I have built a MIDI controller designed to work specifically with the Tone King Imperial MkII standalone. The design can adjust all of the nearly 100 available controls.
All is going well bar a problem with both the input and output effects. When I send increment/decrement commands for controlling parameters in the input or output effects screens the control response is very slow. Between 8 and 40+ consecutive, identical MIDI commands are ignored before the knobs actually move. The input effects are fairly consistent at 9-11 commands between a response but the output effects are more varied. Only the Reverb Dry/wet control responds to every command and Reverb Hi-Pass control is the least responsive with around 30-40 identical commands in a row being ignored. I’ve tested this with both CC inc/dec and Note inc/dec commands with no difference.
I’m confident the sending software/hardware is working well. The common Input, Gate and Output controls, Wah, Amp, CabSim and EQ screens respond to every command sent as expected and every on/off control functions perfectly.
As yet I have not tried loading the Tone King onto another PC for testing. Am I the only person to have experienced this problem?
I’ve downloaded and installed The Tone King onto another laptop from a different manufacturer. It behaves in exactly the same way which convinces me that the problem is built in to the NDSP software.
The cc dec/inc MIDI messages produced by my controller are all of the same format with only the command number changing. I can observe the outgoing messages by inserting MIDIView software in the signal path. All of the software rotary controls respond exactly as expected except those on the input and output pedals. All on/off commands including those on the pedals respond as expected.
My next move will be to download a 14 day trial of another plugin and see how that one works out.
I’ve downloaded the Soldano 14 day trial and mapped the controller to that. Every adjustment works perfectly, so I’m convinced it’s the Tone King software at fault.
I’ve exchanged a couple of emails with the support team (who replied the same day), so with a bit of luck this will get fixed eventually.
I’ve managed to build a workaround into the code for my controller. It’s a bit cumbersome but it works OK and there is no noticeable lag in the response, possibly because I’m using a much faster microcontroller than a standard Arduino.
The trick is to repeat what should be a single MIDI command output as often as is required to make the Tone King software wake up and take notice. The number of repeats can be set to 5, 10 , 20 or 80 (yes, really!) as required to get a smooth response from the specific control.
Some of the controls that respond correctly to every command have very fine steps and the same trick can be used to speed them up if required.
At least I now have a fully functioning MID controller capable of adjusting everything that can be adjusted on the standalone Tone King plugin. All I have to do now is decide what colour to make the final front panel and build the footswitches and wah pedal unit which will plug into the main controller.