Topic by rookie

  • Avatar
  • rookie
  • Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 27-07-2014
  • Posts: 19

Topic: Question to CA 65 owners - problems with sustain pedal

Hi there,

recently I combined a Kawai CA 65 with Pianoteq and I really enjoy this setup.

However, there is a problem with the sustain pedal, which provides gradual MIDI values (instead of just 0 and 127). Whenever I use the sustain pedal at intermediate stages, e.g. about half way, the CA 65 literally flushes the MIDI-out port with so many pedal-messages that the actual notes get delayed very much, resulting in an unplayable situation. This can well be seen in the MIDI tab of the Options window in PT (To be clear: The issue is caused by the DP, and not by PT)

Kawai has been very helpful and will look at this. In the meantime I thought I'd check with you all to find out if someone has had a similar issue with a CA 65, and if so has maybe found a solution.

Cheers

Rookie

P.S.: I checked if it is indeed a problem of the DP by switching off local control and looping the MIDI-out of the DP back into the MIDI-in of the DP. This results in the same delay of notes when using the sustain pedal.

Reply by kalessin

  • Avatar
  • kalessin
  • Member
  • Offline
  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 06-12-2013
  • Posts: 306

Re: Question to CA 65 owners - problems with sustain pedal

Does it make a difference when you use USB instead of MIDI? USB has in theory a bit more jitter (~1ms), but potentially a lot more bandwidth.

Pianoteq 6 Standard (Steinway D&B, Grotrian, Petrof, Steingraeber, Bechstein, Blüthner, K2, YC5, U4, Kremsegg 1&2, Karsten, Electric, Hohner)

Reply by rookie

  • Avatar
  • rookie
  • Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 27-07-2014
  • Posts: 19

Re: Question to CA 65 owners - problems with sustain pedal

kalessin wrote:

Does it make a difference when you use USB instead of MIDI? USB has in theory a bit more jitter (~1ms), but potentially a lot more bandwidth.

I don't quite understand:

i) the issue persists even without any connection to the computer.

ii)  jitter does not apply to the MIDI signal, but to the audio signal.

iii) using a USB MIDI interface does not change things compared to using the CA 65-internal USB-to-host connection

Reply by kalessin

  • Avatar
  • kalessin
  • Member
  • Offline
  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 06-12-2013
  • Posts: 306

Re: Question to CA 65 owners - problems with sustain pedal

Since you said you used the CA-65's MIDI-in, I assumed you used its MIDI port instead of its USB-to-host port. Apparently, I was mistaken.

Pianoteq 6 Standard (Steinway D&B, Grotrian, Petrof, Steingraeber, Bechstein, Blüthner, K2, YC5, U4, Kremsegg 1&2, Karsten, Electric, Hohner)

Reply by rookie

  • Avatar
  • rookie
  • Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 27-07-2014
  • Posts: 19

Re: Question to CA 65 owners - problems with sustain pedal

kalessin wrote:

Since you said you used the CA-65's MIDI-in, I assumed you used its MIDI port instead of its USB-to-host port. Apparently, I was mistaken.

Ah, ok. Well, I tried the standard MIDI-out-to-USB-interface as well with PT -> same thing.

Reply by kalessin

  • Avatar
  • kalessin
  • Member
  • Offline
  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 06-12-2013
  • Posts: 306

Re: Question to CA 65 owners - problems with sustain pedal

Please keep us posted, though. This is the very first time I have heard of something like this. My MP-6 already had a continuous sustain pedal and never did something like this, and my VPC-1 also doesn't have a problem like this. So usually the people of Kawai know what they are doing. This is probably some very weird firmware bug and hopefully can be corrected with an update.

Pianoteq 6 Standard (Steinway D&B, Grotrian, Petrof, Steingraeber, Bechstein, Blüthner, K2, YC5, U4, Kremsegg 1&2, Karsten, Electric, Hohner)

Reply by rookie

  • Avatar
  • rookie
  • Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 27-07-2014
  • Posts: 19

Re: Question to CA 65 owners - problems with sustain pedal

kalessin wrote:

Please keep us posted, though. This is the very first time I have heard of something like this. My MP-6 already had a continuous sustain pedal and never did something like this, and my VPC-1 also doesn't have a problem like this. So usually the people of Kawai know what they are doing. This is probably some very weird firmware bug and hopefully can be corrected with an update.

