ST4 and M-Vave Chocolate+ MIDI Bluetooth controller issues

ulf-kronman

As I have mentioned here before, I use ST4 on a MacBook (MB) for backing tracks for saxophone rehearsals.
I set a new section of the song that I want to learn to loop, and when I have learnt that section I want to jump out of the loop and go to the next section of the song. As I use MacBooks both for editing and playback in ST4 I have set up the MB's keyboard as a "remote control" in ST4 and set it up to toggle the current region loop by remote action on the MB keyboard key "C" (default to toggle looping in Logic Pro) and it has worked perfectly, turning the looping off (or on) when key "C" is pressed.

But as I'm playing saxophone my hands are obviously busy with the horn, so I have purchased an M-Vave Chocolate Plus (CP) MIDI foot controller to send a MIDI signal over Bluetooth toggling the loop on/off.
I have programmed the fourth knob (D) on the CP to send MIDI command PC41@4 (Program Change, knob 4, action 1 at channel 4) and assigned this MIDI signal to "Toggle current region loop" - see attached image.

Unfortunately, this doesn't work the same way as the "C" key press. If I play a section with looping pre-defined, pressing the fourth (D) button on CP turns looping off, but if I want to toggle it to on again by pressing the D button on the foot switch again, I can see a looping symbol flash in ST for a fraction of a second and then the system turns it off and reports Section (current): Continue, almost as if the knob was pressed twice to toggle. Which it wasn't; I'm checking MIDI receives with the nice free program MidiView, and I see only one PC41@4 sent to ST.

Is anyone else here using the Chocolate Plus in conjunction with ST4 and can supply some advice on this?
Should I try with a Control Change MIDI signal rather than a Program Change signal and is it preferable to use another MIDI channel than 4? (I use 4 because I saw a video with Scott Uhl using the Chocolate of channel 4 to control ST4.)

I was considering to report this as a potential bug in ST4, but as it works fine with the keyboard I need to know more about the CP's behavior over Bluetooth connections before going ahead. It seems as if all other assignments I have done (start/stop, vol +/-, scroll page down/up) on the other knobs of the CP is working properly in ST4.

I would be grateful if there is someone else using the CP that I can share experiences with.

[As a side note I can report that is has been a pain to set up the CP due to poor documentation and clumsy software - it took me as an old programmer two days to understand how it works - and it also seems to reset the programming randomly to PC0@0, at least on knob D. But that is a different story.]

Regards,
Ulf

peter

I am using the Chocolate (without +) but with CC commands instead of PC commands and that works just fine. The "Toggle Current Region Loop" works flawless turning loop on and off.

I am using advanced custom mode in the Chocolate Editor and setup 8 different CC commands for short and long presses. No issues with random resets or anything.

ulf-kronman

peter OK, thanks for the reply; I'll try to change to CC commands. The "Chocolate Editor" you mention, is that the CubeSuite and how does it connect with the Chocolate? I have severe problems getting my programming of commands to stick with the Chocolate; the programming seems to resort to some sort of default when the Chocolate is turned off, but this mysteriously only happens on knob 4. I have tried programming the Chocolate with CubeSuite on a MacBook connected to the Chocolate both over USB and my iPhone connected over Bluetooth and the results seem to be very shaky; I never know when a change is saved to the Chocolate. I'll switch over to CC commands and do some more tests and get back with the results.
UPDATE: Changed to CC command with the same result; the toggle change just blips through and the result seems to be dependent on the default mode of the region. If default is set to continuous loop, it turns off the first time the knob is pressed and then nothing (except for a short blipp in the region marker and a report on the middle of the screen saying "Region (Current): continue") happens on following presses. But it seems as my issues are MacOS related.
I switched over to Stage Traxx 4 on my iPhone and there everything works perfectly, toggling looping on and off as it should.

peter

Yes, I mean CubeSuite. But I have programmed the pedal on iOS. Changes in CubeSuite are immediately sent to the pedal as far as I can tell.

Regarding the loop problem: I tried it both on macOS and on iOS and can not reproduce the issue. No matter what the default playback mode for a region is, the action toggles reliably between loop and continue.

ulf-kronman

peter Thanks for taking your time to investigate this for me, Peter. I have now struggled on with CubeSuite and the Chocolate and have gotten a bit wiser about all its quirks. CubeSuite on iOS works much better than the MacOS version, which only works over USB connection and lacks a "Save" button. I can verify that my changes are registered by analysing the MIDI stream with MidiViewer, but the problem is that they don't seem to be saved and stored on the Chocolate, because they are reverted back to previous settings if the Chocolate is turned off and back on again. But CubeSuite on iOS seems to work fine, so that part of the problem is solved now.
The second part, the toggle problem seems to be related to me using ST4 on an old Intel-based MacBook. If I do tests on my newer MacBook Air M3 it all works perfectly as you say. So, even if the problem not is solved for me personally, I think you can consider the problem solved, since it only appears on an old MacBook soon to be obsolete. Again, thanks for your help. // Ulf

peter

The code for remote action execution has no OS-dependent parts. The same code is run on both intel and M3 hardware. I don't think an Intel Macbook could have an issue with the ST4 code. Maybe the Chocolate pedal does behave different on older Intel hardware.