Hello Ernest,
From your description I think your MIDI console must be sending a stream of spurious MIDI messages, which are preventing Hauptwerk from being able to 'hear' the relevant message(s) from your MIDI piston when you try to auto-detect it. The most common culprit is a MIDI expression pedal/encoder, e.g. due has hysteresis, or dirty potentiometer contacts, or an electrical/grounding problem, or perhaps a vibration issue through MIDI console causing the expression pedal's potentiometer to move slightly as you touch other things on the console.
Given that you also mention that other virtual combinations are getting triggered erratically, I think you have probably unknowingly auto-detected that spurious MIDI message (e.g. from the MIDI expression pedal) to one of the other virtual pistons.
I'd suggest:
- Load the sample set set.
- Temporarily turn on the "
Diagnostics: log all MIDI messages received and sent" option on the "
General settings | General preferences | Advanced ..." screen tab and OK the screen (and OK the warning about performance).
- Without touching anything, wait 30 seconds or so, so that the relevant MIDI messages can be identified by their timestamps.
- Still without touching anything else (so as to avoid other actions being logged to confuse the issue), right-click on the relevant virtual piston, and try to auto-detect it to your MIDI piston.
- Still without touching anything else, and assuming that the 'Done' button still flashes as before (which indicates that spurious conflicting MIDI events are being received), click the Cancel button.
- Still without touching anything else, select "
Help | View activity log" from the menu.
- Near the end of the log, look for the last "
INF:2640 Diag: auto-detection: started ..." message, and look at the MIDI IN messages that were received after it. Aside from the intended MIDI messages from your MIDI piston, you'll probably see some spurious additional MIDI messages (e.g. from your MIDI expression pedal). Hence that should allow you to identify the malfunctioning MIDI control, so that you can get it resolved.
Here is an example of MIDI messages being received when auto-detecting a note-on/off MIDI piston to a virtual control (St. Anne's Swell divisional piston 1), with no spurious MIDI messages being received, i.e. an example of what you might see if everything was behaving correctly:
2022-03-28-11-47-40: INF:2640 Diag: auto-detection: started for SwitchInputOutput '060 Comb piston: Sw thumb 1' (ID: 661), screen input tab 1.
2022-03-28-11-47-43: INF:2550 Diag: IN: MIDI note on: port: Console MIDI IN 06 [=> micro lite: Port 5], channel (1-16): 01, note (0-127): 048, velocity (0-127): 066. (Raw hex bytes: 90 30 42.)
2022-03-28-11-47-43: INF:2646 Diag: auto-detection: valid event received. Valid events so far: 0, spurious events so far: 0.
2022-03-28-11-47-43: INF:2644 Diag: auto-detection: event list now valid. Valid events so far: 1, spurious events so far: 0.
2022-03-28-11-47-44: INF:2551 Diag: IN: MIDI note off: port: Console MIDI IN 06 [=> micro lite: Port 5], channel (1-16): 01, note (0-127): 048, velocity (0-127): 000. (Raw hex bytes: 80 30 00.)
2022-03-28-11-47-44: INF:2646 Diag: auto-detection: valid event received. Valid events so far: 1, spurious events so far: 0.
2022-03-28-11-47-44: INF:2644 Diag: auto-detection: event list now valid. Valid events so far: 2, spurious events so far: 0.
2022-03-28-11-47-46: INF:2641 Diag: auto-detection: finished for SwitchInputOutput '060 Comb piston: Sw thumb 1' (ID: 661). Valid events: 2, spurious events: 0.
2022-03-28-11-47-46: INF:2648 Diag: auto-detection: configured switch '060 Comb piston: Sw thumb 1' (per-organ: Y) with: event type: 'Stop or hold-piston: MIDI note-on/off', port: 'micro lite: Port 5' (engaging event type code: 1, disengaging: 2, wizard choices: toggle: N, send matching output: N, output port: '', Launchpad color code: 0).
Best regards, Martin.
Hauptwerk software designer/developer, Milan Digital Audio.