Bars & Pipes Pro 2.5b Bug List
Maintained by Mike Clarke. Last update: 30 April
2000
(NB: an old date does not indicate a dead page, but merely
that no new bugs have been found)
Bars & Pipes is a fantastic piece of software,
and is on the whole very solid and reliable. However, the last
commercially released version of Bars & Pipes Pro was v2.5b
(dated 28th April 1994) and there are a number of bugs present in
that release which may never be fixed. I thought it necessary
therefore to document all bugs that have been found so that users
are aware of them before they happen, and have some ideas for
possible fixes or workarounds. I strongly advise that you read
through the full list as there are some potentially fatal (to B&P,
not to you) bugs in there. Please note that the sourcecode to Bars
&Pipes has now been released by Microsoft, and endeavours are
underway to update the program, so hopefully some of these bugs will
be fixed in the future.
General
Data order
If you have a Control Change value and a Note that are to play
at the same time, there is no way to guarantee which will play
first. This can cause some problems - for example, if you have a
CC#10 value (pan) at the same time as a note, and your synth does
not support real-time panning (ie only notes received after the
last pan message play at that pan position), then there is a
possibilty that your synth will not play the note at the correct
pan position because it would have received the pan information
after the note had started. Or if you have a filter set to operate
via a Control Change; If the filter was previously open and you
send a new note and a close filter command at the same time, if
the note data is sent before the CC value, you will hear a nasty
click as the filter closes just after the note starts.
Set your Control data to play 1 ppqn before the
note, or the note to play 1 ppqn after. You can split your Note
Data and Control Data into two separate Tracks, and use the
PlayTime Tool to set the Data Track to 1 ppqn early.
Metronome
Switching off the Visual Metronome while the transport is
playing does not reset the colour to its default.
Stop the Transport before switching off the
Visual Metronome.
Recording
If you select Record mode (by clicking the R button, or
pressing R on the keyboard) while a Note is sounding, the Note
will sometimes stick.
Use Richard Hagen's Ravenous Bug Blatter Tool.
Saving files
If your Amiga crashes when saving a file, your work will be
completely lost due to the way B&P handles file overwriting
(it deletes the old file and then writes a new one, instead of
writing a new file, deleting the old one, then renaming the new
one).
Always save a backup, and install "NoDelete"
(aminet:util/misc/nodelete.lha) which patches the Amiga's delete
function and will backup your old file before B&P deletes it.
Startup
Sometimes when loading B&P, the startup information window
appears and then B&P hangs before opening its screen.
This seems to be some sort of memory problem.
Switch off the Amiga and then try again. Installing Enforcer has
also been reported to help. If you are still doing important work
on the Amiga and wish to continue before resetting, you will find
that your Amiga is running very slowly. This can be solved by
using a utility such as Scout to freeze the Bars&Pipes task.
However, this is not really advised as memory corruption may have
occured. You should save any other work immediately and reset.
Tempo
Selecting the "1/2" and "3/4" buttons at
the same time actually sets a new tempo. If for example, your
Tempo is 120 and you select the "3/4" button, the Tempo
will change to 90 until you deselect the "3/4" button
again to revert to 120. However, if you press the "3/4"
button and then press the "1/2" button, then both
buttons will deselect and the Tempo will be set to 1/2 of 3/4 of
the original Tempo (3/4 of 120 is 90, 1/2 of 90 is 45, so the
Tempo will now be set at 45). The same is true if you press the
buttons in the opposing order. This can be very annoying if you
set your Tempo and then completely forget about it.
Simply make sure not to set both buttons at the
same time. You might want to make a note of your Tempo in a Track
name, or with the NotePad Tool.
Bars&Pipes tempo may not be exactly the tempo it says it is.
The timing may actually be slightly out due to the nature of running
the timing interrupt from an Audio channel. Every audio chip is
slightly different and this causes tiny discrepancies between different
computers. Thus, what Bars&Pipes says is 140bpm may actually be
140.1bpm or similar.
