Strange pitch bend behaviour

[Soft Enerji]

I use an Axiom 49 as my keyboard for Reason 8.3 and Sonar Platinum. Tonight I was working on something in Reason when suddenly everything was out of tune. I looked at the in the device in the rack and the pitch bend was sitting slightly up from centre which was odd as I hadn't touched the pitch bend control. I left clicked the pith control in the device device which reset it to centre and carried on with what I was doing and it did it again! I went to preferences, deleted the Axion then ran through the auto detect process and all seemed good until I started playing again and same problem!!

I start thinking, maybe my boys have been screwing around and have somehow done something the the control and then I though no, everything was working fine in Sonar last night. So I opened a new Sonar project and inserted a Rapture synth, tried a few presets..........no problem. I inserted a Z3TA-2, a Dimension Pro, Rapture Pro and tried a few presets with each.........once again no problems. Next thing I do is Rewire Reason and as soon as I start playing a Reason device the problem is back. I go between Reason and the plug ins in Sonar and the plug ins are fine but Reason is out of tune seemingly random amounts. If I hold the mouse over the pitch bend wheel on the device in the rack I can see it move by different amounts, such as 1024, 896, 640..........

Sorry to be so long winded but wanted to cover evreything as I'm completely baffled ! Does anyone have any ideas what the problem could be?

[rcbuse]

Get yourself something that does a midi dump of what is coming off your controller. Your controller's pitch bend could be flaking out and sending erroneous messages.

Also check under "Additional Remote Overrides" and see if you have something weird mapped to pitch bend.

[Aquila]

This is a common problem with Axiom controllers. It happened to mine and I keep seeing more people with the same complaint.

I ended up ditching mine for another controller. Shame, because I liked how the Axiom keys felt.

[yeahright31]

I love the feel of the M-Audio keys. however there was some buttons on my M-Audio Oxygen keyboard that would have been super useful to be able to use in Reason, but they didn't work.

In the end some weird thing happened and my M-Audio keyboard kept stuffing up in Reason and I have other controllers, so I threw my M-Audio in the trash heap.

But this pitch bend behavior would happen with my Novation X-Station back in the day and heaps of people had the same issue. It was going to cost more then it's worth to get it fixed and then it came good one day. It is frustrating man I've been here before.

[Soft Enerji]

Thanks for the replies guys, much appreciated feedback. I'm still confused as to why I don't seem to be getting the same problem within Sonar. Can't sit down and investigate tonight (much as I really want to!!!) but will try a few more things on the weekend. If all else fails I guess I'll be in the market for a new keyboard , but them's the breaks. If so I'll be posting a new subject asking what this community might recommend.

Cheers

Mark

[Aquila]

Best way to tell if your Axiom's done for is to watch the pitch bend value on its screen. It should center on 64. If not, it's fubar.

[gak]

But I still have a question and agree with the OP.......why is it that Sonar is fine and reason is not?

[Soft Enerji]

Best way to tell if your Axiom's done for is to watch the pitch bend value on its screen. It should center on 64. If not, it's fubar.

Had a play around this evening and still can't get my head around what's going on. Sonar still seems to sound fine but I opened an instance of Lounge Lizard which shows the pitch and mod wheels on it's interface and there it was again...............a little bit of movement from the pitch wheel but still seemed to sound ok..........maybe.... : Reason on the other hand goes unmistakably outa tune.

Aquila, I'm now watching the screen and it goes from 64 to 68 and back (I guess I just missed out on a 69 there .........sorry)

Gak, seems maybe my original observations may have been wrong but Reason does seem to be more susceptible to the problem than Sonar.

I've tried to disable the pitch bend in the Axiom by following some instructions I found online but it don't seem to work. I've seen some other stuff about using MIDI filters within a DAW but I def can't find anything in Reason. I'll have a look in Sonar tomorrow.

Looks like I'll be forking out for a new keyboard which is a pisser coz I really like the feel of the keys on the Axiom

[jam-s]

You might be able to unplug or clean the pitchbend potentiometer if you open up your Axiom.

[michael.jaye]

You might be able to unplug or clean the pitchbend potentiometer if you open up your Axiom.

I had the same problem with the pitch wheel. It' simple to unplug it, but it unplugs the pitch AND the mod wheel.

[Carly(Poohbear)]

I'm now watching the screen and it goes from 64 to 68 and back

As a crap workaround but just to get you going, in Reason go to the "Options" menu, then "Additional Remote Overrides", map the Pitch Bend to another control on your keyboard that you don't use much.
Note this effects the Pitch Bend wheel globally in your Reason session.

[jengstrom]

One way to always ignore pitch bend by default is to find the .remotemap-file on disk, then do the following:

1. Open in text editor
2. Increase the version number at the top of the file
3. Find the line with pitch bend and comment it out
4. Save

[Soft Enerji]

You might be able to unplug or clean the pitchbend potentiometer if you open up your Axiom.

I have thought about opening the thing up but I'm not too confident and don't wanna break anything else. But........

[Soft Enerji]

You might be able to unplug or clean the pitchbend potentiometer if you open up your Axiom.

I had the same problem with the pitch wheel. It' simple to unplug it, but it unplugs the pitch AND the mod wheel.

.....I might just give it a go. Is there anything I need to look out for?

