chokes & dies with MIDI buffer overload
  • smrlsmrl

    I know I’m messing around with an extreme case, but I noticed if you send the shruti-1 too much MIDI too fast it will just hang and require a restart…

    I’m sequencing via a bend matrix, just playing around, and the MIDI output can get pretty insanely dense if you want. I was getting some really great interesting stuff but I really have to watch it because settings I make will be trashed if I have to restart…

    Having lots of fun, though, destroying video and sequencing the shruti with the same data…

  • pichenettespichenettes

    Ahah! Someone else reported a crash and I suspected MIDI overload…

    I will try to reproduce this bug tonight – if I can reproduce it I’ll immediately fix – so you won’t have to worry about it anymore.

    Is there any procedure that works particularly well at crashing it? Does it happen with a specific message type only (CC? NRPN?) or can it also happen with notes (just to rule out a NRPN controller writing random crap in RAM).

  • smrlsmrl

    It’s sending both clock and note data, but ONLY that. It happens when the MIDI data is really fast. What I could do, if you wanted to reproduce it, is record some of the MIDI coming out of my bend matrix in a sequencer and send you a file that should make your synth puke too… ? helpful?

  • pichenettespichenettes

    Deal.
    You send me a .mid that triggers a problem.
    I send you back a .mid that solves it!

  • smrlsmrl

    OK. having a little trouble recording the MIDI. Playing around with the behavior though. It also crashes when it’s only note-on data. And it seems to only crash when I have greater than some critical number of notes currently on… Seems like it has to be tracking at least 10-20 notes on before it dies…

    If I had to take a guess it’s whatever data structure, a stack or however it’s implemented, used for the voice-stealing stuff. But then I didn’t code this thing…

  • smrlsmrl

    so this should do it. Actually I take back what I said just now. It seems that I can have a dense pattern with lots of held notes, it’s when it goes above a certain rate that it bombs. You’ll notice I left a little dense stuff in the beginning, mine runs for a little while until the tempo of teh pattern increases

    anyway here you go

  • smrlsmrl

    just to reiterate though: it is an extreme case. !!

  • pichenettespichenettes

    Will have a look at it tonight…

  • pichenettespichenettes

    Ok, reproduced the crash! having a way of consistently reproducing a bug is 50% of the work in fixing it!

  • pichenettespichenettes

    It’s actually both: the high rate makes the sequencer/generator drop notes, so we have note ons without matching note offs and there’s a very rare case where it triggers a thing that makes the notes linked list bites its tail (and a never ending loop). Fixing…

  • pichenettespichenettes

    Fixed…

    The Shruti-1 firmware was not emptying the MIDI buffer fast enough so it overflowed and some bytes from the MIDI stream were dropped. As a result, a 0x00 byte from a velocity message or pitch bend message ended up in the position of a note off message, so the voice (stealing) controller tried to remove a note 0 from the data structure storing the keys being pressed. Note 0 had a special meaning in my code – it meant “free slot”, so a free slot was unlinked from the data structure, which caused in some cases circular links. And an infinite loop in the code traversing the structure.

    Fix: use “note == 0xff” as a special code for identifying free slots in the structure. Also increased serial input buffer size to avoid dropping too much stuff…

  • pichenettespichenettes

    As an apology for such a nasty bug, you’ll have a new waveform :D

  • altitudealtitude

    Damn Oliver, Nice bug fix schedule.. * CommentTime1 hour ago (reproduced the crash) * CommentTime37 minutes ago * CommentTime10 minutes ago (Fixed…)

  • smrlsmrl

    yeah… truly amazing! now I’ve got to get my bend matrix firmware updated so I can assign whatever note I want to each button…
    exciting exciting

  • pichenettespichenettes

    I’ll post the update tonight after more tests… at the very beginning the code cross-compiled on OS X/linux and I had unit tests for most of the classes, but I dropped that – I should have kept the testing harness alive… If I had a way of creating test cases with simavr, I would do it.

    The new waveform is a stack of 4 detuned sawtooth waves. Obviously, doing that in the tight space of one oscillator means not using all the anti-aliased wavetable stuff for the saw. So I would not call that a supersaw… But played in the low range it sounds quite fat – the good point being that it can be doubled at the octave or fifth by a PWM’ed sawtooth on the second oscillator, and it sounds quite ambient’y…

  • glitchedglitched

    I agree; kudos to you, pichenettes! I love how involved and attentive you are! Bugfixes, new features…just like that!
    My mouth is watering just thinking about the new oscillators.

  • pichenettespichenettes

    Wanna try the fix and the new waveform?

    http://mutable-instruments.net/static/firmware/

    That’s the 0.55b file…

  • smrlsmrl

    OK. I’ve uploaded 0.55b and I can happily report that the craziest MIDI I can pump out of the Bend Matrix no longer crashes the Shruti! Thanks!!!

    which is great, because i’m incidentally working on a performance I’ve got next tuesday, involving bend matrix annihalating video with a bent video processor, sequencing an atari synthcart (generating sound and video), and sending MIDI to the Shruti-1 for a 2nd voice. Hope to record the performance and share with y’all

  • roschrosch

    yes, that would be great!

  • glitchedglitched

    Yeah, we need some details of this “bend matrix”.

  • smrlsmrl

    http://4mspedals.com/bendmatrix.php

    It’s one of these, except I’ve modified mine to have two MT-8816 crosspoint switches controlled through the single interface. DB-25 outputs on the back accept connections to various circuit-bent/sequencable pieces of mine (currently, 2 video processors, SK1, and atari)...

    It’s also got 1/4”, 1/8”, RCA, BNC, and banana plug connectors…

  • smrlsmrl

    That one’s mine…

  • glitchedglitched

    That’s mighty perdy, sir. Mighty perdy.
    Never heard of this bend matrix, but it’s a bender’s dream. The things it does to video is amazing! Thanks for introducing this to me.

Add a Comment