There is no fix for this. It is essentially a
hardware problem. You would have to test lots of different Amigas
until you found the one with the most accurate timing.
Track Split
If you select a Track and then select "Split" from
the "Track" menu, the program will ask, "Are you
sure you want to split this Track into x tracks", where x
should be the number of different Notes contained in the Track. In
fact, this number is always one greater than the actual number of
Notes.
This is okay. If it asks to split into 3 Tracks,
it will actually only split into 2 as it should.
Song Construction
General
The horizontal drag bar in the window does not update when the
play marker crosses the position shown at the right of the window.
Click on the drag bar and the window will reset
to the position it was in before playing started.
If the display is zoomed in and the horizontal drag bar is
moved fully to the right, then when you zoom out the drag bar
expands to it's full width without the display position changing.
Clicking the drag bar should reset the window to the beginning of
the song, but instead resets to the beginning + the number of
measures which are not displayed when zoomed in fully and the drag
bar is shifted one page to the right.
Zoom back in and the drag bar will shrink so
that you will be able to scroll back to the beginning of the song.
A-B-A Sections
If too many different sections are marked then the song may
loop sections that are not intended to loop.
Switch all of your Tracks to Linear mode
(double-click on the Track name, and set the Linear button). This
will effectively disable all looping in the A-B-A information and
will also make your Tracks a different colour which will take some
getting used to. It is worth it though as the Section marking is
very useful, and copying/inserting/deleting by Section (using the
Lock to A-B-A button) is much faster than doing the same action as
a block of measures.
If you insert a Section with the "Lock to A-B-A"
button selected, then select "Undo" from the "Edit"
menu, the Measures in the Section (ie the Song data) are removed,
but the Section Name remains. The same is true when a Section is
resized in the same manner with the Section remaining the same
size.
Deselect the "Lock to A-B-A" button
and delete the offending Section Name.
If you copy a Section with the "Lock to A-B-A"
button selected then select "Undo" from the "Edit"
menu, the Section you just moved is deleted!
Select "Undo" again from the "Edit"
menu again to replace the missing Section, and move the Section to
its original position by hand.
Timing
MIDI Clock
Switching on Synchronise to MIDI Clocks and Playing the
Transport when no MIDI Clock is present causes B&P to play at
light speed!
Stop the Transport and hope B&P doesn't
crash. Keep away from the Timing Menu if you don't need it!
SMPTE/MTC
If the reception of MTC causes the Transport to play, manually
stopping and restarting the Transport while MTC is still being
received will cause B&P to play at light speed.
Stop the Transport and the MTC source and hope
B&P realises before it crashes.
Everytime you move the Play Marker (either directly in the
Tracks window, by the Transport, or by the keyboard ("("
and ")" on the numeric keypad), B&P plays all
Control data (CC's, Program Changes etc, excluding Note On (which
should have been optional IMHO)) that exist immediately before the
new position. This is to ensure that no matter what position the
song is started from all the sounds are correct (correct tone,
volume etc). However, if you are syncing to MTC then when B&P
jumps to the new song position stated by the MTC, previous Control
data is not played which can sometimes cause instruments to sound
incorrect.
Stop the external MTC, press the Stop button in
the Transport and play the external MTC again.
Track Editor
General
The piano keys on the left do not appear when using CGX.
Ugrade to the newest CGX.
It is impossible to scroll (and consequently edit) past the
current end of the song.
Zoom in fully, scroll to the far right, and Zoom
back out again. This will give you more space to edit into.
Note Data
Sometimes notes at the start of the first visible bar are not
acknowledged by the pointer.
Switch on "Auto-Redraw" in the
"Preferences" menu, or press Return to re-draw the
display.
When moving or copying the note on a non-standard screen (eg
Double height mode or CGX screen), the pointer (although
invisible) moves at a different ratio to the note. When the
invisible pointer gets to the top or bottom of the screen, it
wraps and cause causes the note to jump away from where you intend
it to go. The note will "trill" between the pre-jumped
and jumped position until you move the mouse sharply enough to
break away from the edge of the screen. The note will now continue
moving until it reaches the window boundary.
