I REALLY REALLY REALLY, for the life of me, can not understand why this app does not support use of a sustain pedal. Personally I find it inexcusable, especially being that we cant use one when using audio unit apps like Neo Soul keys studio or when using a piano sound. Just....wow. I am about to delete it from my Ipad until I can use a sustain pedal with it. It's a great app but no, I have to put it on the back burner until it support a sustain pedal. But how in the world was that not implemented ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
@Heated You just need understand that for many other people is this completely unimportant useless festure There cannot be implemented everything at once..
It's definitely on todolist, so sooner or later it will be added.
@dendy said: @Heated You just need understat tgat fir many other people is this comoletely unimoortant useless festure Rhere cannot be imolemented everything at once..
It's definitely on todolist, so sooner or later it will be added.
If you actually played piano youd see how important it is to a lot of people. I have a ton of IOS Daws, Auria Pro, Cubasis, Garageband, ModStep, BeatHawk, FL Studio, Beatmaker 3, Gadget , Caustic and the list goes on, and they all support sustain pedals, I cant even begin to list all the IOS synths and keyboard apps I own, they all support it. Every desktop Daw Ive ever used support sustain pedals. Nanostudio is the only Daw I have ever come across that doesnt. I challenge you to name another Daw that doesnt support the use of a sustain pedal. Every midi keyboard controller has a input for a sustain pedal. Its been how many years in the making of this app? Yes, there was time to implement it.
Again, this is the only IOS Daw I know of that doesnt support a sustain pedal, so it kinda isnt a useless and completely useless feature.
@Blip Interactive said:
Obsidian doesn't implicitly map the sustain pedal, but you can obtain similar results by mapping the controller to Obsidian's Knob 2, which is usually the amp release for most patches. You can do this via the mixer's setup page for the track:
If you want to use this as the default mapping for all Obsidian instruments in future:
Make the controller mapping via the mixer's setup page for the track (as above)
Scroll to the top of the controller mapping list and tap on 'USING CUSTOM MAP'
Choose 'Save as defaults for ...' to make this the default mapping for the current MIDI input controller
I hadn't really expected there to be much demand for this as I'd considered NS2 more of a portable solution where 99% of people would use the touch screen or a smaller external MIDI controller. If there's high demand then it would be possible to add a dedicated automation controller which would be mapped to CC#64 by default.
I just got the app and after a few minutes of exploring it I had to come to this forum looking for help since I was strugling to make my sustain pedal to work with any AU synth.
After reading your explanation I must admit that I am completely disappointed. There’s no single DAW in the market (even in IOS) that doesn’t support sustain pedal and mod-wheel, it’s something absolutely basic since at least three decades ago. I understand that maybe Obsidian in particular may not support it, but there’s no way I can use the app to record my piano or synth performance if these two basic features are not supported. I’m a piano player and the lack of a sustain pedal it’s equivalent to try to record my songs playing with a toy piano.
Please I kindly ask you that you seriously reconsider your decision and implement both features (sustain pedal and mod wheel) in the next upcoming update. I wouln’t have purchased the app if I had known this, but I was not even remotely concerned as I gave it for granted (actually, it just didn’t cross my mind).
It’s an amazing app, beautifully designed, rock solid even with some misbehaving external plugins, but this omission makes it useless for me (and I guess that for any self respected keyboard player).
For what it is worth, Sustainpedal and mod wheel support are absolutely crucial for me too. Even though I always tell people to read the app descriptions carefully before purchase, to avoid unhappiness and the inevitable follow-up complaints, which isn't good/fun for anyone, I too have to admit I didn't look for those specific features before purchase because they are so common they are assumed, just like the standard controls of a car are in the car you wish to purchase, so you basically look at "the other" features.
@Blip Interactive said:
Obsidian doesn't implicitly map the sustain pedal, but you can obtain similar results by mapping the controller to Obsidian's Knob 2, which is usually the amp release for most patches. You can do this via the mixer's setup page for the track:
If you want to use this as the default mapping for all Obsidian instruments in future:
Make the controller mapping via the mixer's setup page for the track (as above)
Scroll to the top of the controller mapping list and tap on 'USING CUSTOM MAP'
Choose 'Save as defaults for ...' to make this the default mapping for the current MIDI input controller
I hadn't really expected there to be much demand for this as I'd considered NS2 more of a portable solution where 99% of people would use the touch screen or a smaller external MIDI controller. If there's high demand then it would be possible to add a dedicated automation controller which would be mapped to CC#64 by default.
I just got the app and after a few minutes of exploring it I had to come to this forum looking for help since I was strugling to make my sustain pedal to work with any AU synth.
After reading your explanation I must admit that I am completely disappointed. There’s no single DAW in the market (even in IOS) that doesn’t support sustain pedal and mod-wheel, it’s something absolutely basic since at least three decades ago. I understand that maybe Obsidian in particular may not support it, but there’s no way I can use the app to record my piano or synth performance if these two basic features are not supported. I’m a piano player and the lack of a sustain pedal it’s equivalent to try to record my songs playing with a toy piano.
Please I kindly ask you that you seriously reconsider your decision and implement both features (sustain pedal and mod wheel) in the next upcoming update. I wouln’t have purchased the app if I had known this, but I was not even remotely concerned as I gave it for granted (actually, it just didn’t cross my mind).
It’s an amazing app, beautifully designed, rock solid even with some misbehaving external plugins, but this omission makes it useless for me (and I guess that for any self respected keyboard player).
Thank you for your support and understanding.
@Ayepad said:
For what it is worth, Sustainpedal and mod wheel support are absolutely crucial for me too. Even though I always tell people to read the app descriptions carefully before purchase, to avoid unhappiness and the inevitable follow-up complaints, which isn't good/fun for anyone, I too have to admit I didn't look for those specific features before purchase because they are so common they are assumed, just like the standard controls of a car are in the car you wish to purchase, so you basically look at "the other" features.
Controller mod wheels are supported. They’re mapped to knob 1 by default. The in-app keyboard does not have a mod wheel but that has no effect on your external keyboard. A mod wheel is just an encoder that’s hard-wired to send CC1.
@Blip Interactive said:
Obsidian doesn't implicitly map the sustain pedal, but you can obtain similar results by mapping the controller to Obsidian's Knob 2, which is usually the amp release for most patches. You can do this via the mixer's setup page for the track:
If you want to use this as the default mapping for all Obsidian instruments in future:
Make the controller mapping via the mixer's setup page for the track (as above)
Scroll to the top of the controller mapping list and tap on 'USING CUSTOM MAP'
Choose 'Save as defaults for ...' to make this the default mapping for the current MIDI input controller
I hadn't really expected there to be much demand for this as I'd considered NS2 more of a portable solution where 99% of people would use the touch screen or a smaller external MIDI controller. If there's high demand then it would be possible to add a dedicated automation controller which would be mapped to CC#64 by default.
I just got the app and after a few minutes of exploring it I had to come to this forum looking for help since I was strugling to make my sustain pedal to work with any AU synth.
After reading your explanation I must admit that I am completely disappointed. There’s no single DAW in the market (even in IOS) that doesn’t support sustain pedal and mod-wheel, it’s something absolutely basic since at least three decades ago. I understand that maybe Obsidian in particular may not support it, but there’s no way I can use the app to record my piano or synth performance if these two basic features are not supported. I’m a piano player and the lack of a sustain pedal it’s equivalent to try to record my songs playing with a toy piano.
Please I kindly ask you that you seriously reconsider your decision and implement both features (sustain pedal and mod wheel) in the next upcoming update. I wouln’t have purchased the app if I had known this, but I was not even remotely concerned as I gave it for granted (actually, it just didn’t cross my mind).
It’s an amazing app, beautifully designed, rock solid even with some misbehaving external plugins, but this omission makes it useless for me (and I guess that for any self respected keyboard player).
Thank you for your support and understanding.
@Ayepad said:
For what it is worth, Sustainpedal and mod wheel support are absolutely crucial for me too. Even though I always tell people to read the app descriptions carefully before purchase, to avoid unhappiness and the inevitable follow-up complaints, which isn't good/fun for anyone, I too have to admit I didn't look for those specific features before purchase because they are so common they are assumed, just like the standard controls of a car are in the car you wish to purchase, so you basically look at "the other" features.
Controller mod wheels are supported. They’re mapped to knob 1 by default. The in-app keyboard does not have a mod wheel but that has no effect on your external keyboard. A mod wheel is just an encoder that’s hard-wired to send CC1.
(Response edited for clarity)
Thank you very much for your answer!
I apologize if I’m doing something wrong, but it doesn’t seem to work “by default” as you mention.
I’ll give you an concrete example:
-Standalone app, Moog Model 15, factory patch “Pad Brownout”, modwheel from my keyboard works as expected
-Same app, same patch, loaded in NS2: it doesn’t respond to modwheel at all. If MIDI Learn is used to map mod-wheel to knob 1 then “904A Regeneration” parameter is mapped, which is not precisely what mod-wheel is doing in that particular patch in Model 15 (it goes through a 995 attenuator first and then combined with other signals).
I tried to remap it using the Macro Tools, but a limited number of arbitrary parameters are exposed and I find no way of adding a new parameter to that list.
The key question is:
Is there any way to “MIDI Learn” mod-wheel (or CC64 for sustain pedal, or any other CC) in any way so the MiDI CC message is just passed through to the app to the same CC and NOT remapped to those arbitrary AU parameters?
In other words, is it possible to send any CC to the AU app and let the app itself decide what to do with that CC message and not interfere/remap with that arbitrary list of AU parameters?
If this is possible then my previous message should be deleted from the thread and I should truly apologize for jumping into wrong conclusions. I understood from previous messages that mod-wheel and sustain are “not supported” and I honestly could not manage to make them work as expected or as in other DAWs.
@Rodolfo
Is there any way to “MIDI Learn” mod-wheel (or CC64 for sustain pedal, or any other CC) in any way so the MiDI CC message is just passed through to the app
No, this is not possible at the moment, but sustain pedal support is definitely planned, also modwheel support...
@Rodolfo
Is there any way to “MIDI Learn” mod-wheel (or CC64 for sustain pedal, or any other CC) in any way so the MiDI CC message is just passed through to the app
No, this is not possible at the moment, but sustain pedal support is definitely planned, also modwheel support...
Thank you very much for your answer.
Just a suggestion for the developer: instead of restricting CCs from an external keyboard/controller to an arbitrary list of AU parameters, a simple “pass through” could be added as a mapping option in the Macro Tools. This would easily solve in advance any other potential issues like the sustain/modwheel support or AU apps that do not provide a list of “main parameters”.
Just a suggestion for the developer: instead of restricting CCs from an external keyboard/controller to an arbitrary list of AU parameters, a simple “pass through” could be added as a mapping option in the Macro Tools.
Interesting idea ... what is situation in other daws ? Are they passing all MIDI CC into AU plugin ? I always thouht that they just domthis with pitchmod, modwheel and sustain
Just a suggestion for the developer: instead of restricting CCs from an external keyboard/controller to an arbitrary list of AU parameters, a simple “pass through” could be added as a mapping option in the Macro Tools.
Interesting idea ... what is situation in other daws ? Are they passing all MIDI CC into AU plugin ? I always thouht that they just domthis with pitchmod, modwheel and sustain
To my understanding, which could be wrong, exactly what AU parameters are exposed by any specific app is up to the developer of the hosted app. However, the host should ideally be able to pick up any AU parameter a hosted app has exposed.
I would probably say AUM is the school book example of how AU parameters in hosted app should be picked up, and developers like Bram Bos et al always sing the praise of AUM's capabilities when it comes to AU's.
As for midi parameters being passed on, to my understanding all midi messages on a given channel will be passed along to the hosted app. Ideally it should also be possible to record those cc's in the host.
As for other situation with other DAWs it has been a bit of hit and miss, but most of them have worked it in there, as it isn't feasible for someone to load say Ravenscroft Piano as an AU and not have access to things like sustain, as it pretty much renders it unusable (for pianists at least). I have never had to actually map the ones you mention though (pitchbend, modwheel and sustain, and quite often aftertouch too) so I'm guessing clever defaults might have been incorporated too, as they always are on the same midi cc's in all apps that support them.
Just to test I tried out a couple of hosts, loading in BS16i as an AU with a Grand Piano into the following hosts (which are the ones I currently happen to have installed): Auria, Cubasis, MultitrackStudio, Stagelight, ModStep and finally midiSTEPs.
All of them had pitchbend, modwheel and sustain mapped per default. All except for ModStep and midiSTEPs also had aftertouch mapped.
To my understanding, which could be wrong, exactly what AU parameters are exposed by any specific app is up to the developer of the hosted app. However, the host should ideally be able to pick up any AU parameter a hosted app has exposed.
Yes, that's my understanding too.
As for midi parameters being passed on, to my understanding all midi messages on a given channel will be passed along to the hosted app. Ideally it should also be possible to record those cc's in the host.
This is possible with "External MIDI" instrument in Nanostudio - which is mentioned to control other instruments both inside iPad (standalone Apps) and external (HW synths) - that is purpose if this instrument - you can record and automate ALL CC's directly, not just those assigned to macro knobs (if you look inside pattern on track which is using "External MIDI" instrument - you see list of all CC automations available there)
So way around, until sustain/modwheel would be implemented directly to AU instrument, is to use standalone version of AU instrument (lot of them can usually run also Stanalone not just as AU plugin) and control it from Nanostudio using "Eternal MIDI" instrument - this way you can automate all CCs and send them to that instrument
In default setting of "External MIDI" instrument is macro knob 1 set to "Mod Wheel". Just add also "Sustain" cc to other Macro knob, then point it to any exteral instrument (you can run Ravenscroft or iSymphonic even as standalone app not just AUv3) and you're done - both mod wheel and sustain works like a breeze and you can even record them in Nanostudio
I know, it's not that cofortable like having them as AU, and you don't get audio back to NS.. so it's really more for just live playing (which is probably what keyboardists do in first place ? )
All of them had pitchbend, modwheel and sustain mapped per default.
Yeah those are obvious. As i said, modwheel and sustain are definitely in todolist. Pitchbend already works.
@Rodolfo said:
In other words, is it possible to send any CC to the AU app and let the app itself decide what to do with that CC message and not interfere/remap with that arbitrary list of AU parameters?
