny how this thread is interleaving in time. Didn't see the last two posts. It would be good to rule out MIDI Captain. Either prevent it from receiving MIDI, or try a different controller if you have one.

jeff

matthew I'll delve into its configuration, and how its host track is set up in Reaper

This is interesting. I'm not a Reaper expert, but it seems like there are two ways to get MIDI into Mobius: directly from a hardware input, or indirectly from another track. If there is a Reaper track wired in between Mobius and the MIDI Captain, then I can imagine that track could get involved in processing the MIDI stream, and it would respond to the Reaper transport.

jeff

I did verify that if you send Mobius a NoteOff that was not preceded by a NoteOn, some functions can incorrectly treat this as the "On" since the underlying mode (Record, or whatever) isn't active. This should be prevented, and I'm looking at ways to do this, but it would be more better for predictability if this could be prevented from happening in the host.

I don't know if you've tried this yet, but if possible have Mobius get its MIDI Input directly from the hardware input rather than from a Reaper track. Unless that track is generating events for Mobius to follow, there shouldn't be a need to go through the track.

matthew

Thank you, Jeff. Both of those ideas worked:

First I disconnected my MIDI Captain controller as a MIDI input into Reaper, as you suggested, then configured Mobius to receive MIDI input from it directly, and that worked. Mobius no longer responded to the Play/Stop messaged from the Reaper Transport. (It took me a white to work out that Mobius won't accept MIDI input from the MIDI Captain while it is still registered as a MIDI input device in Reaper.)

I also tried another approach - with the MIDICaptain re-connected to Reaper, and no longer directly connected to Mobius. I updated the config for my MIDI Captain (in SuperMode for anyone interested reading this), and simply changed the AutoRecord command I had previouly set up to now send CH 14 61 0 instead of CH 14 61 127 - and that also worked. Sending CH 14 61 0 puts Mobius into AutoRecord mode when I press the switch, and hitting Stop/Play in Reaper no longer causes AutoRecord to be triggered again. So I guess it was some sort of Note On/Off state issue.

Thank you - and @SchrodingersCat - for your help.

jeff

Good go hear. When I said "direct MIDI" what I was actually thinking was not having Mobius connect to the MIDI device
but having Reaper pass MIDI to Mobius from the Captain without going through a different Reaper track, one that isn't hosting Mobius. I was thinking it worked like Ableton Live, where you normally get MIDI from an Ableton MIDI track rather than direct. But looking at it again, I don't think it works that way. When I look at the MIDI inputs for the track containing Mobius I just see Input MIDI->All MIDI Inputs->All Channels. That I would think would get you a direct connect between Mobius and the Reaper MIDI input. I do also see "MIDI bus" somewhere so there does seem to be a way for tracks to pass MIDI to each other, so if you were using MIDI busses maybe try not using those.

This is concerning, because you're not supposed to have to make Mobius open a direct connection to the MIDI device. The issue with that as you found is that devices usually can't be "owned" by more than one application, so if you have Mobius connect to it, Reaper can't and vice versa. That will be limiting for some people. I have to believe there is a way to get unmolested MIDI through Reaper into Mobius without resorting to Mobius direct connect.

"and simply changed the AutoRecord command I had previouly set up to now send CH 14 61 0 instead of CH 14 61 127 - and that also worked. Sending CH 14 61 0 puts Mobius into AutoRecord mode when I press the switch, and hitting Stop/Play in Reaper no longer causes AutoRecord to be triggered again. So I guess it was some sort of Note On/Off state issue."

This isn't going to work in the future. What you've done is change the MIDI event for AutoRecord to be a NoteOff rather than NoteOn. Due to a bug in Mobius, receiving a NoteOff without a previous NoteOn is going to be treated as a signal to run the action. That's wrong it should not be doing that and this will be fixed in the future.

The reason this "works" seems to be because something in Reaper is trying to be smart about NoteOn/Off pairs. When it sees a NoteOn, it is injecting a NoteOff to ensure that it was turned off when you stop/start the transport. When you changed the Captain to send Off instead, Reaper doesn't think there is anything to turn off since it never sees an On, so no extra message are being injected.

So the real solution to this is figuring out why this phantom NoteOff is being injected when you stop/start the transport.

jeff

Don't know for sure since I don't use Reaper, but I noticed something interesting.

I create a track to contain Mobius, insert it as an effect. In order to get MIDI to flow from the reaper MIDI inputs into Mobius I have to enable that track for Recording. You can now send Notes into Mobius and it responds to them.

But when you start the transport, if you have enabled recording in the transport, it's actually going to record all those Mobius command notes into the track. You never want to record the MIDI that is being sent in to the Mobius track, but if you don't arm it for recording, it won't receive any MIDI.

Since Reaper thinks it is doing a normal recording of keyboard notes into the track, it may be trying to be smart about stuck notes when the transport starts and stops, even though these are just plugin command notes, not anything you would want to capture and save.

Is there a way to get MIDI into a track and its plugins without arming it for Record? Maybe some kind of Monitoring option?

Ableton and AFAIK Logic doesn't seem to have this issue because they distinguish between audio tracks and midi tracks. Mobius normally goes in an audio track since it is a sound generator, and receives MIDI only for control. But these two concepts seem to be merged in Reaper.

[update]
I found a menu where you can select "Record: disable input monitoring only".
Also in here it looks like you can configure the track to be only MIDI or only Audio, not "audio or midi".

So you might try using that "input monitoring only" option.

Also too, over in the MIDI Captain, it is important that the switches be configured as "momentary" where they send different events on press and release. If they're only sending NoteOn, then this may be why Reaper wants to get involved and turn notes off. This actually wouldn't work at all for the Mobius Record function since without a NoteOff when the switch is released it does a "long press record" which will Reset the loop. But if you're always using AutoRecord, you wouldn't notice this since AutoRecord doesn't have long press behavior.

Hardware controllers must always send NoteOn when pressed and NoteOff (or NoteOn velocity 0) when released, or CC > 0 when pressed and CC 0 when released.