Highlight the note with the Pencil or Hand and
use the cursor keys to move the note, or always use the bounding
box with the Hand or Duplicator..
Control Data
Editing Control Change data using the bounding box (Move,
Copy, Delete) affects all Control Change data at the same
position.
Don't use the bounding box. If you need to
delete a big contiguous block of a specific Control Change then
set the Edit Flags and use the Event Filter to remove offending
data.
When using the pencil to edit a specific high resolution
Control Datum, the pencil will only edit the datum that is closest
to 10 ppq's previous in time to the actual one you intended on
changing.
Go to the List Editor to edit the specific
datum.
Tracks window
Song length
In some circumstances, the Song length is set to be shorter
than the actual song making it impossible to scroll to the end of
the song.
Select "Length..." from the "Song"
menu and increase the Song length, or enter "0000.00.000"
to have Bars&Pipes calculate a new correct length.
Accessories
MMC
Does not Rewind or Fast Forward.
Either use BigSys to transmit the SysEx for one
of the commands, or create two new tracks with the SysEx for
Rewind at the beginning of one track and the SysEx for Fast Foward
at the beginning of another. Keep the plugs on these Tracks closed
until you need to FF or REW and then select the Track and press
the Solo button. Play the Transport from the beginning of the song
to transmit the SysEx. Not perfect, but better than having to
possibly get out of your chair to press rewind on your tape
machine. The SysEx for REWIND is "F0 7F 7F 06 05 F7" and
for FastForward is "F0 7F 7F 06 04 F7".
Tools
General
Some Tools (VeloMap + VeloDoc for example) have the potential
to crash the computer if they are opened from inside a ToolTray.
This seems to be linked to the fact that when opened, the Tools
show the Track name in the title bar of their control windows, or
if opened from the ToolPad show the Toolname. These Tools seem to
have forgotten about the Tooltrays and if opened from one, then
when the Tool tries to display the name it will either show
garbage in the title bar or crash your Amiga.
Check a Tool by opening it from a Track before
putting it into a ToolTray. If its title bar displays the name of
the Tool, then you will have no problems. however, if it's title
bar displays the Track name then you must be careful. You can
setup the parameters you want to store before dragging it from the
Track into a ToolTray. Then never open that Tool from inside the
tray. I suggest creating a separate ToolTray called DoNotOpen
specifically for these Tools.
MacroTools
Once you have started to edit a MacroTool, there is no way to
cancel the changes you have made and revert back to the original.
Also, if you create a new MacroTool, cancelling will leave an
empty Tool in the ToolBox.
When asked if you want to update the MacroTool
to disk, select "No". Then Remove the offending Tool
from the ToolBox and re-install it again.
Alist
Intermittently crashes.
Use The MIDI Meter Tool by Ned Robinson.
Event Smoother
Sometimes when Toolizing in the Track Editor with this Tool, the
even immediately before the Edit Flags is included in the Toolize
operation.
Simply Undo the operation and Toolize again.
Pattern Tool
Be very careful with this Tool! It contains
potentially fatal flaws, but can be very useful if used carefully.
Sometimes you cannot change between drum mode and note mode
more than once.
Save your drum map. When it is loaded back in,
the Tool will always switch to the drum mode.
A "Recoverable Alert" appears when switching between
drum and note mode, or switching to the default drum map.
No fix. Save your work immediately
after this occurance and reboot your Amiga.
VeloFade
When using Toolize from the Edit menu with this tool, all
Control Change data as well Velocity data is affected at the same
position.
Use "Selective Toolize" and only
switch on Note On/Off, or use the Tool pointer and the bounding
box.
Found a bug that isn't listed here? If so then send a mail to bpbugs@fromwithin.com.
Please be as detailed possible. Try to answer the following: How is it caused? What are the symptoms? How can it be solved?