Direct connections dodgy?

Ok maybe I'm behind the times here and this is one of those problems that have persisted so long that everyone just takes it for granted... BUT,

Has anyone noticed that transmitting events via direct connections to knobs:

a) Seems to lose a lot of events
This is really annoying because often it would be nice to just to send a wireless receive to a lamp and then connect that lamp to (x) amount of knobs.

I checked the receive module and it seem to behave perfectly.


b) Gets really tricky when for instance you want to send 0..1 data to 0..32 with a step size of 1? It seems to truncate rather than round values, so a value of 1.9999 will be received and displayed as 1 on the new knob instead of 2?

c) Connections sometimes get lost, misplaced, or starts pointing to completely different controllers when you save and reload a module..

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So what are the workarounds if any for these problems? Apart from phycsically connecting cables.

 

Make sure your "mouse resolution" setting is the same as the "number of steps" and see if you still havve the same problem.

That doesn't always fix it, but sometimes it does.

- CList

 

Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. There's something bizarre in the conversion. Anyway. I've given up on direct connections.

 

I've notived the wireless send and recieve modules are very flakey causing crashes and weird problems were a connection isn't made until the number of voices is changed to 1 and then back to what it was. (Turning processing on and off doesn't have an effect.) It looks like Reaktor does some different recalculations when it's switch between mono/poly.

In fact I think I'm going to post this as a bug.

 

I have to say, as of r4.1.2 I don't really think they're that bad.
Yes there are weird rounding issues sometimes, but that's not as common as it used to be.

I built an instrument that's basically like Memory Drum or BeatSlicer, but instead of XY's everything was actual panel controls that would turn when each new key was pressed (or rather; "for each new midi note received"), with all panel control values being saved in a single table. The knob values were sent to the table via wireless connect, and sent back to the controls via wireless connect and I didn't have any problems. Then again, since it was all being stored in the same table, I made it so that all the knobs output values in the range 0...1 and then scaled as appropriate.

...during the building it never crashed except when I accidentally made an event-loop with the wireless connections, though while this was a polyphonic instrument, the wireless connections were all mono, and got to-voiced once they reached their destination.

In fact, while beta-testing, I've had a bit of a hard time getting it to break on things like save/restore of instruments. Losing connections doesn't seem to happen much at all (though I've heard rumors that it does when you get into the realm of a lot of connections - like more than 32 or 50 or 100 or something - but I haven't experienced this first-hand).

There are rounding issues when you send things as MIDI CC or PolyAT - since the midi values all get scaled to 0...127, but I dunno if the same thing happens when you just do wireless connections.

Perhaps you could post a sample somewhere of the structure you're having trouble with? It would be helpful for the beta team.

- CList

 

I haven't had any issues with wireless connections lately.

Yes, I suppose Internal Connections then

Doing a modula before the lamp defeats the purpose. Because I would have liked to be able to connect the lamp to several knobs wether they be 0..8 with a stepsize of 1, or 0..3 with a stepsize of 0.25

I'm now doing a simmilar kind of thing as you've mentioned CList. I've compiled all my settings for an instrument into a Table and I just use one selector from my sequencer module to either set, or glide through the settings.

 

although on second thought.. the modulo idea has merit...

I could make various lamp connections for certain typical conversions... such as 0..1 to pitch or 0..1 to 0..31 selector.

but it still doesn't solve my main problem, which is that some events tend to go missing.

I wonder if it could be related to the graphics update bug?

 

Facinating question.

I've never used lamps as send-sources, but I tried it out and got some *very* interesting results! See the .gif.
The LampKnob is controlled by the lamp, and the MIDICtrlKnob is controlled by the Controller out - but NOT using MIDI, using wireless connection. Note that the "RateLamp" was jumping back and forth between 15 and 31Hz.

Note that it's mentioned somewhere in the manual that screen output stuff, like XY's, Lamps, Meters, etc. refresh at about at 25Hz rate. Well it turns out that the lamp only sends values at the same rate! A MIDICC output. however, will send values at the full rate - whatever it is. Note that MIDICC outputs do NOT have to be used to send MIDI, they can be set up with "disable midi out" activated, and then connected to the knob the same way as you would the lamp - via the wireless connection buttons. In this case you don't get the rounding problems that you do from sending MIDI CC.

That may be the solution to your problem...

- CList

 

Thanks! This is very useful information.

It's interesting to note that the Knob-value is being updated at the correct rate even if the graphics component isn't