Major Bug!! Soft Knobs and "Snap" Mode
 

Hey all. I'm hoping I'm missing something here as this is really frustrating...

I've submitted a support ticket to Access and started a thread on the official Virus forum here as well.

If you are having this problem too, please reply to that thread and send a support ticket to Access as well.

So here is the issue that I'm having...

If I set the TI's knobs to "snap" mode in the global config, the soft knobs become practically unusable in a live situation. All of the knobs will claim to have a stored preset value of 127 regardless of where I had them positioned when I saved the patch. But when I load a patch, I don't hear their effects on the sound at all. It's clear that the stored value should be 0 when the patch loads (which is exactly what I want to happen). As a result of this, turning the soft knobs will not effect the sound until I turn them all the way to the right and pass through value 127 to activate the snap. At this point I can turn them down to the left, but this causes a jump in the sound as soon as the knob moves to 126.

So for example, let's say I've programmed soft knob #3 to be the reverb send on a lead sound. I load the patch and I don't hear any reverb. So far so good. But to get any reverb at all, I have to turn the knob all the way to 127 to activate the snap and then turn it backwards. So I go from no reverb to almost an almost completely wet sound at value 126 as I turn the knob to the left.

To make matters worse, the TI seems to forget the last value I moved the knob to. So continuing with the example above, let's say I turned the reverb send to 50 and then continued playing the patch for a bit. If I decide I want a little more reverb and I turn the knob to the right a bit to value 70, there is no change in the sound. Instead, I have to turn the knob all the way back to 127 to reactivate the snap and then turn it down to 70. This causes a jump from 50 to 126 before I can turn it back down to 70.

Is this a bug in the OS or am I missing something completely obvious here? If the TI correctly stored the preset soft knob values at 0, I could just turn them all the way to the left to activate the snap at 0. That's how they should work, right?

All of the regular knobs behave normally in snap mode. In other words, turning a knob doesn't effect the sound until I pass through the value stored in the preset, at which point turning it left left or right increases or decreases the value. If I come back to the knob 5 minutes later, I can adjust the knob from its current state without having to pass through the preset value again, and the LCD will show me the current value as I adjust it as well as what the stored value is.

Confirmed. I see the same behavior. Edit: Actually not, I probably mixed the problem of the original post with a different issue when using Virus Control and Snap mode.

Also, I think the values of the soft knobs should be stored with the preset and not always start at zero. There are many situations where you may want to start tweaking in the middle of a range...

Regarding the TI "forgetting" the last selected value: The same is happening for the last played note and therefore makes Mono Mode 1 unusable with medium portamento values: After a pause of about 10 seconds between notes, the portamento will start a the highest possible note instead of the last played. Different issue but most probably the same origin.

Spoke too soon. I thought I had seen the same thing, but now I can't replicate it. The Soft Knobs seem to work exactly as I'd expect.

Also, you say that you assign a Soft Knob to Reverb Send. How did you do that? Because that assignment is not available to me!

Can you give a more detailed instruction on how to replicate the problem you see?

Ok, I found Effect Send (Reverb) as available assignment.

So there are three way to set this up:

1. Assign Soft Knob to Effect Send (Reverb)
2. Assign Modulation Matrix Slot 2 to Controller 12, Amount 1 to +63 and send to Reverb Send, assign Soft Knob to Controller 12
3. Assign Modulation Matrix Slot 2 to 10% Constant, Amount 1 to 0 and send to Reverb Send, assign Soft Knob to Assignment 2 Amount 1

In all these three scenarios the assigned Soft Knob works differently but correct:

1. Soft Knob shows the stored and current value in db and only adjusts if stored value is touched
2. Soft Knob shows the stored and current value (-64 .. +63) and only adjusts if stored value is touched
3. Soft Knob shows the current value and immediately starts adjusting, as if it was an external MIDI controller

Seems just fine to me.

BTW, I'm using a Darkstar TI2 with OS 5.1.3.0, and did the above on the hardware without VC.

Same problem here...

Did some experiments and found the following:

• A Soft Knob assigned to a MIDI controller will not have a value stored with the patch. This means that Snap mode can not work because there is no reference value, and therefore these Soft Knobs will behave same as in Jump mode.
• A Soft Knob assigned to a Virus parameter will have its value stored and works as expected in Snap mode.

Unfortunately:

1. OSC Volume is not available as an assignable parameters (why not?! -> feature request)
2. The only way to assign Soft Knobs to Matrix slots is via MIDI controllers, except for assigning a Matrix destination amount directly. However, that requires the Matrix to use a constant source.
3. The Matrix does not have a "100% constant" source (-> feature request)

Found a workaround using the additional envelopes:

1. Set Envelope 4 to Attack: 0, Decay: 0, Sustain: 33.6%, Release: 127
2. Set up a Matrix slot (e.g.2) with Source: Envelope 4, Destination 1: OSC Volume
3. Set up a Soft Knob to Assign 2 Amount 1

Now, Envelope 4 acts as constant value source for the Matrix slot and the Soft Knob which controls the Matrix assignment has an internal destination and therefore has the value stored.

Happy knob tweaking!



PS: Here are the related feature request threads:

• New Matrix Source: 100% constant
• Assignable Soft Knob destinations

Many thanks for this. Was cleared up in the official forum. Much appreciated.