Yes, I'll keep you up to date on this. As I wrote, Kawai is very kind and helpful, and they will surely sort this out. And to know that you have had no problems at all with their DPs and PT makes me even more confident. But since this is a really strange issue I wanted to check if there is maybe someone out there who can give us a hint on this. As you say, sometimes things like this can be fixed by some sort of reset or update or adjustment of some setting. (For completeness: We did try the ordinary reset and FW upgrade already)

To me the CA 65 is absolutely awesome, in particular the action. And the sound through PT is so good that I always have a hard time detaching from the piano!

Reply by johng

  • Avatar
  • johng
  • Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 04-07-2011
  • Posts: 35

Re: Question to CA 65 owners - problems with sustain pedal

Hi Rookie,

I have the same setup - CA65 playing through Pianoteq via USB connection. I had a similar problem with the sustain pedal - occasionally there would be a very high latency (substantial fraction of a second) between playing the notes and hearing the sound. I assumed this was either due to the CA65 generating high rates of messages for the sustain pedal or a problem with the usb driver.

However, I switched the input to a different usb port on my laptop and since then I have not had a problem. The only difference is that the port I'm using now is a'll pos t USB 3.0 port whereas the port I was using originally is a USB 2.0 port. USB 3.0 ports are capable of higher throughput, but I would guess this only applies when connected to a USB 3.0 compliant device. I doubt if the CA65 is USB 3.0 compliant, so I cant really explain why the problem has gone away.

Incidentally, I have a slight issue with the midi velocity response of the CA65, but I'll post this on a new thread shortly - maybe you could take a look.

John

Reply by rookie

  • Avatar
  • rookie
  • Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 27-07-2014
  • Posts: 19

Re: Question to CA 65 owners - problems with sustain pedal

johng wrote:

Hi Rookie,

I have the same setup - CA65 playing through Pianoteq via USB connection. I had a similar problem with the sustain pedal - occasionally there would be a very high latency (substantial fraction of a second) between playing the notes and hearing the sound. I assumed this was either due to the CA65 generating high rates of messages for the sustain pedal or a problem with the usb driver.

However, I switched the input to a different usb port on my laptop and since then I have not had a problem. The only difference is that the port I'm using now is a'll pos t USB 3.0 port whereas the port I was using originally is a USB 2.0 port. USB 3.0 ports are capable of higher throughput, but I would guess this only applies when connected to a USB 3.0 compliant device. I doubt if the CA65 is USB 3.0 compliant, so I cant really explain why the problem has gone away.

Incidentally, I have a slight issue with the midi velocity response of the CA65, but I'll post this on a new thread shortly - maybe you could take a look.

John

Hi John,

sounds very similar, however for me the problem does not happen occasionally but more or less constantly.

In order to check things Kawai gave me the hint to loop the MIDI out back into the MIDI in and switch off local control. The problem should not be present then, at least as far as I understood them.

Unfortunately I don't have a USB 3 port so I can't try that out.

I'll keep you informed, and thanks for letting me know that I may not be the only one experiencing this.

Cheers

Daniel

Reply by rookie

  • Avatar
  • rookie
  • Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 27-07-2014
  • Posts: 19

Re: Question to CA 65 owners - problems with sustain pedal

Hi everyone,

here is an update: Kawai was very helpful and had someone check things out. He ended up replacing the main CPU and at first try the issue seemed solved. (A new pedal unit showed the same effect with the old CPU so it was left  unchanged)

However, the issue has only disguised itself and now sometimes sets in after some minutes of play when not using the pedal, and sometimes immediately when beginning to play (Also for the MIDI looping back into the DP).
When I unplug and replug the USB connection it works again until a few minutes of play without using the pedal.

The difference between a working situation and a situation where the MIDI messages flush in can now easily be seen in the MIDI window of PT:

In the case when everything is fine the messages from the pedal are about 20 ms apart.

When the flush sets in PT shows messages which are all 1 ms apart, and I suspect that they may even be closer since 1 ms seems to be the limit of PTs time resolution in the MIDI window.

So the issue has become more complex instead of more transparent. It certainly does a good job in giving me a hard time to figure out an explanation.

I'm hoping for some bright ideas from the support people now and just wanted to keep you informed, as I promised.

Cheers

Rookie