Help us to help you – how to report problems

27 Sep Help us to help you – how to report problems

Posted at 11:23h in Knowledge Base Articles, Troubleshooting by

We want to do our very best to support every Gig Performer user. For general help with using Gig Performer, tips and tricks, ways to develop ever more sophisticated gig files, our community forums should be your first stop. Do a search there first and if that doesn’t help, post your question in the appropriate forum. Long time users are welcoming and very willing to help new users get up to speed. The development team participates in the community forums as well.

There is also a ticket support system that can be used to report problems directly to Deskew Technologies, although in most cases users will be referred back to the community forums as most issues reported through our support system have already been solved or answered on those forums.

Sections in Gig Performer support portal

The support page also has a “Presales Contact” form for non-technical questions about Gig Performer as well as to contact us for business-to-business issues. Note that questions of a technical nature will not be answered through the Presales Contact forum.

If a recent version of Gig Performer actually crashes, it will most likely be due to an errant or buggy plugin (check this blog article to help you identify plugin that crashed). Depending on your platform, some operating system updates, audio interface driver updates, and also some anti-virus programs, particularly those that include real-time monitoring, can also cause Gig Performer (and other applications) to crash.

We realize that it can be hard for users to determine the root cause of such a crash and some experiments may be required to track down the issue. A typical clue that a bug is due to something other than Gig Performer itself is that Gig Performer has been operating perfectly fine and then out of the blue seems to fail. In such cases it’s worth thinking about what might have changed in your environment. Did you add a new plugin that you had never used before or perhaps update your operating system or download new anti-virus updates, for example.

If you do have an issue, whether you ask on our forums or ultimately contact us directly, please don’t just tell us that Gig Performer crashed. That’s like telling your doctor to cure your ailment without your telling him/her your symptoms. There’s absolutely nothing they can do.

The more information you can give us, the better are the chances we can efficiently point you in the right direction to resolve the problem. If you don’t give us any information, frankly we probably won’t respond much, certainly not quickly.

So here are some guidelines for what to include when you report a problem:

  • Your platform (Windows or macOS, and the version), amount of RAM, disk space (hard drive or SSD) and so on
  • What audio interface are you using, where relevant
  • What plugins are you using (and are they VST, VST3 or AU versions)
    • Are you using the very latest version of the plugin in question?
    • Did the problem happen after you performed such an update?
  • What were you doing that caused the problem to occur?
    (Inserting a plugin, turning a widget, pressing your expression pedal, editing your layout, etc)
  • How long had you been using Gig Performer before you encountered the problem (years, months, days, etc)
  • Is it reproducible? If so, include the steps that we can follow to reproduce the problem
  • Did the problem happen after an upgrade to Gig Performer? Or after an upgrade to a plugin?
  • Did the problem happen with the trial version of Gig Performer
  • If you can, send us a complete stack trace, not an abbreviated version or just the beginning of one
  • Any other information you think might be helpful

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The more information you can include at the beginning, the less we will have to ask you for clarification and details and therefore the quicker we will be able to address your problem.

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Related topics:
– How to report issues and ask properly for help? (community)
– Tips to troubleshoot your setup (blog)
– Include your email address in the report

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Scaling Curves

Scaling curves allow you to control the shape of the output of a widget or convert an incoming note velocity to a new velocity. Various predefined curves are available and they can be tweaked as necessary. You can also just draw your own curve as well to achieve the effect you require.

 

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MIDI File Player Plugin

You can load up to 128 MIDI song files in a single plugin instance. Switch from one song to another, mute tracks and/or change their channel numbers. Tempo can be controlled by individual songs or you can use the global tempo and tap tempo to control the BPM interactively.

 

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Favorites and Presets

Create a sound by placing and interconnecting your desired plugins, such as a synth, some effects and perhaps a mixer. Select them all and then save the selection as a named favorite. The favorite will subsequently show up in all plugin insert menus, making it easy for you to recreate that configuration whenever you need it again. This feature is also very powerful for creating your needed sounds on your studio computer and then transferring them to your touring laptop.

 

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Probabilistic Sound Designer

Parameters you select in an open plugin are captured into the Probabilistic Sound Designer dialog window. When you click Randomize, you're only adjusting those selected parameters. Each entry in the PSD dialog has a curve but unlike widgets where the curve controls scaling, in the PSD the curves are used to define the probability of particular values being selected. Make sure the filter cutoff never gets too slow so as to block all sound. Perhaps adjust the max range of the VCA attack parameter so that the sound doesn't have too much delay. Constrain the octave ranges of the oscillators, perhaps ensuring that 1/3rd of the time we select 8' and 2/3rds of the time we select 4'. The possibilities are endless.

 

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More Widgets

Numerous new widgets are included in Gig Performer - a new sustain pedal, plastic knobs, drum pads and more colored sliders. Shapes can be colored with different borders and fill colors and morphed from rectangular to circular. Your creativity is now the limit to creating fabulous front panels in Gig Performer.

 

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MIDI Message Helper

Select MIDI devices by name. Choose the MIDI message type and adjust the appropriate parameters for the specific type

 

  

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Layout management

Gig Performer supports arbitrary resizing. Layout your widgets the way you want - resize the main window and the widgets will grow or shrink as necessary to maintain the same interrelationships. No matter what size screen you have, your front panels will still be neat and usable.

 

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Undo Support

If you move your widgets around and/or resize them, or even delete them by mistake, the Undo facility will correct your mistake. Minor moves to a widget by mistake will no longer spoil your design

 

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Plugin Channel Count

Some plugins support a large number of outputs and they depend on the traditional channel strip to control how many ports should be available.   When you only need a stereo pair, it is convenient not to have a large horizontal block. In Gig Performer, the number of available ports  is controlled by the channel count override, which can be applied to individual plugins and will be remembered when the gigfile is reloaded or if the plugin is saved as a favorite.

 

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Input muting and output fading

Rather than a single audio length tail, Gig Performer 4 gives you the ability to control input muting and output fading separately. Input muting controls how much time it takes for audio input to be silenced when you leave the rackspace. Output fading controls how much time will be taken for audio to fade out when you leave the rackspace.

 

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Faster Plugin Finder

Instead of searching through menus of perhaps hundreds of plugins (you know who you are!), the Quick Plugin Finder makes it easy to find the plugin you need by simply typing partial strings. For example, as shown here, to find the Modartt Pianoteq 7 plugins, it's enough to type pia mod 7 (in any order, by the way)  to restrict the list of available plugins to those matching your query. The Quick Plugin Finder also knows about manufacturers, presets and favorites.

 

  

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Touch Friendly Input

Any entry field can be changed by either dragging your mouse (or finger) up or down, or by using the large popup touchpad where you can just tap on the squares to enter a value. The large popup keypad also does validation so you can't enter an invalid value. You can also just tap the BPM field to pop up a larger view where you can quickly change tempo, tranpose, trigger Tap Tempo and enable Ableton Link, the last allowing you to synchronize Gig Performer with any other application that also supports Ableton Link.

 

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New Tuner Display

The tuner view makes it easy for guitarists to quickly check and adjust their tuning. You can toggle into the tuner view from any other view and toggle right back as soon as you're done. All output will be silenced automatically while you're in tuning mode. You can adjust the concert reference pitch from its default of 440 Hz to suit your own needs. The tuner view fills the entire screen so you can easily see it from a distance.

 

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