That would definitely be ideal for external controllers, but the list of AU parameters is, in my opinion at least for now for now, the best way of handling the situation within the app when not using an external controller. Of course, the mod wheel and sustain pedal are "special cases" and should be treated as such. I'm pretty sure these problems will go away in future updates.
@Rodolfo said:
In other words, is it possible to send any CC to the AU app and let the app itself decide what to do with that CC message and not interfere/remap with that arbitrary list of AU parameters?
That would definitely be ideal for external controllers, but the list of AU parameters is, in my opinion at least for now for now, the best way of handling the situation within the app when not using an external controller. Of course, the mod wheel and sustain pedal are "special cases" and should be treated as such. I'm pretty sure these problems will go away in future updates.
With all my respect, you are not helping the Dev with this type of comment. You don’t need to defend it at all costs, a simple acknowledge of a wrong implementation and a future fix would be more than enough.
Mod-wheel and sustain pedal are not “special cases” at all. They are a standard in ANY DAW, the special case is what has been implemented in NS2 with a very particular and personal criteria.
Hope this issue will be solved some day soon (and not in years) so I can finally use the app. It’s a great and beautiful app in many aspects, except for a basic and standard missing feature like this one.
@Rodolfo said:
In other words, is it possible to send any CC to the AU app and let the app itself decide what to do with that CC message and not interfere/remap with that arbitrary list of AU parameters?
That would definitely be ideal for external controllers, but the list of AU parameters is, in my opinion at least for now for now, the best way of handling the situation within the app when not using an external controller. Of course, the mod wheel and sustain pedal are "special cases" and should be treated as such. I'm pretty sure these problems will go away in future updates.
With all my respect, you are not helping the Dev with this type of comment. You don’t need to defend it at all costs, a simple acknowledge of a wrong implementation and a future fix would be more than enough.
Mod-wheel and sustain pedal are not “special cases” at all. They are a standard in ANY DAW, the special case is what has been implemented in NS2 with a very particular and personal criteria.
Hope this issue will be solved some day soon (and not in years) so I can finally use the app. It’s a great and beautiful app in many aspects, except for a basic and standard missing feature like this one.
Ok, I’m sorry if I came across as rude, that was definitely not my intention. I have to admit that I’ve read my post a couple of times and still don’t understand how I have offended you. If you want to help me understand, I’m very willing to listen.
I’ll try to clarify my earlier post a bit:
The mod wheel and sustain pedal are special cases in the midi implementation because they are always the same CCs and many AUs don’t allow them to be mapped to NS2’s performance controls. This is why these CCs should be passed through to the AU, at least as an option.
What I was trying to explain with this ”the list of AU parameters is, in my opinion at least for now for now, the best way of handling the situation within the app when not using an external controller” was that the NS2 performance controls are a necessary layer between NS2 and an AU instrument because at the moment, there is no way to directly automate the AU controls themselves, they have to be assigned to performance controls. It may be possible in the future, I don’t have a clue what Matt’s long term plans are.
Most people agree that Sustain Pedal support would be nice.
I think it is uderstandable that Sustain pedal support would be missing at initial launch of the app with the assumption that a mobile app would not normally be attached to controllers & pedals as often as just being used on the go or on the couch. Yes, some people are using iPads as laptop replacements and they are generally connected to a larger amount of interfaces, controllers, etc. However I’ll bet that the majority of iOS music producers don’t use a sustain pedal. So, when corners have to be cut so that an app can be released sooner, that seems like a logical one to me.
Granted, there will be a few people for whom music cannot be created without a sustain pedal. Understandable. Sustain pedal is on the To Do list and will be implemented. Same with a lot of other features. In the meantime, stiksi & dendy are suggesting some work-arounds that may be useful while waiting for sustain pedal implementation. I find their posts to be helpful. I’m glad they don’t just take the easy route and ignore threads & posts or simply don’t bother to reply.
@Rodolfo said:
In other words, is it possible to send any CC to the AU app and let the app itself decide what to do with that CC message and not interfere/remap with that arbitrary list of AU parameters?
That would definitely be ideal for external controllers, but the list of AU parameters is, in my opinion at least for now for now, the best way of handling the situation within the app when not using an external controller. Of course, the mod wheel and sustain pedal are "special cases" and should be treated as such. I'm pretty sure these problems will go away in future updates.
With all my respect, you are not helping the Dev with this type of comment. You don’t need to defend it at all costs, a simple acknowledge of a wrong implementation and a future fix would be more than enough.
Mod-wheel and sustain pedal are not “special cases” at all. They are a standard in ANY DAW, the special case is what has been implemented in NS2 with a very particular and personal criteria.
Hope this issue will be solved some day soon (and not in years) so I can finally use the app. It’s a great and beautiful app in many aspects, except for a basic and standard missing feature like this one.
Ok, I’m sorry if I came across as rude, that was definitely not my intention. I have to admit that I’ve read my post a couple of times and still don’t understand how I have offended you. If you want to help me understand, I’m very willing to listen.
I’ll try to clarify my earlier post a bit:
The mod wheel and sustain pedal are special cases in the midi implementation because they are always the same CCs and many AUs don’t allow them to be mapped to NS2’s performance controls. This is why these CCs should be passed through to the AU, at least as an option.
What I was trying to explain with this ”the list of AU parameters is, in my opinion at least for now for now, the best way of handling the situation within the app when not using an external controller” was that the NS2 performance controls are a necessary layer between NS2 and an AU instrument because at the moment, there is no way to directly automate the AU controls themselves, they have to be assigned to performance controls. It may be possible in the future, I don’t have a clue what Matt’s long term plans are.
You were not rude, and I’m not offended at all. I’m sorry if that was understood from my previous post. English is not my first language and sometimes I find it difficult to properly express complex ideas. Actually, I was trying to be kind (that’s why I started with “with all my respect”) as I was in some way critizising your position here. Sorry again.
The reason behind my comment is that I’ve been browsing this forum (and other forums too) and I found that there’s a group of people like you (moderators? Beta testers?) that seem to have some insight or communication with the Dev and defend NS2 at all costs and try to convince people that their requests or complains are wrong or at least not so important.
In my humble opinion this is a mistake and it’s not helping the Dev realize that there are a number of important misses in NS2 implementation. It’s better to say “yes, we missed this feature during beta tests, sorry, we’ll try to advice the dev to fix/implement it as soon as possible” than making statements like if NS2 has the best implementation in the market (I could transcribe here a lot of bold statements I found but that would not help at all either).
This particular issue is a big miss, believe me. It’s evident that there was no keyboardist or piano player in the beta team, otherwise this would not have happened. Additionally, it could be easily and quickly fixed with a minor maintenance update (as most devs do) since the code for the CC pass-through is already there in the app (just as the the way external MIDI track work).
Anyway, this is my last post on the subject, since I’m not helping either.
Hope it can be fixed soon, since there’s no workaround possible in this particular case.
As I mentioned before this is a great app in many aspects. I had high hopes and was very excited to produce my music with such a nice interface and a rock solid app. Unfortunately I’ll have to wait, but I’m afraid that considering the long development times involved and the dev’s reluctance to post frequent maintenance updates this will not be any time soon...
Thank you @Stiksi and @dendy for taking the time to answer, if it wasn’t for you guys, I would be still trying to find a fix for this as nobody in other forums seemed to know anything on the subject.
Thanks for you reply, it was interesting reading also for me. I will add few my comments..
English is not my first language and sometimes I find it difficult to properly express complex ideas
This is obviously my case too, and be sure you'r english is better than mine )) So i pretty much understand that what i wrote may sound for some people completely different than i originally mentioned it. That's language issue, another issue is forum communication at all, where except of emoticons you have no way to express you real feelings. This is source of many misunderstandings.
Anyway, this is my last post on the subject, since I’m not helping either.
That would be actually pity because true keyboardist can bring pretty interesting opinions and point of view, especially because - how you correctly pointed - there was no experienced keyboardist in beta team. So all your opinions and viewpoints are very welcome here, and can push things forward to make NS even better !
some insight or communication with the Dev and defend NS2 at all costs
I'm very aware that for few people it looks like this. Believe me, this is not the case at all ! Actually we are flooding Matt with out own requests in our internal communication pretty much too (especially me). Matt is checking this forum, every single thread, even through he is not so active by replying on everything - but don't make mistake - every single request is written on his super long request list and he is trying do his best to satisfy as much users as possible.
We all here are very diverse community. There are keyboardist like you ... there are people who are strongly into sample based workflow - sample slicing, mangling, effecting, people often with hiphop / MPC background .. there are sound designers and people with synths as their main tools for expressing their creative ideas and who use advanced production techniques when creating sonically very complex track structures. We are different. Different people, different needs. From different countries, with different cultural and social background, with different understanding what is joke and what is dead serious.
Every single one have own set of crucial features. And very often features totally crucial in one group of users, are totally not important in other group. There were for example people, who very strictly demanded possibility to apply individual AUfx effects for every Slate pad - it was totally crucial for them. I guess this is far away from importance for you :-). But for them it had same importance like sustain pedal support for you.
And that's my point - this is only one thing which i'm sometimes trying to explain (at beginning i was doing this more often but after few people from one specific community didn't get my intentions properly and starter to be mad on me, they still are, i'm trying to limit this approach. But i still do it sometimes). I'm not trying to defend anybody. Nobody from beta team is trying to do this. That's very deep misunderstanding.
Problem is that i'm "teacher" type of guy. Even through it not looks based on my profile photo - i'm just trying to learn people understand some more wide consequences, if i see they are too much locked in their own point of view.. I was even teacher on university some time in my past, because this is simply my obsession
If somebody is demanding some feature like 'totaly crucial and without this is NS useless' i'm just trying to a little bit cool down his anger and show him different point of view. I really don't think about any requested feature here, that it is not important for that particular user. I very much understand how crucial is sustain pedal for you, same way how i understand how crucial is per pad AUfx in Slate and chromaticall playability of pads for people with sampling background, or how important is posibility of move track automations together with clips for people like @drez who are working on tracks with a brutal amount of automations. Or people who cannot use NS at all without audio tracks availability - it's totaly most important feature for them.
I'm just trying to explain that we all needs to be patient and we all needs to respect requests and point of views of other users. That's all what i'm trying to do. In most cases not because of Matt (he is mature man and can sort all things for himself), but because i saw many times on other forums users fighting between just because "crucial" feature for one was "nonsense" for other. This actually already hapend also on this forum, user @flockz can tell you how some other users were angry on him just because he requested some for him very crucial feature. That was not nice.
So we all need respect different opinions of other users in first place - even (or exatly when) we disagree with them.
Hope it can be fixed soon, since there’s no workaround possible in this particular case.
Yes, back to beginning of this tread - sustain and modwheel are definitely on list with high importance. They are on todo list.
Additionally, it could be easily and quickly fixed with a minor maintenance update (as most devs do) since the code for the CC pass-through is already there in the app (just as the the way external MIDI track work).
This is another thing which i'm sometimes trying to explain. Thanks to my insight i often see that even some things which from the point of view of user looks like totally trivial stuff for 5 minutes of work, it can actually lead to weeks of development - or months - good example is this discussion in thread abouve, where i explained why adding of some, at first look trivial feature, would need HUGE amount of development, which would for months postpone any other request of other users.
If you're interesed, read it here: https://www.blipinteractive.co.uk/community/index.php?p=/discussion/comment/4416/#Comment_4416
Not saying that topic we discuss here is same case - actually i have no idea how much work it needs, i just know it is on todo list.
But one of most important things i learned during beta is to not make assumptions that something is easy to add- because in most cases i was terribly wrong and i just wasted Matt's time when he had to explain me all consequences of my "minor" request ..
Hope i explained enough clearly my intention (and +/- intention of other people "with insight" here). You're always welcome here with all kinds of ideas and requests.
@dendy Thank you very much! As I mentioned (“my las post on the subject”) I had nothing to add to this particular issue, but you deserve at least a reply for taking the time to answer is such detail.
Believe it or not, I consider all the features you mention of high importance, yes, even the AUFx per Slate pad
I knew the app was not ready yet with all planned features (audio tracks as an example). At this moment I was just looking for a good MIDI sequencer for AU apps. I’m an Auria Pro power user and I have audio stuff pretty much covered with it, but Auria Pro development seems to have stopped and simple maintenance fixes are taking months to be corrected so I’m open to switch to a new platform (hopefully NS2 some day?).
Again, thank ypu very much for your support.
Auria Pro is a good example of an app that launched with certain features and then others were added later. It had Audio Tracks but no MIDI sequencing. NS2 has MIDI sequencing but not Audio Tracks. Look at the history of Desktop DAW and it is the same. Features take time to develop and are added... over time.
Hi, I’m here again after reinstalling NS2 to check the last 2.0.1 update and see if the sustain pedal issue was finally fixed.
I would like to thank @drez who was kind enough to let me know about the update on the Audiobus forum.
This is approximately what I posted there, but I’m posting it here too since I believe this is ultimately the right place.
After testing sustain pedal with some piano apps I found that for some reason polyphony (with sustain pedal pressed) seems to be limited by NS2 to about 32 notes in most AUs, which maybe ok for most simple sounds but very insufficient for playing real piano.
I tested Ravenscroft 275, Colossus (apps that can handle at least 100 notes of polyphony) and also Bs-16i, BeatHawk (with Acoustic Grand IAP) and the result is the same, at approximately 32 notes it runs out of polyphony, which is very noticeably when you play some passages with repetitive chords or long legato arpeggios.
I also tested Neo-Soul Keys Studio (my favorite electric piano app) and sustain pedal just doesn’t work well, it seems very buggy and hard to explain what happens. Just try loading the app and throw some chords and you’ll see what I mean. It’s like once you play a note with sustain pedal, the same note won’t play again if pressed until you release the sustain.
I looked at the NS2 settings but didn’t find anything related to AU polyphony limitation, so I’m afraid there’s some kind of restriction in the implementation (and a specific bug with Neo-Soul Keys Studio).
I kindly suggest that a pianist is included in the beta team, since something like this could have been easily found before releasing the update.
Hope you guys can convince the dev to fix this soon, otherwise I’m afraid it can take months until it’s corrected, but in any case I guess NS2 is not for me...
Someone suggested I put together a video demonstrating the issue. I will try to find some time later tonight or maybe tomorrow to make a short video, but in any case, the Neo-Soul Keys Studio issue with sustain pedal can be easily checked by anybody that owns the app, and the polyphony issue can be checked just pressing the pedal and playing a repetitive 4 notes chord with both hands (8 notes in total), you’ll hear that after the 4th repetition (4x2x4=32) it stops working properly.
