Velocity Passthrough Not Working - Limited to 89 when using external keyboard

I am using Scaler with the internal sounds switched to “OFF” and have a Kontakt instrument following Scaler in the chain. When clicking within the UI the velocity is sent to Kontakt as per the velocity preferences in the UI. However, when using an external keyboard, the velocity exiting Scaler is always set to 89. I have put a midi logger on before and after scaler, and I can see Scaler is always limiting the velocity to 89 on exit. Presumably this is a bug?

Update1: I discovered the limiting is only occurring on keys which are bound as chords. Playing keys which are not bound to chord keys allows for the external keyboard velocity to pass through.

Update2: I have also discovered it seems when you “Edit” the chord, that is where the velocity is set. It would appear the notes associated with the chord have their velocities set to a default of 89. If I manually change each individual note for that chord to 127, then the velocity of the external keyboard flows through and it works. But changing each individual note to 127 is not practical.

Is there a way where we can make the default velocity for chords to be 127? There is an option in the UI to change the Scaler UI Velocity. This works when you click the chord with your mouse, it uses the value in the Scaler UI Velocity, and overrides whatever velocity has been set for the chord notes. Is there a way to set the default velocity for chord notes to be 127, or a quick way to change the velocity for all notes in a set of chords?

Interestingly the manual says “This setting only affect items you interact with on the graphical interface. Items triggered from MIDI sources are played with the velocity they receive from the trigger note” which suggests the default limiting to 89 is a bug.

I am using V2.7.1, Windows 11, Reaper

Thanks @r3coil, I can confirm this behaviour.

@Ed1 I just wanted to bring this to your attention. When using a MIDI controller with bound notes, the maximum velocity when triggering chords looks to be 89, unless you raise the note velocities to 127 via the Chord page. You can observe this recording the MIDI output from Scaler to another track triggering a 3rd party instrument, or using MIDI capture triggering internal sounds.

What do you think?

@Tristan I came here looking for an answer to this as well as I just noticed the difference in velocities between playing through a MIDI controller.

It doesn’t make sense to have two separate velocity options for MIDI bindings. I want to be able to just have all notes play at a set velocity with MIDI bindings . . . what is the point of having different settings between bindings and UI button presses?

Also, the suggestion you mentioned of raising the note velocities via the chord page is extremely tedious. One would need to go in change the note velocities for every chord and for every single note.

On top of that, I just noticed that it doesn’t even save the MIDI velocity settings for all chords. This appears to be a bug where when I raise all of one chord’s notes velocity settings to 127, when I go to edit another chord, the velocity goes back to the default of 89.

Please make it to where one can set a fixed velocity for all chords with MIDI bindings. Also being able to pass through velocity from MIDI controller for MIDI binding chords would be really nice.

I am using MacOS 12.6.1. Same behavior in multiple DAWs

@mikedurden , @Tristan previous comment wasn’t suggesting a solution. He was confirming the replication of the issue and condensed my original post into a few lines for @Ed1 to look at it. At the moment @Ed1 hasn’t replied. Let’s hope we hear something soon, and a fix shortly afterwards :slight_smile:

@r3coil @Ed1 @Tristan Ah ok, I had misread that, thanks for the clarification.

I actually just downloaded 2.7.1 and see in the release notes that it says “Edit chord velocities now uses the user input instead of the default velocity.”

Not sure if that is referencing the same issue discussed here, but I am getting the same results and don’t notice any difference. So not clear what exactly that noted in the release notes is improving?

@mikedurden 2.7.1 now provides the ability to set the velocity via Settings for when you are using the mouse in the UI i.e. clicking on the chords. Before this it used a default velocity when clicking with the mouse. This is not related to external midi.

@r3coil Oh I see, thanks for clarifying that

Hi @mikedurden

Thanks for reporting your issue. We are looking into this, we are improving the handling of default and custom velocities to allow for better control between the bound notes and clicked notes.

This will fix the problem you are facing which limits the maximum velocity output.

@Ed1 Ok awesome! Glad to hear it’s being fixed. Thank you for the response!