Evaluating the free version: a couple of questions

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Hello,

I’m a long time MIDI guitar player, and I’ve used a number of older solutions in the past. I’m still using a Roland GR-55 and also an Axon 100 mkII coupled with a Roland Integra 7 (almost all my guitars are Godin with GK compatible outputs).

I’m evaluating the demo version to figure out if it’s a viable solution to replace my Axon. This means that I’m not interested in onboard sounds or effects; only in the tracking quality and the flexibility of MIDI communication with external devices.

I have a couple of remarks / questions already.

  1. So far, I’m quite impressed with the tracking speed and quality, especially given the fact that only the normal guitar output is used. It is also very convenient that you don’t need a long setup phase for all the guitars you use (I use at least 6 different guitars with MIDI). I have a couple of problems with polyphonic tracking though.

  2. When I play chords with 4 or 5 notes at the same time (especially with a pick), the tracking seems less accurate. In particular, I often seem get 3 notes only, or notes with a very low volume compared to the others. Are there any known issues in that regard, or do I need to know anything about the influence of picking technique?

  3. Some chords are not recognized correctly, which is a showstopper. For example, if I play a Gsus4 (G F A C), the low G is turned into an F. This is very audible when I play the low G first, and then the other 3 notes simultaneously. I’ve read about similar problems supposedly fixed in the payed versions. Would that apply here?

  4. I’ve never used the string-based split functions of the Axon or the various Roland products, so I don’t mind ditching hexaphonic pickups (on the contrary). String-based sensitivity setting could be a problem, but maybe the GM2’s algorithm is smart enough to not require this anymore. However, it seems that the GM2’s MIDI output is not really configurable, which would be a problem. Is it possible to customize the output channel(s) for Note on/off messages? Is is possible to filter out “ghost” notes? etc.

  5. Final question: my several guitars may require different adjustments, notably the input gain. Are the interface modules (audio and midi) stored in patches as well as the rest?

Oh, and a final note: out of curiosity (and hope) I have tried GM2 with an electric sitar. The result is disappointing, although not surprising (given the amount of transitory “noise” in a sitar sound). It works more or less in monophonic mode, but it is a disaster with chords. Would there be any interest in working on this? I have not tried my sitar with the Axon yet, as I need to install a GK3 on it first :wink:

That’s it. Thanks for your time!

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Good questions! I’ll try answer them in order of appearance ( I was in a hurry while originally answering this, so I forgot this introduction)

  1. allthough MG does its best, it cant be perfect. Polyphony is easier to provide with a hexpickup ofcourse.
  2. other than using the brightest possible bridge pickups there are no known fixes for that. A fast pick movement over multiple strings might work less well than nail-less fingerpicked chords.
  3. there is no difference in converter quality between the demo and the purchased version.
  4. there are midi machines in MG that can change the midi outputchannel and do keyboardsplits and more. String based separation is not possible.
    There is a midi machine script script for more rigid gating and retrigger blocking.
  5. interface settings are stored globally.
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Thanks for your reply Paul!

About the differences between the demo and full version, I understand that it boils down to the reminder dialog that pops up regularly. However, there /is/ another difference, which is that they are not currently at the same version number. So I was rather wondering whether there had been improvements between 2.0.18 (current demo version) and 2.2.1 (current full version).

About interface settings being stored globally, that’s really too bad! Could we turn this into a feature request? I don’t think that’s difficult to implement…

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The differences between 2.0.18 and 2.2.1. are merely small display details, that were in flux during release.
Changing interfaces between patches would cause terrible overhead and be most likely very user unfriendly, the only thing we could do is to make the input channel assignable per patch.
-In interface section you’d choose a default input channel.
-In patch you choose “default” or channel number for input.
That way you’d have patch based support for multiple input channels, but as soon as you switch to an interface with less channels problems arise at patch level…
It would kind of cluther up the simplicitiy of our little host… We allways recommend using bigger hosts for the bigger jobs: e.g. Gigperformer

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Wow, what a great discussion.

Thanks didierverna for asking such inquisitive questions and Paul for your informative responses. Threads like this are why forums are so useful for a vibrant community!

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