Well, not much to add, as I mentioned in previous comments, NS2 is an incredible app, unfortunately this sustain pedal issue has turned to be something more complicated than I originally thought.
Rodolfo
Bah, I thought I'd sorted this. I've just had a look into it and you're correct with your guess of the 32 note limit, probably borne of my lazy assumption that the majority of AU instruments usually don't have a higher polyphony than this.
I'm sure it's easily fixed - I'll wait a little while to see if any other small issues have crept in with the new features and round them up into a mini-update before I get cracking on the iPhone.
@Rodolfo - If I think I've come up with a good solution then I'll message you and get you on TestFlight so you can try it out for yourself. I do actually have a piano but would hardly consider myself proficient. Actually I've got a few synths, some V-Drums and a 30 year old knackered electric guitar and I'd say the same about my abilities with all of those too.
@Blip Interactive said:
Bah, I thought I'd sorted this. I've just had a look into it and you're correct with your guess of the 32 note limit, probably borne of my lazy assumption that the majority of AU instruments usually don't have a higher polyphony than this.
I'm sure it's easily fixed - I'll wait a little while to see if any other small issues have crept in with the new features and round them up into a mini-update before I get cracking on the iPhone.
Thank you very much for your quick answer, I understand that for most users this is not even a concern, but as you can imagine this is vital for any pianist since sustain pedal is part of the instrument expression and a polyphony of 100 is easily reached in some genres.
Regarding Neo-Soul Keys Studio I suspect that maybe there’s something specific on the app side that in the interaction with NS2 causes this weird behavior, it would be great if you can take a look also at this issue since it’s not happening on other hosts.
Thanks again and congrats for you hard work, NS2 is really impressive.
@Blip Interactive said: @Rodolfo - If I think I've come up with a good solution then I'll message you and get you on TestFlight so you can try it out for yourself. I do actually have a piano but would hardly consider myself proficient. Actually I've got a few synths, some V-Drums and a 30 year old knackered electric guitar and I'd say the same about my abilities with all of those too.
Sure! No problem, Just let me know and I’ll test it with my keyboards.
Thank you for your support.
@Blip Interactive said: @Rodolfo - If I think I've come up with a good solution then I'll message you and get you on TestFlight so you can try it out for yourself. I do actually have a piano but would hardly consider myself proficient. Actually I've got a few synths, some V-Drums and a 30 year old knackered electric guitar and I'd say the same about my abilities with all of those too.
Sure! No problem, Just let me know and I’ll test it with my keyboards.
Thank you for your support.
Well, today I noticed that there was an updated version so I downloaded NS2 again and tested the sustain pedal behavior.
The polyphony for AU plugins was clearly improved and seems not to be a problem now, but unfortunately, I have bad news for you (well, for me actually...) since it still doesn’t work as a sustain pedal which makes it unusable, at least for a piano player.
After several tests in which I experienced a lot of cut notes and weird sounding pianos I decided to record a performance to better analyze what the problem was and when I looked at the recorded MIDI notes I immediately noticed the problem.
The issue is that NS2 is still blocking CC64 and not passing it through to the AU plugin, instead, it’s “faking” the pedal behavior by extending the notes until pedal is released. This seems to be a clever workaround at first sight, but it causes a number of serious issues depending on the performance and the plugin used:
1-It is almost impossible to later edit MIDI notes when the same note is repeatedly played while sustain pedal is ON, since the result will be just a bunch of long overlapped notes. Just think of a simple song like “Stay” by Rihana, where the sustain pedal is ON while Am and C chords are played repeatedly with the right hand. You’ll get a set of long overlapped notes across several measures, virtually impossible to edit after recorded.
2-Some AU Piano plugins (such as Neo-Soul Keys Studio) do not accept overlapped notes (or the same note ON message before a note OFF message is received) so that’s the reason it still doesn’t work well with NS2. If you play a chord and press the sustain pedal, then if you play the same chord again it will not trigger any sound until you release the pedal (This doesn’t happen in any other host).
3-Some other AU Piano plugins (most of them) will sound “weird” when the same note is played twice (or more times) while the sustain pedal is ON, you can hear some phasing issues probably due to cancelling/summing phases of the sample played depending on the timing of played notes.
4-Some plugins will respond cutting notes when receiving overlapped notes, sometimes cutting the last one played and therefore cutting the sound even with the sustain pedal ON.
Conclusion:
-Sustain Pedal will never work as it should unless the basic implementation is fixed in NS2.
-MIDI note ON/OFF events should be recorded exactly as they are played and CC64 should be passed through to the AU plugin (and recorded as any other controller for eventual editing).
NanoStudio filters all CC messages (and MIDI channel info) sent to AUs. That makes using some AUs a big pain and appears to be the same issue here. Hopefully that restriction can be lifted at some point, but some comments from dendy made it seem like that might be a pretty serious change.
I’ve posted some MOZAIC scripts to give editable sustain control on NanoStudio2 by mapping to a note number - Sustain Toolkit for iOS MIDI Apps (iOS Mozaic Scripts) Scripts on patchstorage.com.
The soundtrack in the demo video is NS2 hosting VirSyn AudioLayer playing a free ESX24 piano sample from pianobook.co.uk. Hope you find this useful.
@AndyHoneybone said:
I’ve posted some MOZAIC scripts to give editable sustain control on NanoStudio2 by mapping to a note number - Sustain Toolkit for iOS MIDI Apps (iOS Mozaic Scripts) Scripts on patchstorage.com.
The soundtrack in the demo video is NS2 hosting VirSyn AudioLayer playing a free ESX24 piano sample from pianobook.co.uk. Hope you find this useful.
This looks very cool! Sorry for being a little dense, but how does this differ from how NS is handling it now? As I understand it NS does extend the notes when there's sustain pedal input but there were some issues with how that's accomplished. What does this script do differently?
Comments
I REALLY REALLY REALLY, for the life of me, can not understand why this app does not support use of a sustain pedal. Personally I find it inexcusable, especially being that we cant use one when using audio unit apps like Neo Soul keys studio or when using a piano sound. Just....wow. I am about to delete it from my Ipad until I can use a sustain pedal with it. It's a great app but no, I have to put it on the back burner until it support a sustain pedal. But how in the world was that not implemented ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
@Heated You just need understand that for many other people is this completely unimportant useless festure
There cannot be implemented everything at once..
It's definitely on todolist, so sooner or later it will be added.
If you actually played piano youd see how important it is to a lot of people. I have a ton of IOS Daws, Auria Pro, Cubasis, Garageband, ModStep, BeatHawk, FL Studio, Beatmaker 3, Gadget , Caustic and the list goes on, and they all support sustain pedals, I cant even begin to list all the IOS synths and keyboard apps I own, they all support it. Every desktop Daw Ive ever used support sustain pedals. Nanostudio is the only Daw I have ever come across that doesnt. I challenge you to name another Daw that doesnt support the use of a sustain pedal. Every midi keyboard controller has a input for a sustain pedal. Its been how many years in the making of this app? Yes, there was time to implement it.
Again, this is the only IOS Daw I know of that doesnt support a sustain pedal, so it kinda isnt a useless and completely useless feature.
Sorry i didn't wanted to make you angry, just pointed that there is lot of users with complete different priorities so we just need to be patient ...
I very much understand that for piano player it is crucial feature - that’s why it really is on todo list.
It will be definitely added, although not ETA for now.
I just got the app and after a few minutes of exploring it I had to come to this forum looking for help since I was strugling to make my sustain pedal to work with any AU synth.
After reading your explanation I must admit that I am completely disappointed. There’s no single DAW in the market (even in IOS) that doesn’t support sustain pedal and mod-wheel, it’s something absolutely basic since at least three decades ago. I understand that maybe Obsidian in particular may not support it, but there’s no way I can use the app to record my piano or synth performance if these two basic features are not supported. I’m a piano player and the lack of a sustain pedal it’s equivalent to try to record my songs playing with a toy piano.
Please I kindly ask you that you seriously reconsider your decision and implement both features (sustain pedal and mod wheel) in the next upcoming update. I wouln’t have purchased the app if I had known this, but I was not even remotely concerned as I gave it for granted (actually, it just didn’t cross my mind).
It’s an amazing app, beautifully designed, rock solid even with some misbehaving external plugins, but this omission makes it useless for me (and I guess that for any self respected keyboard player).
Thank you for your support and understanding.
For what it is worth, Sustainpedal and mod wheel support are absolutely crucial for me too. Even though I always tell people to read the app descriptions carefully before purchase, to avoid unhappiness and the inevitable follow-up complaints, which isn't good/fun for anyone, I too have to admit I didn't look for those specific features before purchase because they are so common they are assumed, just like the standard controls of a car are in the car you wish to purchase, so you basically look at "the other" features.
Controller mod wheels are supported. They’re mapped to knob 1 by default. The in-app keyboard does not have a mod wheel but that has no effect on your external keyboard. A mod wheel is just an encoder that’s hard-wired to send CC1.
(Response edited for clarity)
Thank you very much for your answer!
I apologize if I’m doing something wrong, but it doesn’t seem to work “by default” as you mention.
I’ll give you an concrete example:
-Standalone app, Moog Model 15, factory patch “Pad Brownout”, modwheel from my keyboard works as expected
-Same app, same patch, loaded in NS2: it doesn’t respond to modwheel at all. If MIDI Learn is used to map mod-wheel to knob 1 then “904A Regeneration” parameter is mapped, which is not precisely what mod-wheel is doing in that particular patch in Model 15 (it goes through a 995 attenuator first and then combined with other signals).
I tried to remap it using the Macro Tools, but a limited number of arbitrary parameters are exposed and I find no way of adding a new parameter to that list.
The key question is:
Is there any way to “MIDI Learn” mod-wheel (or CC64 for sustain pedal, or any other CC) in any way so the MiDI CC message is just passed through to the app to the same CC and NOT remapped to those arbitrary AU parameters?
In other words, is it possible to send any CC to the AU app and let the app itself decide what to do with that CC message and not interfere/remap with that arbitrary list of AU parameters?
If this is possible then my previous message should be deleted from the thread and I should truly apologize for jumping into wrong conclusions. I understood from previous messages that mod-wheel and sustain are “not supported” and I honestly could not manage to make them work as expected or as in other DAWs.
No, this is not possible at the moment, but sustain pedal support is definitely planned, also modwheel support...
Thank you very much for your answer.
Just a suggestion for the developer: instead of restricting CCs from an external keyboard/controller to an arbitrary list of AU parameters, a simple “pass through” could be added as a mapping option in the Macro Tools. This would easily solve in advance any other potential issues like the sustain/modwheel support or AU apps that do not provide a list of “main parameters”.
Interesting idea ... what is situation in other daws ? Are they passing all MIDI CC into AU plugin ? I always thouht that they just domthis with pitchmod, modwheel and sustain
To my understanding, which could be wrong, exactly what AU parameters are exposed by any specific app is up to the developer of the hosted app. However, the host should ideally be able to pick up any AU parameter a hosted app has exposed.
I would probably say AUM is the school book example of how AU parameters in hosted app should be picked up, and developers like Bram Bos et al always sing the praise of AUM's capabilities when it comes to AU's.
As for midi parameters being passed on, to my understanding all midi messages on a given channel will be passed along to the hosted app. Ideally it should also be possible to record those cc's in the host.
As for other situation with other DAWs it has been a bit of hit and miss, but most of them have worked it in there, as it isn't feasible for someone to load say Ravenscroft Piano as an AU and not have access to things like sustain, as it pretty much renders it unusable (for pianists at least). I have never had to actually map the ones you mention though (pitchbend, modwheel and sustain, and quite often aftertouch too) so I'm guessing clever defaults might have been incorporated too, as they always are on the same midi cc's in all apps that support them.
Just to test I tried out a couple of hosts, loading in BS16i as an AU with a Grand Piano into the following hosts (which are the ones I currently happen to have installed): Auria, Cubasis, MultitrackStudio, Stagelight, ModStep and finally midiSTEPs.
All of them had pitchbend, modwheel and sustain mapped per default. All except for ModStep and midiSTEPs also had aftertouch mapped.
Yes, that's my understanding too.
This is possible with "External MIDI" instrument in Nanostudio - which is mentioned to control other instruments both inside iPad (standalone Apps) and external (HW synths) - that is purpose if this instrument - you can record and automate ALL CC's directly, not just those assigned to macro knobs (if you look inside pattern on track which is using "External MIDI" instrument - you see list of all CC automations available there)
So way around, until sustain/modwheel would be implemented directly to AU instrument, is to use standalone version of AU instrument (lot of them can usually run also Stanalone not just as AU plugin) and control it from Nanostudio using "Eternal MIDI" instrument - this way you can automate all CCs and send them to that instrument
In default setting of "External MIDI" instrument is macro knob 1 set to "Mod Wheel". Just add also "Sustain" cc to other Macro knob, then point it to any exteral instrument (you can run Ravenscroft or iSymphonic even as standalone app not just AUv3) and you're done - both mod wheel and sustain works like a breeze and you can even record them in Nanostudio
I know, it's not that cofortable like having them as AU, and you don't get audio back to NS.. so it's really more for just live playing (which is probably what keyboardists do in first place ?
)
Yeah those are obvious. As i said, modwheel and sustain are definitely in todolist. Pitchbend already works.
That would definitely be ideal for external controllers, but the list of AU parameters is, in my opinion at least for now for now, the best way of handling the situation within the app when not using an external controller. Of course, the mod wheel and sustain pedal are "special cases" and should be treated as such. I'm pretty sure these problems will go away in future updates.
With all my respect, you are not helping the Dev with this type of comment. You don’t need to defend it at all costs, a simple acknowledge of a wrong implementation and a future fix would be more than enough.
Mod-wheel and sustain pedal are not “special cases” at all. They are a standard in ANY DAW, the special case is what has been implemented in NS2 with a very particular and personal criteria.
Hope this issue will be solved some day soon (and not in years) so I can finally use the app. It’s a great and beautiful app in many aspects, except for a basic and standard missing feature like this one.
A> @Rodolfo said:
Ok, I’m sorry if I came across as rude, that was definitely not my intention. I have to admit that I’ve read my post a couple of times and still don’t understand how I have offended you. If you want to help me understand, I’m very willing to listen.
