MG3HEX in the Wild (gig log experiences)

[erol]

I have a weekly restaurant gig, where I invite a different guest musician to play with me each week. I play my Godin Multiac and use foot percussion (no tracks or looper) . My regular rig is an ATG-1 with an AXON 100mk2 into a TC Helicon Voice Live Play harmonizer. Today I tried it with the MG3HEX replacing the AXON, using GP-10 as an interface to mini PC, running all SampleTank instruments. I’m only using the synth to supplement my acoustic guitar sounds. I’m not trying to create big synth solo sounds.

I tried to make as compact and portable unit as possible. A mini PC sits underneath the ATG-1, the display is resting on the TC-Helicon. The music stand and mic stand are attached to the pedal board to save floor space. The music stand holds my tablet for charts, an android phone as a bluetooth mixer for my EV-50M PA, and the Sparrow 3 fader midi controller with fader 1 for Bass, Fader 2 is a String Pad, Fader 3 is the feature instrument (piano, e piano, org, flute etc…). It was a 3 hour gig, I had one crash (running a bass and 2 different sampletank organs). An organ note stayed stuck on even after MG3 had crashed and it’s window had closed. I tried opening MG3 again, but it lost the GP-10 driver so I had to restart the computer. On restart it did not remember my tracker was HEX, it defaulted to regular MG3. This was a 3 hour gig, the crash occurred at about 1.5 hours, perhaps the PC overheated?

It tracks great, and the sounds are whatever you want them to be. Aside from being very heavy, this could be a regular gig rig if I had the following:

1.) When I hit a patch change button, I need it to load all saved parameters (the fader positions) regardless of current midi controller positions. Currently, the MG3 faders all drop to zero on patch change and I have to recreate the mix before I start the song (forget about changing patches during a song).

2.) Open tunings. My ATG-1 is set up with some open tunings and I’d like whatever midi instrument I’m using to match those tunings. Perhaps the “String Filter” aside from being just OFF or ON, could included a transpose plus or minus 1-12 semitones for each string?

3.) A few more Chains (with mute buttons) Why? Because of the load time when switching patches. If I could preload my most used instruments into several chains, then the patch change could simply be muting or unmuting chains rather than loading new instruments. I tried loading more than one sampletank instrument into a chain, but it seems to create midi issues (missing notes). Right now I run one sampletank instrument in each chain on it’s own midi channel.

4.) I need to feel confident it’s not going crash (worry about playing outdoors on a hot sunny day).

Here’s a link to some clips of the gig tonight: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAbL7U7mZWz4ezXwHQ4HhgDyf5qudP1sY&si=lLI-vKxy3EtmjTHx

Below are pics of the rig.

[kimyo]

‘still the same’ was very nice. and nylon strings guitars are the best, it’s great to see how well yours functions with mg3.

your pc bios may have a high temperature reading stored. also i think there are utilities which will log the cpu temp. did it feel hot around the time it crashed?

the camera’s proximity to the foot percussion causes it to be too prominent in the mix, maybe you could use an external mic instead? some of the synthy stuff was hard to hear.

[erol]

Thanks Kimyo, I’m only guessing that heat may have been the cause of the crash because of past experience using iOS soft synths where that happened. The PC felt warm to the touch, and the air blowing out of it was not quite as hot as a hair dryer on low setting. The CPU meters in MG3 never went above 50%. Perhaps I’ll install the “CoreTemp” monitor software.

I was quite surprised at how loud the foot percussion came out (the shaker is not amplified). The video was just a last min thought, so I could review my overall sound (iphone leaned up against my beer glass). I got pretty much the sound I was looking for, except on the organ patch, it was way too low. My next gig is tomorrow, I’ll give it another try then. But without the features I mention above, I probably will go back to my other synth rigs.

[erol]

Did my second gig with MG3HEX last night. Had a crash in the middle of second set. Same as last time, program closed and when I tried to reopen it couldn’t locate the GP-10 driver. Rebooted and it was fine for the rest of the night.

I have a gig tonight and will give it another shot. I’ll try putting the system to sleep on the breaks, perhaps a little rest during the gig will prevent shut down.

[pasha]

Beware, when waking up from sleep, Windows (and Macs in my experience) can loose drivers as well.
Mac Apple Silicon M1 Max when woke up after sleeping forgets my UM-ONE MKII Roland USB-MIDI and my Midi USB Keyboard MAUDIO - K61. My company Windows laptop (work only) forgets about LAN …

Give it a try at home before relying on it.
Have a good show!

[erol]

Did my third gig with it last night. No crashes, and I didn’t change anything? I take that back, I changed one thing, I lifted the ground on the PA system because I was noticing some digital noise/whine (lifting the ground got rid of it). Other than that, last night’s job was the same length as the previous two.

[erol]

I’m happy with the tracking and sound I’m getting at gigs. But I’d like to lower the load time when changing patches (maybe preload more sounds and just mute unmute). I’d also like patch parameters (like volume of each instrument chain) to be saved and loaded when switching patches. I thought I’d try a VST host program and run MG3HEX as a VST (rather than stand alone). I’m starting with Kushview ELEMENT (free version). It’s looking good, as is Gig Performer (but don’t know if I need that much).

[erol]

Decided on Gig Performer as a plugin manager on my gigs and started running MG3HEXbeta as a VST. This seems to give me a little more control and keeps processor resources lower. I created 8 midi channels out from MG3 to one instance of Sample Tank with 8 instruments loaded, each on their own midi channel. Then mute and unmute them as need via the pedal switches on my ATG-1. This took some scripting because the ATG-1 only sends out PC messages. The guys on the GigPerformer forum were EXTREMELY helpful, actually wrote the script for me to convert PC to CC messages. It worked well on my Tuesday gig (but I still had one crash). I have gigs tomorrow and Saturday, so we’ll see how it does there.

[pasha]

Good luck! It looks promising!

[JamO]

Thank you for all the feedback, @erol.

I’ve been searching my soul and the MG codebase for anything that could cause a crash over the last days, but havent found anything yet. It could very well be a bug on my side, especially on the windows version which is less tested. I’ll keep looking… always crash bugs are highest priority for me.

@erol

Currently, the MG3 faders all drop to zero on patch change and I have to recreate the mix before I start the song (forget about changing patches during a song).

Oh that sounds wrong. I probably misunderstand you, but you mean the patch bay CC settings?

@erol

Perhaps the “String Filter” aside from being just OFF or ON, could included a transpose plus or minus 1-12 semitones for each string?

Someone else asked similarity. I guess we can do that.

@erol

Because of the load time when switching patches. If I could preload my most used instruments into several chains, then the patch change could simply be muting or unmuting chains rather than loading new instruments. I tried loading more than one sampletank instrument into a chain, but it seems to create midi issues (missing notes). Right now I run one sampletank instrument in each chain on its own midi channel.

I’ve done this with sampletank, but you need to set it to MIDI 1.0 and then you can wire a CC cable to the midi channel selector.

I think 3.0.56 will have faster patch changes, which seems the primary issue here. The load time of external plugins regressed a bit in the last few updates (in the name of plugin compatibility), The internal modules are all very fast, so any loading time is mainly that of any hosted external plugins.

One addition, that we’ve been talking about over the years, is to mark some plugins as “persistent” so that MG doesnt even have to reload it from one patch to the next, but instead just keep it in memory to whenever that plugin needs to be used again.

Another addition that im currently looking into is to load all plugins in parallel in separate threads, rather than sequentially as now.

[erol]

@JamO

Thank you for all the feedback, @erol.

I’ve been searching my soul and the MG codebase for anything that could cause a crash over the last days, but havent found anything yet. It could very well be a bug on my side, especially on the windows version which is less tested. I’ll keep looking… always crash bugs are highest priority for me.

****If I come up with a reason, I let you know. So far the CPU meter rarely goes over 50% but the fan is blowing out some pretty warm air, so maybe it’s getting too hot. I have not installed temp monitoring software but may do so. The other possibility (but unlikely is the position of my touch screen, perhaps it got brushed against, or is effected by EMF of other devices). One odd thing in the last crash, an Organ note remained stuck on even though the program was closed.

@erol

Currently, the MG3 faders all drop to zero on patch change and I have to recreate the mix before I start the song (forget about changing patches during a song).

Oh that sounds wrong. I probably misunderstand you, but you mean the patch bay CC settings?

***You are right that was said all wrong, sorry! They don’t drop to zero, they remain where they were for the last patch. So if I turned the faders down for a song, then hit patch change they remain down instead of going to the position they were in when I saved the patch. (follow me?)

@erol

Perhaps the “String Filter” aside from being just OFF or ON, could included a transpose plus or minus 1-12 semitones for each string?

Someone else asked similarity. I guess we can do that.

***THIS WOULD BE GREAT! Then open tunings are available, tons of stuff tuned to DADGAD, or open G, or open E.

@erol

Because of the load time when switching patches. If I could preload my most used instruments into several chains, then the patch change could simply be muting or unmuting chains rather than loading new instruments. I tried loading more than one sampletank instrument into a chain, but it seems to create midi issues (missing notes). Right now I run one sampletank instrument in each chain on its own midi channel.

I’ve done this with sampletank, but you need to set it to MIDI 1.0 and then you can wire a CC cable to the midi channel selector.

I think 3.0.56 will have faster patch changes, which seems the primary issue here. The load time of external plugins regressed a bit in the last few updates (in the name of plugin compatibility), The internal modules are all very fast, so any loading time is mainly that of any hosted external plugins.

One addition, that we’ve been talking about over the years, is to mark some plugins as “persistent” so that MG doesnt even have to reload it from one patch to the next, but instead just keep it in memory to whenever that plugin needs to be used again.

