Kontakt Track Suddenly Loses Volume

[MusicBug]

Hi. I am working on a cue in Studio One 5, and one of my instruments is the Noire piano from Kontakt. Twice now, in the middle of working on the track, it will suddenly lose volume to the point where I can barely hear it. I haven't adjusted anything. No faders, no dials, nothing. It just happens. And once it does the only way I have found to fix it is to dump the file and start the session over again. Very annoying and time-consuming. It doesn't even work to close and reopen the file, or to try and go backwards in the session. The volume on that track is just gone even though all the other tracks are fine.

Anybody experience this? Anybody know why it happens, or how to fix it?

Thanks.

[RPaul]

Hi. I am working on a cue in Studio One 5, and one of my instruments is the Noire piano from Kontakt. Twice now, in the middle of working on the track, it will suddenly lose volume to the point where I can barely hear it. I haven't adjusted anything. No faders, no dials, nothing. It just happens. And once it does the only way I have found to fix it is to dump the file and start the session over again. Very annoying and time-consuming. It doesn't even work to close and reopen the file, or to try and go backwards in the session. The volume on that track is just gone even though all the other tracks are fine.

Anybody experience this? Anybody know why it happens, or how to fix it?

I haven't seen this with NOIRE and don't use Studio One (I've mostly used NOIRE in Cubase -- maybe also Cakewalk). However, the typical reason this happens is because a MIDI CC (continuous controller) that affects the volume gets sent to the instrument. The CC for volume is CC#7, but some instruments also use CC#11 (expression) for volume (e.g. for emulating a wind instrument with changes in volume and timbre during a note).

If this were just happening sporadically and wasn't still an issue when closing and reopening the project, I'd be inclined to suspect accidently having sent a CC from a controller to the instrument. However, since you say it is still an issue after closing and reopening the project, it sounds like the setting is saved, either in the instance of KONTAKT (e.g. if the settings were saved after the change in level was set) or in a MIDI sequence. One other possibility might be if it has its MIDI input set to all devices and some other virtual instrument also transmits MIDI that is "accidentally" getting read by KONTAKT. (I have seen something like that in Cakewalk, where some virtual instrument was behaving weirdly, and it turned out it was set to listen to all MIDI ports and was reading some values from Superior Drummer.)

Suggestions would be:

1) Go into the KONTAKT instance, and raise the volume level in the plugin (from memory, the fader is near the top right). Now play the project and see if it is okay and doesn't change over the course of the playback. If so, save the project, close it, and reopen it. Does the fix persist?

2) If #1 didn't do the trick, look closely at the MIDI data for the track to see if there is CC data in there. Odds are you'd be looking mainly for CC#7, though maybe also CC#11. Since NOIRE is a piano (albeit with fancy synth-like extras) I wouldn't think either CC#7 or CC#11 would be applicable to just playing it, so either of those in there are *probably* there by mistake. So remove them and see if that resolves the problem.

If neither of those does the trick one other thought is if there is some setting in Studio One to zero controllers when playback is stopped. If so, turning that off may be the ticket.

Rick

[melodea]

I experienced the same with NOIR!!! On one round of the song the volume was right then on the next round there was a noticeable volume loss. I tried everything without result. I ended up bouncing in place which of course solved the problem.