MIDI Issues with M1 Mac running Reaper

Hi S2400ers,

Does anyone use their S2400 via USB B with an Apple SIlicon M1 Mac running macOS 12 (Monterey)?

I get no MIDI input when the S2400 is connected to the Mac via USB.

When connected via DIN OR USB B to my MIDI interface (an iConnectivity MioXL), MIDI data is seen at the monitor and the S2400 is well happy. But move that USB cable from the mioXL back to the Mac (directly or via a hub), and there’s no MIDI input seen on the S2400.

I’m not sure if this was an issue in prior versions of macOS (or isn’t an issue using an Intel Mac), but I’m unable to use an earlier version due to Dante Virtual Soundcard needing macOS 12 on M1.

Cheers

On Monterey here. I don’t know if this helps or not, but I’ve noticed some bugs - the S2400 doesn’t like USB hubs, so I connect directly to a rear Mac port. Sometimes I don’t get MIDI clock straight off but have found that unplugging the USB cable and then plugging back in seems to get the S2400 to actually respond to MIDI clock (This is with the Sync set to USB). Bit of a faff, but it tends to work from then on in.

Thanks for the response.

Primarily I was testing with the S2400 directly connected to one of the two USB A ports on the Mac (it’s an M1 Mac Mini), but I saw the same issue when using a USB hub (I tested directly since many of us have run into problems with hubs, like you mention).

When disconnecting and reconnecting the USB B port on the S2400 (whilst connected directly to the mac), I see either some “U note on” (a blob of several messages once, which then stop) OR a “U SysEx start” or “U SysEx end” messages (the last two being exclusive from the note on messages). I’m using Reaper as the DAW, and while I’m not sure why it’s sending a SysEx blob [0xF0 …], rather than clock [0xF8]), the note on messages appear to correspond to a test pattern I’m sending over. Perhaps eliminating the sysex blob would help, I’ll try to identify the source of that.

In any event, as soon as the note on messages start (which, similarly to your indications, don’t always occur on every reconnection), they stop again, despite the DAW continuing to play.

When using the mioXL interface, either via MIDI or USB, the S2400 has no issues seeing MIDI. Since the mioXL is also but a USB class compliant MIDI device (connected to the same mac), there does seem to be an incompatibility between the S2400 and an M1 Mac mini, at least using monterey.

I should have mentioned that I’m using an Intel based Mac here. I also tend only to send MIDI clock and no other MIDI messages - not even note info. Never tried via DIN MIDI either to test whether the bug is USB driver specific or a generic MIDI one, but I’d doubt the latter. As I’ve not seen anyone else mention USB MIDI clock issues I assumed it was just my set up - and I can work around it. Sending MIDI clock from Logic Pro is more prone to not work than from Ableton 11. Hope you find a fix.

With great debugging help from Isla’s support team (thanks!), we have been able to identify an interaction problem between the S2400 MIDI implementation and Reaper’s default settings.

If you’re using Reaper, you must disable the MIDI reset options (Preferences > MIDI > untick everything at the bottom on the “Reset by:” and “Reset on:” fields. Reboot the S2400 and now the S2400 will respond to MIDI input, including clock, from the Mac’s USB port.

Either approach to resetting (“reset by”) seems to cause the S2400 to stop responding to further MIDI input (at least via USB).

The person from support indicated this would be raising a bug internally to resolve the issue with receiving Reaper’s “reset” note-offs.

My thoughts: it could be that sending a slew of note-offs (particularly if they don’t correspond to note-ons, which was the case) is sending the MIDI implementation on the S2400 into a bad state (which requires a reboot to fix even after stopping the triggering behaviour from Reaper).

Off topic: disabling “CC reset” in Reaper is something I’d recommend on many synths so that restarting the transport doesn’t change your patch settings back to default (e.g., if you’ve made front panel changes).

If a forum admin sees this, it may be worth changing the thread title to something like:

“MIDI Issues with M1 Mac running Reaper”

As I didn’t mention Reaper (which was the specific source of the issue affecting the S2400) until my second post, and I understand this would be with any MIDI port (though I wasn’t able to confirm as my DIN MIDI interface was somehow correcting this issue over USB as well as DIN MIDI).

Moved to bug reports for the team’s sake of keeping track of issues and documentation.

@roborr you might want to triage it differently since it seems like the issue has been already looked at by you guys :stuck_out_tongue:

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