On saturday I’ve had a E1 freeze on stage unfortunately. Only a restart helped.
I can’t reproduce what I did in the moment of freeze, just a few seconds before it still worked. In the next moment I tried to switch the page with the right bottom button hold and E1 didn’t react anymore.
My E1 is on the latest official Firmware 3.10. It’s connected to a powered USB 3.1 Hub from Delock.
A Novation Circuit Tracks is connected to and powered by the USB port of the E1 (could this be too much power consumption?).
With this setup under same conditions I did rehearsals every day in the 2 weeks before and it didn’t freeze, all worked fine.
@alectroniq, first off, I am sorry you had an issue during the performance.
To understand it a little bit more… In the setup you described:
did you use E1 to control Circuit Tracks sound engine?
was MIDI clock generated by the Circuit tracks and sent to E1?
I assume Delock hub is connected to the computer. Was there anything(DAW, etc) running on computer and sending data to E1?
is there anything else you think is worth mentioning?
Sorry for shooting questions like that it is a bt difficult to figure out what happened. But still, answering may help to identify area where the problem could be happening.
the Circuit Track receives a MIDI clock via external MIDI and forwards it to other devices in my setup. So E1 might receive it as well. Can I instruct E1 to ignore any incoming clock?
Yes, the Delock USB Hub is connected to a powered Macbook Pro (M1Pro, late 2021). Ableton Live 11.2.11 is sending MIDI Feedback data to the E1, as well as MIDI Notes and CC data to the Circuit Tracks (connected via USB Port).
a) E1 was powered on through a longer time before my performance (2-3 hours) via the USB Hub power supply. In the meantime the Macbook Pro and the Circuit Tracks were powered off and on again.
That’s a typical situation between Soundcheck and Stage Time and the E1 remains powered on as long as I don’t disconnect the USB cable. Would you recommend to give it a fresh start right before performance? Could a longer power-on time be problematic for the E1?
b) My E1 Preset has 5 pages, so the Preset not too busy. But these pages themselves are all completely full, all “element slots” used. The RAM display on the button left displaying some value around 55%.
Thanks for any help. I love the E1 concept and your constant development!
Hey @martin , just a very humble question:
I will play an extremely important concert with an Orchestra in 3 weeks, and I want to use the E1. But a freeze on stage would be a worst case scenario.
Do you have any hint, idea or tipp, a new FW or a stable FW beta, which can make sure to avoid any freezing? (I won’t be using the Novation Circuit Tracks there)
Thank you so much for any help
I had rare but repeating freezes with the 3.1.0 firmware and they are gone since I use the beta firmware 3.1.3 (beta.electra.one => update device => firmware number will be higher now). You can always go back to the official firmware easily on www.electra.one
Yeah, there are numerous improvements on the beta version. The releasing it officially gets slowdown due to work on finalizing mk2 hardware/firmware though.
I would suggest to try to rehearse with the latest beta. 3 weeks are quite a long time I hope that beta version will be out as an official release by then. Also, if you encountered any problem during rehearsing with it, just reach me here on the forum chat and we can review that immediately.
hi @alectroniq, I am sorry to hear that. I was searching for all types of causes. The 3.2 comes with numerous fixes. I was hoping it would address your issue too. Anyways, I will keep looking at stuff. By any chance, is there anything you noticed or you did just before the freeze?
@martin thanks!
I was triggering many different Pads on the screen at a pretty high rate (2 or 3 a second) for a test.
My setup is still like mentioned above.
More detail: The pads trigger different states of “Isotonik Launchsync LE”, which is a MaxForLive device in Ableton Live, that recalls presaved “ringbox” positions of the Novation Launchpad Pro MK3 Control Surface. Ableton sends MIDI feedback to the E1 (when I mouse-click the buttons, the connected equivalent E1 Pads light up).
Btw. FW 3.1.7 worked fine without freezes recently, but I used it in a simpler setup without Circuit Tracks connected via USB.
Could it be a problem for the E1, that the Circuit Tracks is forwarding MIDI clock to its MIDI outs?
@martin The E1 just freezed without even touching it, just while playing It didn’t even receive MIDI CC or Note data from Ableton (USB) or the Circuit Tracks. I think there just should’ve been MIDI Clock from Circuit Tracks.
A different Preset, running the E1 without the Circuit Tracks connected to the USB port, did not freeze yet after many times of playing with it.
The Preset which freezes regularly (with Circuit Tracks connected), was originally created with an early FW 2.xx … or maybe even 1.xx (I can’t remember exactly) … and until now continually edited further in FW 3.xx step by step. Maybe there are version compatibilty issues with older settings in the Preset?
Would you like to have a look into my affected Preset in my account. Or I can send it to you?
I’m still wondering if the problem is the MIDI traffic, which looks like this (in rare peak moments of MIDI traffic in my performance):
on E1 I’m controlling CC of the Circuit Tracks (connected via USB Port)
‘MIDI feedback’ is active: when I’m twisting knobs on the Circuit Tracks, their values are reflected on the E1 (MIDI in+out communication). This means that Circuit Tracks is also sending MIDI-CC to E1
Ableton is sending MIDI-Notes to E1, which forwards them to Circuit Tracks
Circuit Tracks is forwarding a MIDI Clock also to E1
I need this for the rest of my setup
I’d still like to set E1 to ‘block’ any incoming MIDI Clocks, because this is constant and dense data stream
E1 is not receiving a MIDI Clock from Ableton
One interesting fact is, that the Freezes also appear even in unbusy moments of less MIDI traffic, when I’m not touching the E1 knobs. The only constant during the entire set is the received MIDI clock.
Anyway I really have to make it work, because the E1 is definitely by far the best MIDI controller concept in the world that I know for 25 years!!
the Circuit Track receives a MIDI clock via external MIDI and forwards it to other devices in my setup. So E1 might receive it as well. Can I instruct E1 to ignore any incoming clock?
It didn’t even receive MIDI CC or Note data from Ableton (USB) or the Circuit Tracks. I think there just should’ve been MIDI Clock from Circuit Tracks.