Welcome to DirectConnect! This document is intended to inform you about late-breaking changes and/or news that did not make their way into the manual.
Here’s what to know about DirectConnect.
- Under certain circumstances you will see a "-6031" error message displayed in the plug-in window. This message cannot be "clicked away" and will be visible unless you deinstantiate and reinstantiate the DirectConnect plug-in. This error message is harmless and can be safely ignored. An upcoming version of DirectConnect will allow to hide this message.
- When moving controls on any of the Studio 9000 synths while Pro Tools is playing back in the background, MIDI output will stop after approximately ten seconds. This currently is a limitation in Pro Tools. The workaround is to not move controls for longer than ten seconds or to use external MIDI controllers for the Studio 9000 synths. Please remember that you can "draw in" controller movements in Pro Tools too.
- Please make sure the IAC bus you are using for communicating with Tokyo is disabled in the MIDI Input Devices dialog from the MIDI menu. If this option is enabled you might create a MIDI feedback loop within OMS that could lead to freeze crashes when recording or setting up MIDI inputs for DirectConnect compatible applications.
- The bypass button on the plug-in UI doesn’t work. Since it serves no purpose anyway it will be grayed out in a future version of DirectConnect.
- DirectConnect will automatically launch the DirectConnect-compatible third party application when a Pro Tools session using DirectConnect is opened. This means that if you saved a Tokyo project beforehand it will be recalled automatically while the Pro Tools session is being opened. Since this happens in the background, you’ll see sluggish behavior like a cursor "freeze" for some seconds while Pro Tools is loading this session. Please be patient and allow enough time for Tokyo to load. We will incorporate a status message informing you about this background process in future versions of Pro Tools and DirectConnect.
Here are some tips and tricks.
- Total recall in Tokyo. Tokyo’s "Save project as" command allows you to save the current configuration of synthesizers so the next time you recall this project it remembers that you had open one Vibra 9000, two Vibras 1000 and a Stella 9000 and so on. You will also have to save the synth setups separately or they won’t be recalled correctly by the project.
- If you want to use Tokyo's "Transmit MIDI" feature to record knob movements as MIDI controller messages into Pro Tools, you should make sure not to create a MIDI feeback loop as this might lead to a crash. In order to do so you have to uncheck the "MIDI thru" option in Pro Tools' MIDI menu before you enable the appropriate IAC bus in the Input Devices dialog. This measure will "break" the loop and thus avoid sudden "hangs".
- Logic Audio and DirectConnect. In order to make DirectConnect work in Logic Audio, please do not forget to assign a valid output and input to the track you are using with DirectConnect. If the input is set to "no input" Logic won't pass audio coming in from the DirectConnect plug-in.