I’ll try to clarify my earlier post a bit:
The mod wheel and sustain pedal are special cases in the midi implementation because they are always the same CCs and many AUs don’t allow them to be mapped to NS2’s performance controls. This is why these CCs should be passed through to the AU, at least as an option.
What I was trying to explain with this ”the list of AU parameters is, in my opinion at least for now for now, the best way of handling the situation within the app when not using an external controller” was that the NS2 performance controls are a necessary layer between NS2 and an AU instrument because at the moment, there is no way to directly automate the AU controls themselves, they have to be assigned to performance controls. It may be possible in the future, I don’t have a clue what Matt’s long term plans are.
Most people agree that Sustain Pedal support would be nice.
I think it is uderstandable that Sustain pedal support would be missing at initial launch of the app with the assumption that a mobile app would not normally be attached to controllers & pedals as often as just being used on the go or on the couch. Yes, some people are using iPads as laptop replacements and they are generally connected to a larger amount of interfaces, controllers, etc. However I’ll bet that the majority of iOS music producers don’t use a sustain pedal. So, when corners have to be cut so that an app can be released sooner, that seems like a logical one to me.
Granted, there will be a few people for whom music cannot be created without a sustain pedal. Understandable. Sustain pedal is on the To Do list and will be implemented. Same with a lot of other features. In the meantime, stiksi & dendy are suggesting some work-arounds that may be useful while waiting for sustain pedal implementation. I find their posts to be helpful. I’m glad they don’t just take the easy route and ignore threads & posts or simply don’t bother to reply.
You were not rude, and I’m not offended at all. I’m sorry if that was understood from my previous post. English is not my first language and sometimes I find it difficult to properly express complex ideas. Actually, I was trying to be kind (that’s why I started with “with all my respect”) as I was in some way critizising your position here. Sorry again.
The reason behind my comment is that I’ve been browsing this forum (and other forums too) and I found that there’s a group of people like you (moderators? Beta testers?) that seem to have some insight or communication with the Dev and defend NS2 at all costs and try to convince people that their requests or complains are wrong or at least not so important.
In my humble opinion this is a mistake and it’s not helping the Dev realize that there are a number of important misses in NS2 implementation. It’s better to say “yes, we missed this feature during beta tests, sorry, we’ll try to advice the dev to fix/implement it as soon as possible” than making statements like if NS2 has the best implementation in the market (I could transcribe here a lot of bold statements I found but that would not help at all either).
This particular issue is a big miss, believe me. It’s evident that there was no keyboardist or piano player in the beta team, otherwise this would not have happened. Additionally, it could be easily and quickly fixed with a minor maintenance update (as most devs do) since the code for the CC pass-through is already there in the app (just as the the way external MIDI track work).
Anyway, this is my last post on the subject, since I’m not helping either.
Hope it can be fixed soon, since there’s no workaround possible in this particular case.
As I mentioned before this is a great app in many aspects. I had high hopes and was very excited to produce my music with such a nice interface and a rock solid app. Unfortunately I’ll have to wait, but I’m afraid that considering the long development times involved and the dev’s reluctance to post frequent maintenance updates this will not be any time soon...
Thank you @Stiksi and @dendy for taking the time to answer, if it wasn’t for you guys, I would be still trying to find a fix for this as nobody in other forums seemed to know anything on the subject.
Ok, thanks for taking the time!
@Rodolfo
Thanks for you reply, it was interesting reading also for me. I will add few my comments..
This is obviously my case too, and be sure you'r english is better than mine
)) So i pretty much understand that what i wrote may sound for some people completely different than i originally mentioned it. That's language issue, another issue is forum communication at all, where except of emoticons you have no way to express you real feelings. This is source of many misunderstandings.
That would be actually pity because true keyboardist can bring pretty interesting opinions and point of view, especially because - how you correctly pointed - there was no experienced keyboardist in beta team. So all your opinions and viewpoints are very welcome here, and can push things forward to make NS even better !
I'm very aware that for few people it looks like this. Believe me, this is not the case at all ! Actually we are flooding Matt with out own requests in our internal communication pretty much too (especially me). Matt is checking this forum, every single thread, even through he is not so active by replying on everything - but don't make mistake - every single request is written on his super long request list and he is trying do his best to satisfy as much users as possible.
We all here are very diverse community. There are keyboardist like you ... there are people who are strongly into sample based workflow - sample slicing, mangling, effecting, people often with hiphop / MPC background .. there are sound designers and people with synths as their main tools for expressing their creative ideas and who use advanced production techniques when creating sonically very complex track structures. We are different. Different people, different needs. From different countries, with different cultural and social background, with different understanding what is joke and what is dead serious.
Every single one have own set of crucial features. And very often features totally crucial in one group of users, are totally not important in other group. There were for example people, who very strictly demanded possibility to apply individual AUfx effects for every Slate pad - it was totally crucial for them. I guess this is far away from importance for you :-). But for them it had same importance like sustain pedal support for you.
And that's my point - this is only one thing which i'm sometimes trying to explain (at beginning i was doing this more often but after few people from one specific community didn't get my intentions properly and starter to be mad on me, they still are, i'm trying to limit this approach. But i still do it sometimes). I'm not trying to defend anybody. Nobody from beta team is trying to do this. That's very deep misunderstanding.
- i'm just trying to learn people understand some more wide consequences, if i see they are too much locked in their own point of view.. I was even teacher on university some time in my past, because this is simply my obsession 
Problem is that i'm "teacher" type of guy. Even through it not looks based on my profile photo
If somebody is demanding some feature like 'totaly crucial and without this is NS useless' i'm just trying to a little bit cool down his anger and show him different point of view. I really don't think about any requested feature here, that it is not important for that particular user. I very much understand how crucial is sustain pedal for you, same way how i understand how crucial is per pad AUfx in Slate and chromaticall playability of pads for people with sampling background, or how important is posibility of move track automations together with clips for people like @drez who are working on tracks with a brutal amount of automations. Or people who cannot use NS at all without audio tracks availability - it's totaly most important feature for them.
I'm just trying to explain that we all needs to be patient and we all needs to respect requests and point of views of other users. That's all what i'm trying to do. In most cases not because of Matt (he is mature man and can sort all things for himself), but because i saw many times on other forums users fighting between just because "crucial" feature for one was "nonsense" for other. This actually already hapend also on this forum, user @flockz can tell you how some other users were angry on him just because he requested some for him very crucial feature. That was not nice.
So we all need respect different opinions of other users in first place - even (or exatly when) we disagree with them.
Yes, back to beginning of this tread - sustain and modwheel are definitely on list with high importance. They are on todo list.
This is another thing which i'm sometimes trying to explain. Thanks to my insight i often see that even some things which from the point of view of user looks like totally trivial stuff for 5 minutes of work, it can actually lead to weeks of development - or months - good example is this discussion in thread abouve, where i explained why adding of some, at first look trivial feature, would need HUGE amount of development, which would for months postpone any other request of other users.
If you're interesed, read it here: https://www.blipinteractive.co.uk/community/index.php?p=/discussion/comment/4416/#Comment_4416
Not saying that topic we discuss here is same case - actually i have no idea how much work it needs, i just know it is on todo list.
But one of most important things i learned during beta is to not make assumptions that something is easy to add- because in most cases i was terribly wrong and i just wasted Matt's time when he had to explain me all consequences of my "minor" request ..
