Ardour 3 Beta 1 - system MIDI input problem

Hi everybody,

I have a strange problem here. When I start Ardour normally and then add a MIDI track, I don’t see system midi inputs in the channel input menu, so I can’t record anything from my MIDI keyboard attached to external audio device. Only solution I found yet is starting JackOSX first via JackPilot with midi enabled, and then start Ardour. In this case MIDI is working, but when I play something trough virtual instrument (AU), there are many glitches, errors and it seems, that it only register up to 5 or 6 notes played at once. In one word it is unplayable. And for addition, when I then try to remove any MIDI track (with JackOSX started manually with midi enabled) in my project, Ardour freezes and crashes. I assume this would be an issue of JackOSX, but I would really need that to get it work. So if you know any solution, I’ll much appreciate that. Thanks

you should not discuss problems with ardour3 betas on the forums. irc is your friend. this has been said many many times… you also should have seen this on the first screen appearing when you were opening ardour.

to your question:

the problem you describe is fully explained by paul in the forum topic that has the download in it. read here:

http://ardour.org/node/4658

especially the part under important osx notes…

ok the problem is not FULLY covered in pauls post…

Yes, it is not. Reason why I’m posting to the forum is, that when I ask something on irc, I usually don’t get answer in next minutes, and I can’t afford to wait hours there (afaik freenode does’t have a history log, if I’m wrong let me know). So for me the thing is, that on forum I’ll get answer and on the irc not, so that’s why I am asking here. But probably I’m writing to wrong topic, in that case I apologize.

So back to the topic. Of course I’ve read all Pauls post before asking, several times. The reason I asked was, that I’ve been trying to find a solution myself for many days, unsuccessfully.

So my first problem is, that when I get to the state, that Ardour receives midi input from my master keyboard, it seems that Ardour just don receive everything, only a part of the signals or something. Because of that there are many glitches and freezes, so the virtual instruments are unplayable. When I play slowly single notes it works, but when I try something more complicated like piano, midi is getting totally mess.

Second problem is, that when I have midi enabled in Jack, start Ardour, add MIDI track and then try to remove it, Ardour freezes and crashes, which is clearly an Ardour bug. I know, I should send bug report, but I don’t have time right now, so I’m writing at least here about it.

I’m not a programeer, I’m an artist, which is at the moment dependent on this Ardour feature, so please have patience with me. Last thing I’d wanted would be to migrate to another DAW now, only because of this small, but crucial thing is not working. So keep up to good work, I really appreciate everything, what you do on Ardour, can’t imagine how much. I hope, that I’ll be able to get this work soon.

@wildfireheart: perhaps i should have made it more clear that this is a BETA release, the very first release of Ardour3 for OS X and that as such, testing by people who expect it to “just work” is not very sensible. Even for myself, I have done absolutely zero testing of external MIDI input on OS X, although I know it works well on Linux. If you need MIDI sequencing for your work right now then I strongly suggest you consider some other tool rather than use a BETA release on a platform where the app is still just beginning testing. Its entirely possible that the issues you are seeing are not even in Ardour3 itself, but rather the CoreMIDI<->JACK MIDI bridge which is also new and very untested.

Writing bug reports on the forums is a fairly guaranteed way to ensure that they will be forgotten, not because we want to, but because forums are … forums, not bug trackers.

The goal of a beta test is to attract users who, when they run into bugs, have the time, interest and energy to help us track them down. If that doesn’t describe your situation, then I suggest you wait for the actual release of Ardour 3. If it does describe you, then please interact with us in a way that is efficient, productive and gives us ways of tracking issues, resolutions, progress and so forth (the bug tracker, IRC and the development mailing list).

Yes, I know, it’s just beta. Only I had hope that especially this thing will work as soon as possible. As I can see, maybe the most helpful way I can do something are these bug reports, so I’ll try to send some when I have time. Thanks for reply anyway

Paul. I wrote software for years (AT&T Bell Labs) and I appreciated how you answered Wildfireheart’s question / concerns. AND I can appreciate Wilefireheart’s seemingly frustration. Many people simply do not understand the life-cycle of software nor what BETA software release is about. Job well done and I believe Wildfireheart will contribute - when he has the time.

Kariym.