Ableton VST MIDI out silencing

Audio Plugins
1

I’m working on a plugin controlled by Launchpad that does audio in, audio out, midi in, and midi out (midi from and to the launchpad that is). Most of it works as a VST. However, Ableton seems to block midi out until the first signal of midi has been seen going in. There are probably reasons for this, and I relate this to Live also silencing audio if none has been produced for a few seconds. