Poly 2: Aftertouch issues

Legacy Products
1

I’ve been using a Poly 2 for a while and encountered a very strange issue involving aftertouch.

It seems that an aftertouch message received on any channel can interrupt any incoming midi messages, even if they are not on the same channel.

the way I’ve replicated this, and narrowed the problem down to the poly 2 is:
I have an Octatrack, and a Keystep both running to a midi solutions merger. The Octatrack is running a sequence on channel 13. If I have the output of the merger running to the Poly 2, and I press keys on the keystep to the point where it generates aftertouch messages, midi notes in the sequence from the Octatrack get interrupted, regardless of what channel the keystep is set to. This also occurs with anything hooked up to the Poly 2’s midi out that’s the midi thru signal.

If I remove the Poly 2 from the equation and run it to another device, say my midi interface and a DAW, the issue doesn’t occur, the midi sequence will play uninterrupted.

This feels like a bug in the Poly 2’s firmware to me. has anyone else run into it? is there a workaround, or any info from Polyend on it? I sent them a support request about it but they haven’t gotten back to me for a couple weeks.

2

Does this happen as soon as two channels are active and one channel has aftertouch data?

If so i can probably try and recreate this with my setup since i have a Poly 2 as well, to see if i encounter the same issue.

3

yes, a pattern doesn’t even have to be playing. I can recreate the same thing with my two key steps into the merger, playing something with one hand, and then just mashing a key with my other hand to create aftertouch messages on the other keystep.

4

i’ll give this a try tomorrow evening and will report back. :muscle:

1 Like
5

Were you able to try and see if yours has the same issue?

6

omg, i’m so sorry! :scream:
my week has been crazybusy work wise. i’ll make sure to report back to you tomorrow :pray:
Maybe you can also tell me the settings you use on the Poly 2 so i can try it exactly the same way?

7

I have it set to channel mode. Gates and pitch 1-4 are channels 9,10,11 and 12

Custom CVs 1-4 are velocity, the rest are midi CCs

I have smoothing set to low, although I don’t think this affects the issue at all.

Also, no worries! I was just checking to see if maybe you’d tried and forgot to reply or something. Thanks for taking the time :slight_smile:

1 Like
8

Alright so i gave it a go… my setup was the following:

  • Polyend Tracker connected to the Poly 2 via TRS Midi
  • Resulting CV’s are sent to a VMPE Zeroscope.
  • Aftertouch was simulated by sending MIDI ChannelAT from the Tracker via two MIDI Channels.

I’m also having a hard time to understand what is happening. To the point that after one or two hours of trying out various things i had to give up :laughing:

I’ve sent the same output on two channels. The second channel is slightly delayed.

When sending Velocity and AT on the first channel, it works(!?) as expected? But the second channels cv output looks nothing like it should.

If it’s any other CC message it will be sent without issues across the various Custom CV Outputs. But Aftertouch/Velocity does indeed cause some weird behaviour that i honestly can’t really wrap my head around.

Also looking through the Manual didn’t really give me any clues as to what should be happening.

I’m tagging @Answerme , in hopes that someone at Polyend has some more info for us :heart:

9

Thanks for putting the effort in.

I’ll take a video and show you what I’m talking about.

At the very least aftertouch doesn’t work very well, causes all sorts of CV noise in the velocity channel when it’s activated

10

I’m giving this a try - might give the Poly 2 a second lease on life and a chance for further improvements: