S88 Mk3, How to stop sustain pedal double MIDI commands

Steve Wight

Hi All,
I've just set up my new S88 Mk3 keyboard and am really enjoying it after navigating some of the peculiarities of the system. There's one problem I haven't been able to solve so far: every time I press or release the sustain pedal it sends the pedal up or pedal down MIDI command twice with the same timestamp. (I know there have been issues in the past with double MIDI notes in Logic, but this is only a sustain pedal issue for me. MIDI note information seems fine.)

I'm using the latest Logic Pro (10.8.1) on a Mac Studio with M2 chip running MacOS 14.3.1. Any suggestions on a fix for this would be greatly appreciated.

Steve Wight

Well, I think I found the answer: in Logic's MIDI inputs page in Settings there are inputs for KONTROL S88 MK3 Main, KONTROL S88 MK3 DAW, KONTROL S88 MK3 Ext, and KONTROL S88 MK3 MIDI 2.0. (I had set both Logic and the S88 for MIDI 2.0 mode, as I'm very interested in using the bi-directional capability of MIDI 2.0 to update controllers, hopefully making it easier to tweak controller info on a track.)

It turns out that if you have the S88 Main input and the S88 MIDI 2.0 input both active, you get double transmission of controller data, though there's no double transmission of note data. If you deactivate the Main input you can't transmit anything, including MIDI notes, to Logic. And if you deactivate MIDI 2.0, you obviously won't have that. So the upshot is that MIDI 2.0 isn't quite ready for prime time on the S88 unless you don't mind having duplicate controller information. Hopefully this will be corrected in a future update.

Steve Wight

Well, I think I found the answer: in Logic's MIDI inputs page in Settings there are inputs for KONTROL S88 MK3 Main, KONTROL S88 MK3 DAW, KONTROL S88 MK3 Ext, and KONTROL S88 MK3 MIDI 2.0. (I had set both Logic and the S88 for MIDI 2.0 mode, as I'm very interested in using the bi-directional capability of MIDI 2.0 to update controllers, hopefully making it easier to tweak controller info on a track.)

It turns out that if you have the S88 Main input and the S88 MIDI 2.0 input both active, you get double transmission of controller data, though there's no double transmission of note data. If you deactivate the Main input you can't transmit anything, including MIDI notes, to Logic. And if you deactivate MIDI 2.0, you obviously won't have that. So the upshot is that MIDI 2.0 isn't quite ready for prime time on the S88 unless you don't mind having duplicate controller information. Hopefully this will be corrected in a future update.

reffahcs

Can't you just turn off main in Logic and leave MIDI 2.0 active?

Steve Wight

No, you lose all ability to send note data and also DAW control. It's kinda hard to understand what turning on MIDI 2.0 does at this point.n

reffahcs

That's a good tip! It definitely doesn't like both, I've had nothing but constant crashes with Logic. But it seems like if you disable at least one it works perfect.

This worked for me, I can still control the DAW, and control the plugin. Nice!!

Steve Wight

Interesting. Thanks for this. I'm gonna go back in and see if there's something else I'm doing that's making it lose connection when I disable the "Main" input.

Steve Wight

So I disabled the Main MIDI input and enabled the MIDI 2.0 input, then rebooted the keyboard and the computer. This time the keyboard could send MIDI note and controller information, but the DAW control was still lost until I re-enabled the Main input.

Another thing I'm still not clear on: sometimes the nob on the keyboard moves the playhead and other times it controls the fader level on the currently selected track. I'm not consciously changing anything, and I don't know how to make it switch between those two behaviors. Am I missing something?

reffahcs

I recall having to do something with Audio MIDI Setup on Mac to get 2.0 to work. For me if I switch the keyboard back to regular MIDI then it breaks things and the keyboard doesn't MIDI any more.

Steve Wight

Yeah, as I recall, when switching the keyboard to MIDI 2.0 mode it instructed me to delete the S88 entry in Audio MIDI setup and reboot the keyboard, which then created a new Audio MIDI entry with MIDI 2.0 enabled.