Another addition that im currently looking into is to load all plugins in parallel in separate threads, rather than sequentially as now.

*** My last gig I used Gig Performer (first time) and ran MG3HEX as VST. I loaded 8 instruments into one sample tank and used midi 1.0 and sent a seperate midi channel to each instrument. This allowed for immediate muting or unmuting of instruments (essentially imitating a patch change without reloading a new patch). The gig went well, other than the one crash. I’ll try this set up again tonight and tomorrow.

Thanks for your attention. You have taken on a huge task with MG3HEX and what you’ve accomplished so far is remarkable to say the least!! Keep it up

[erol]

Just reporting back on Fri and Sat gigs. Same thing occurred, crashed at the end of the first set. For the second night I installed CoreTemp to see if it would offer any insight for a possible cause. I thought I could get a report today that showed all the temps like “overheated at 7:55pm on Sept 23” That would be the time of the last song in the first set. But I only see a bunch of HEX code that means little to me, there is a section for the Audio processor though. I’ll send you the report in case it helps you someway. At least you can see the specs of the machine I’m running. Crashes seem to occur about the same time at every gig so far (about 1 to 1.5 hrs in). Each time after the crash it no longer recognizes the GP-10 Driver and I have to restart. After that it seems good the rest of the night (my second and third sets are usually a little shorter than the first, and I think I only had a second crash once). I did also add a fan on the last gig, but seems to have made no difference.

[kimyo]

maybe it’s not heat, maybe it’s losing a slice of available ram every time a vst is loaded / unloaded.

this could cause a freeze after a bunch of cycles.

if so, a persistent vst load option would probably fix this. or in gig performer you could setup all of your commonly used instruments outside of mg3 and minimize or eliminate the need for preset switching.

[erol]

Good thought, but I don’t think it’s a loading issue because for the last 2 gigs I switched from running Stand Alone MG3 to using it as a VST in GigPerformer. Pretty much as you are suggesting, there was no VST instrument loaded in MG3. In Gig performer I ran one instance of SampleTank with 8 instruments preloaded, then just mute and unmute the ones I wished to play. So after the initial load, nothing else gets loaded the entire gig (just muted or unmuted). The crashes seem to occur at about the same point in each gig and it always loses the GP-10 driver.

[pasha]

Even if I am on a Mac, I can say that GP10 driver sometimes has problems here as well.
Sometimes I prepare GP10 patches in advance and after some modification and write I leave Tone Editor alone idle for sometime. Usually after 20/30 minutes when I came back to the software for another modification … it cannot recognize GP10 anymore. I have to reboot. It makes me crazy. Haven’t found a solution yet.

[Dutti67]

@ Erol, @ Pasha I experienced that the USB port of portable devices like laptop etc. often is the reason for losing connectivity. Keep the ports clean and use some contact spray to see if that helps?

[kimyo]

also it may help to switch to another usb port, and also make sure that your usb port is never turned off to save power.

lastly to expand on @pasha’s point - if it is the driver and it is a timeout situation, you could test this by starting from a fresh boot, then leaving your system on with mg3 running but without any sampletank stuff loaded.

if you come back to it the next morning and it’s locked then it’s probably the driver and not heat/cpu/resources.

Start by typing ‘Device Manager’ into the Start menu or finding it in your Control Panel, then scroll down to ‘Universal Serial Bus controllers’. Note that your device will need to be plugged in to show here, so make sure you’ve got your controllers and interface plugged in at both ends before doing this. Click the arrow to the left of the device name which will open up a list of your USB devices.

Then you’ll need to right-click on one, hit ‘Properties’ then go to the ‘Power Management’ tab, and deselect the tick box that states ‘Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power’. Once you’re done repeat the process for all of the USB devices present and you’re good to move on to the next step.

[pasha]

Mac Studio M1 here so dust is present but limited, I agree with you it can be a point.

[erol]

Good idea, I’m going to boot it up now and just leave it on. See if it loses the GP-10 driver in time without being played.

[erol]

Following up on your thoughts about timing out. I ran my last used gig setup (MG3HEX as VST in GigPerformer feeding a SampleTank VST) at idle today for 2.5 hours with no crash, no loss of GP-10 driver. I’m currently trying with MG3HEX as a standalone, I’m about an hour in no crash yet…but while waiting I reread what was said above about disabling power settings in device manager. I went through everything under USB and unticked the suggested box, so nothing is allowed to power down. While waiting I found this interesting article on a solution for a similar problem with graphic drivers . Apparently “Windows expects a reply from the video card driver within two seconds, and if it doesn’t get one in time, Windows will assume the driver has problems and proceed by killing it. The solution was to increase this timer, and now all my crashes have stopped.” Perhaps something similar also applies to the GP-10 Driver, but I wouldn’t know how to adjust my registry settings for it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/radeon/comments/1c1cwsu/this_fixed_all_my_driver_timeout_crashes/