[Soft Enerji]

I'm now watching the screen and it goes from 64 to 68 and back

As a crap workaround but just to get you going, in Reason go to the "Options" menu, then "Additional Remote Overrides", map the Pitch Bend to another control on your keyboard that you don't use much.
Note this effects the Pitch Bend wheel globally in your Reason session.

Dude, that is def not a crap workaround. Sure, it's a workaround but it'll do for now. Thanks for the suggestion!

[Soft Enerji]

One way to always ignore pitch bend by default is to find the .remotemap-file on disk, then do the following:

1. Open in text editor
2. Increase the version number at the top of the file
3. Find the line with pitch bend and comment it out
4. Save

I had a look at this in notepad but couldn't see a line with pitch bend in it....

[Carly(Poohbear)]

I had a look at this in notepad but couldn't see a line with pitch bend in it....

Don't use notepad on these files as you lose the white spaces.

I was not sure what Axiom 49 you have so I have changed all 3 mappings to remove the Pitch Bend

Axiom 49.txt

(53.6 KiB) Downloaded 131 times

Axiom Pro 49.txt

(208.21 KiB) Downloaded 68 times

Axiom49, 2nd gen.txt

(154.53 KiB) Downloaded 66 times

[Soft Enerji]

I had a look at this in notepad but couldn't see a line with pitch bend in it....

Don't use notepad on these files as you lose the white spaces.

I was not sure what Axiom 49 you have so I have changed all 3 mappings to remove the Pitch Bend

Axiom 49.txt

Axiom Pro 49.txt

Axiom49, 2nd gen.txt

Thanks man! That's really kind of you! I have the original Axiom so the first one. Do I just copy the file into the remote files folder?

[Carly(Poohbear)]

I had a look at this in notepad but couldn't see a line with pitch bend in it....

Don't use notepad on these files as you lose the white spaces.

I was not sure what Axiom 49 you have so I have changed all 3 mappings to remove the Pitch Bend

Axiom 49.txt

Axiom Pro 49.txt

Axiom49, 2nd gen.txt

Thanks man! That's really kind of you! I have the original Axiom so the first one. Do I just copy the file into the remote files folder?

Rename the original one to something like Axiom 49.remotemap.bak
save this file in that directory and rename it from Axiom 49.txt to Axiom 49.remotemap

[Soft Enerji]

Rename the original one to something like Axiom 49.remotemap.bak
save this file in that directory and rename it from Axiom 49.txt to Axiom 49.remotemap

Okay, I did that but it hasn't fixed the problem. Anyhoos, I appreciate the help and you've already gone above and beyond so I'll just stick with your other workaround until I get brave enough to open the sucker up, or buy a new keyboard..............whichever comes first

[Carly(Poohbear)]

Rename the original one to something like Axiom 49.remotemap.bak
save this file in that directory and rename it from Axiom 49.txt to Axiom 49.remotemap

Okay, I did that but it hasn't fixed the problem. Anyhoos, I appreciate the help and you've already gone above and beyond so I'll just stick with your other workaround until I get brave enough to open the sucker up, or buy a new keyboard..............whichever comes first

Hmmm, Reason must be overriding it, ho-hum !!!!

[Soft Enerji]

Ho-hum indeed I started to take the thing apart today........took all the screws out around the outer but couldn't get get top to come off. There are a few screws around the "middle" that I can't figure if they hold the thing together and I'm wary of removing them.....

michael.jaye........if you see this post......can you let me know how to get into the fecker?

[michael.jaye]

Ho-hum indeed I started to take the thing apart today........took all the screws out around the outer but couldn't get get top to come off. There are a few screws around the "middle" that I can't figure if they hold the thing together and I'm wary of removing them.....

michael.jaye........if you see this post......can you let me know how to get into the fecker?

I think you have to unscrew everything on the bottom. The display, keys and everything is screwed to the top panel from the inside (from memory - I did this over 12 months ago)

I think unplugging the wheels is pretty easy, I'm not the kind of person who would normally open up a piece of hardware and start messing about. Having said that, I was gonna throw the whole thing in the rubbish. I tried to adjust the spring in the pitch wheel and made it worse.

[swamptooth]

Had that happen with an oxy 49. It was a cold solder joint that snapped off screwing a connection to an axial inductor. Couldn't find the right replacement inductor and m-audio wouldn't tell me the part number.

[Soft Enerji]

Ho-hum indeed I started to take the thing apart today........took all the screws out around the outer but couldn't get get top to come off. There are a few screws around the "middle" that I can't figure if they hold the thing together and I'm wary of removing them.....

michael.jaye........if you see this post......can you let me know how to get into the fecker?

I think you have to unscrew everything on the bottom. The display, keys and everything is screwed to the top panel from the inside (from memory - I did this over 12 months ago)

I think unplugging the wheels is pretty easy, I'm not the kind of person who would normally open up a piece of hardware and start messing about. Having said that, I was gonna throw the whole thing in the rubbish. I tried to adjust the spring in the pitch wheel and made it worse.

Thanks man. When I installed Reason 9 last night I thought for a moment that the problem was gone but it was only for a moment . I'll try to take it apart again this weekend if I get time. Otherwise I'll keep going with Carly's workaround until I buy a new keyboard.

Hey Mods, maybe this thread should now be moved to the "hardware" page?