EVB3 volume drop upon repeat playing with sustain pedal

This sounds like a bug, and it's worse than you describe.
Without using the sustain pedal, if you just play a note repeatedly, that note will go silent after a number of hits.

I just tested this on 7.2.1. I'm surprised I haven't noticed it before.

I figured out what was going on here. My Fatar keyboard had the zones set weird, and it was sending every note out on both channels 1 and 3. This was confusing the EVB3, in addition to messing up the sound a bit. I'd noticed that most keyboard programs hadn't sounded good lately... as a result of this unwanted doubling.

When I recorded a sequence of many repeated notes, with it still misconfigured, the note would get quieter as the sequence plays. But on rewinding, and starting again, it would start at the correct level. I think this has something to do with the sequencer chasing or sending all notes off when rewound.

Anyway, I think the problem has to do with EVB3 getting confused about 'note off' events. Check that you're only sending it note events on one channel.

Note: for me, the problem still appears if I hold the sustain pedal...

Yes, there is a problem with EVB3, it's just not as bad as I first thought.

A real organ doesn't have a sustain pedal, so one workaround is to not use the sustain pedal.

Yes, tele player is right about the EVB3 being an organ. It is not a piano.

Therefore I suspect, that there is a certain restriction on the voices available in EVB3.

Unfortunately, the interface does not reveal this, leave alone give us an option to change it, like in EXS, the Spectrasonics family and so on.

Solution:
Play ORGAN(ic) whenever you need that sound, and forget about sustain pedals, which where designed for something else.

Just hold that note 🙂

They still should fix it, this is definitely a bug in the program.

I am not really an organ guy but.... couls this have to do with the tone wheels? Aren't you given a certain number of tonewheels and then voices use them, as voices increase, wheels are taken.

I am not an organ guy so, nobody brng out the knives.

J

It's just a bug.

Wow, what a bug!

I see that there's a "memory effect" associated with this too... When you hold the sus pedal down and repeated hit the same notes, those notes will not only reduce in volume incrementally, but they will stay reduced in volume even after the sustain pedal is released.

Try this: with a heavily distorted organ patch, hold the pedal down and play C3 a bunch of times until the volume dies, then let go of the pedal, place C3. It'll still sound quiet. But any other note will sound fine. The distortion on the patch makes the problem obvious.

This explains why I was having trouble with the plug the one and only time I used it... Thanks for bringing this up tristanjove.

As a side note, I think it's totally legal to play organ with sustain pedal, as it is to play any other instrument sound from a keyboard. Whatever gets the job done. We're not all Joey De Francesco ya know 🙂

I agree, the pedal should work correctly, even though it's not a feature of a real organ.

On a curiosity note: Hold the sustain pedal, and strike a middle C (or any note) repeatedly till its volume goes down. Then release the pedal - and notice that octaves (and some other notes, depending on the drawbar settings) of that note are also messed up. This tells us something about the internals of EVB3, though it's only of curiosity value.

Just tried that out. Very interesting...

Noticed also that the problem gets cleared up by toggling the Bypass button.