I am clueless how to debug my MIDI problems with Ardour 8.1, switching to JACK instead of PipeWire does not solve the problem.
What works: Linux Mint 21.2 with PipeWire 1.0 (0.3.84 worked, too) and Ardour 7.5 (Backports PPA) and a MIDI loop with my workstation, which is also the USB audio interface. Recording up to 8 MIDI arpeggiated channels simultaneously works. Bouncing 4 MIDI channels into stereo audio tracks at once is no problem. Mackie control works, MIDI clock sync too. I was amazed and switched to the payed version 8.1.
What does not work using 8.1: same setup as above with 8.1 does not work. MIDI sounds are missing, the timing is incorrect. Pre-listening to MIDI files in the import dialog is distorted beginning with the second MIDI file. Parts of the first MIDI file are still played back, too. To be sure I installed Debian 12 on a laptop with JACK but MIDI does not work correctly, too. The whole MIDI stack seems to be messed up.
What I tried: Switching to ALSA (Linux Mint), starting āa2jmidid -eā and a lot of settings , I did not try everything with the Debian laptop because as soon as I switch back to 7.5 my Linux Mint setup works.
Where should I start debugging, which settings should I check at least for the Debian/JACK system?
Only one session for me, but I only need one session for midi so I donāt have any other to try onā¦
There is no tempo changes on mine, in fact I donāt even use the timeline at all (no midi regions), I just send external midi inputs into midi tracks and get the output on the speakers.
Thanks for confirming my issue, hereās how I reproduce the problem:
Connect an external device which sends on more than one MIDI channel
Create two MIDI tracks
Set channel selector to channel 1 for first channel and 2 for the second (recording and playback)
As long as I send only on channel 1 everything is fine. As soon as I send on channel 2 there are stuck āendlessā notes, missing sounds and so on. Recording is not necessary, even the pre-listening is ācorruptā. There are no plugins involved, I set both MIDI input and output to my keyboard/workstation. Clock sync makes no difference.
Switching between JACK2 or ALSA or PipeWireās JACK makes no difference. Last version I tried was Ardour 8.2, 7.5 worked.
Iām having MIDI issues as well. Using Ardour 8.1 from arch linux repository, and pipewire-jack.
The issues I have noticed for now are:
Dropped midi events when playing with a midi controller, especially when using aftertouch/modulation/expression pedal actively. Especially noticable is dropped note off events which causes a note to hang.
MIDI event latency when routing to hardware synth. If I increase the audio latency buffer size, the MIDI latency increases as well. Is this normal? Shouldnāt be necessary to buffer midi events, they should be sent immediately to the destination port.
Thinking about it, the dropped events and buffered midi events could be related. If I use a lot of expression there will be a lot of midi events. If the events are buffered, we could potentially fill up the buffer, and events are dropped when the buffer is full.
Midi recording with PipeWireās JACK still has problems on my system, too. So I switched to the supported JACK2. PipeWire plays nice with JACK2, just install it and jackdbus, works fine here.