Hope i explained enough clearly my intention (and +/- intention of other people "with insight" here). You're always welcome here with all kinds of ideas and requests.
@dendy Thank you very much! As I mentioned (“my las post on the subject”) I had nothing to add to this particular issue, but you deserve at least a reply for taking the time to answer is such detail.
Believe it or not, I consider all the features you mention of high importance, yes, even the AUFx per Slate pad
I knew the app was not ready yet with all planned features (audio tracks as an example). At this moment I was just looking for a good MIDI sequencer for AU apps. I’m an Auria Pro power user and I have audio stuff pretty much covered with it, but Auria Pro development seems to have stopped and simple maintenance fixes are taking months to be corrected so I’m open to switch to a new platform (hopefully NS2 some day?).
Again, thank ypu very much for your support.
Auria Pro is a good example of an app that launched with certain features and then others were added later. It had Audio Tracks but no MIDI sequencing. NS2 has MIDI sequencing but not Audio Tracks. Look at the history of Desktop DAW and it is the same. Features take time to develop and are added... over time.
Hi, I’m here again after reinstalling NS2 to check the last 2.0.1 update and see if the sustain pedal issue was finally fixed.
I would like to thank @drez who was kind enough to let me know about the update on the Audiobus forum.
This is approximately what I posted there, but I’m posting it here too since I believe this is ultimately the right place.
After testing sustain pedal with some piano apps I found that for some reason polyphony (with sustain pedal pressed) seems to be limited by NS2 to about 32 notes in most AUs, which maybe ok for most simple sounds but very insufficient for playing real piano.
I tested Ravenscroft 275, Colossus (apps that can handle at least 100 notes of polyphony) and also Bs-16i, BeatHawk (with Acoustic Grand IAP) and the result is the same, at approximately 32 notes it runs out of polyphony, which is very noticeably when you play some passages with repetitive chords or long legato arpeggios.
I also tested Neo-Soul Keys Studio (my favorite electric piano app) and sustain pedal just doesn’t work well, it seems very buggy and hard to explain what happens. Just try loading the app and throw some chords and you’ll see what I mean. It’s like once you play a note with sustain pedal, the same note won’t play again if pressed until you release the sustain.
I looked at the NS2 settings but didn’t find anything related to AU polyphony limitation, so I’m afraid there’s some kind of restriction in the implementation (and a specific bug with Neo-Soul Keys Studio).
I kindly suggest that a pianist is included in the beta team, since something like this could have been easily found before releasing the update.
Hope you guys can convince the dev to fix this soon, otherwise I’m afraid it can take months until it’s corrected, but in any case I guess NS2 is not for me...
Someone suggested I put together a video demonstrating the issue. I will try to find some time later tonight or maybe tomorrow to make a short video, but in any case, the Neo-Soul Keys Studio issue with sustain pedal can be easily checked by anybody that owns the app, and the polyphony issue can be checked just pressing the pedal and playing a repetitive 4 notes chord with both hands (8 notes in total), you’ll hear that after the 4th repetition (4x2x4=32) it stops working properly.
Well, not much to add, as I mentioned in previous comments, NS2 is an incredible app, unfortunately this sustain pedal issue has turned to be something more complicated than I originally thought.
Rodolfo
Bah, I thought I'd sorted this. I've just had a look into it and you're correct with your guess of the 32 note limit, probably borne of my lazy assumption that the majority of AU instruments usually don't have a higher polyphony than this.
I'm sure it's easily fixed - I'll wait a little while to see if any other small issues have crept in with the new features and round them up into a mini-update before I get cracking on the iPhone.
@Rodolfo - If I think I've come up with a good solution then I'll message you and get you on TestFlight so you can try it out for yourself. I do actually have a piano but would hardly consider myself proficient. Actually I've got a few synths, some V-Drums and a 30 year old knackered electric guitar and I'd say the same about my abilities with all of those too.
Thank you very much for your quick answer, I understand that for most users this is not even a concern, but as you can imagine this is vital for any pianist since sustain pedal is part of the instrument expression and a polyphony of 100 is easily reached in some genres.
Regarding Neo-Soul Keys Studio I suspect that maybe there’s something specific on the app side that in the interaction with NS2 causes this weird behavior, it would be great if you can take a look also at this issue since it’s not happening on other hosts.
Thanks again and congrats for you hard work, NS2 is really impressive.
Sure! No problem, Just let me know and I’ll test it with my keyboards.
Thank you for your support.
Well, today I noticed that there was an updated version so I downloaded NS2 again and tested the sustain pedal behavior.
The polyphony for AU plugins was clearly improved and seems not to be a problem now, but unfortunately, I have bad news for you (well, for me actually...) since it still doesn’t work as a sustain pedal which makes it unusable, at least for a piano player.
After several tests in which I experienced a lot of cut notes and weird sounding pianos I decided to record a performance to better analyze what the problem was and when I looked at the recorded MIDI notes I immediately noticed the problem.
The issue is that NS2 is still blocking CC64 and not passing it through to the AU plugin, instead, it’s “faking” the pedal behavior by extending the notes until pedal is released. This seems to be a clever workaround at first sight, but it causes a number of serious issues depending on the performance and the plugin used:
1-It is almost impossible to later edit MIDI notes when the same note is repeatedly played while sustain pedal is ON, since the result will be just a bunch of long overlapped notes. Just think of a simple song like “Stay” by Rihana, where the sustain pedal is ON while Am and C chords are played repeatedly with the right hand. You’ll get a set of long overlapped notes across several measures, virtually impossible to edit after recorded.
2-Some AU Piano plugins (such as Neo-Soul Keys Studio) do not accept overlapped notes (or the same note ON message before a note OFF message is received) so that’s the reason it still doesn’t work well with NS2. If you play a chord and press the sustain pedal, then if you play the same chord again it will not trigger any sound until you release the pedal (This doesn’t happen in any other host).
3-Some other AU Piano plugins (most of them) will sound “weird” when the same note is played twice (or more times) while the sustain pedal is ON, you can hear some phasing issues probably due to cancelling/summing phases of the sample played depending on the timing of played notes.
4-Some plugins will respond cutting notes when receiving overlapped notes, sometimes cutting the last one played and therefore cutting the sound even with the sustain pedal ON.
Conclusion:
-Sustain Pedal will never work as it should unless the basic implementation is fixed in NS2.
-MIDI note ON/OFF events should be recorded exactly as they are played and CC64 should be passed through to the AU plugin (and recorded as any other controller for eventual editing).
Hope this helps clarify the issue.
NanoStudio filters all CC messages (and MIDI channel info) sent to AUs. That makes using some AUs a big pain and appears to be the same issue here. Hopefully that restriction can be lifted at some point, but some comments from dendy made it seem like that might be a pretty serious change.
I’ve posted some MOZAIC scripts to give editable sustain control on NanoStudio2 by mapping to a note number - Sustain Toolkit for iOS MIDI Apps (iOS Mozaic Scripts)
Scripts on patchstorage.com.
The soundtrack in the demo video is NS2 hosting VirSyn AudioLayer playing a free ESX24 piano sample from pianobook.co.uk. Hope you find this useful.
This looks very cool! Sorry for being a little dense, but how does this differ from how NS is handling it now? As I understand it NS does extend the notes when there's sustain pedal input but there were some issues with how that's accomplished. What does this script do differently?