Have a pedalboard setup with an MC8pro hitting a lot of midi pedals.
Editor for the MC8Pro has usually been solid, mostly used it over bluetooth, but have recently been using Ableton with some max4live plugins to control various pedals which seems to need MIDI via USB to configure Ableton.
The workflow I’m trying to achieve is easy control and automation of my MIDI pedals in Ableton, so I can tweak sounds much and save interesting presets much quicker with max4live devices etc. whilst also editing the MC8Pro and adjusting banks & presets to manage new sounds/settings etc.
So because of Ableton & connecting USB-C on Macbook to USB-C device port on MC8Pro to get this going – works fine on it’s own, but soon as i connect to the MC8Pro editor, chaos breaks out.
Editor refuses to load presets or function properly, generally just becomes unresponsive. HOWEVER, I’m not sure if I’m doing something wrong; it may or may not have been working, until I adjusted the MC8Pro’s midi port configuration, enabling midi thru on the USB Device port (for Ableton > MC8Pro > Midibox > Whatever pedal’s MIDI ch. Have since reset MC8Pro midi config, and tried several options with no luck – I am fully lost.
soooo…Is this expected? As in it doesn’t like sharing the MIDI connection?
Or am I doing it wrong somethings misconfigured or alternatively, is there a proper way I should be setting up this MIDI workflow tweaking pedals via Ableton & tweaking the MC8Pro editor at the same time instead?
I suspect Ableton is sending something to the MC8 PRO via MIDI which is causing an issue with the communication. Here are something you can try:
Try using the Serial connect option. Does that resolve the issue?
You can use this MIDI Monitor to sniff the outgoing MIDI messages from your computer to the MC8 PRO. Is anything coming from Ableton? snoize: MIDI Monitor
You can enable Spy on Output to destinations to check:
On this topic, has the MIDI log feature in the Editor changed a lot? Haven’t used it for a while but tried that and found it not providing much of anything. Certainly not in the way I remember it used to, with full real-time MIDI logs streaming through, so you could audit & verify things etc. Maybe I don’t have it configured right in the latest version?
Seems like there is some sort of loop going on. MC8 is sending a SysEx, and then something is sending that same SysEx back. Would be worth investigating this. Might be a setting on Ableton? You should be having only using one USB MIDI port connected in Ableton, and Ableton should not be set to send anything back to the MC8 PRO (unless there is something specific you are trying to do).
On the MC8Pro my USB Virtual Midi Ports is set to 1. should it be set to 4?
i left it virtual at 1, and in ableton reduced input & output to just port 1. not doing anything special back to ableton, just sending midi from ableton to mc8p > midi box > pedals, but this only works if i have at least ticked ‘Track’ on the output port.
but yeh, setup w/ 1 virt & ableton input & output on port 1 same connection issues. midi snoop results
17:27:56.470 To Morningstar MC8 Pro Port 1 Invalid 1 bytes
17:27:56.975 To Morningstar MC8 Pro Port 1 SysEx 1 bytes F0
17:27:56.975 To Morningstar MC8 Pro Port 1 SysEx Morningstar FX 18 bytes F0 00 21 24 00 00 00 2C 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 59 F7
17:27:56.975 To Morningstar MC8 Pro Port 1 Invalid 1 bytes
17:27:56.976 To Morningstar MC8 Pro Port 1 SysEx 1 bytes F0
17:27:56.976 To Morningstar MC8 Pro Port 1 SysEx Morningstar FX 18 bytes F0 00 21 24 00 00 03 31 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 47 F7
17:27:56.976 To Morningstar MC8 Pro Port 1 Invalid 1 bytes
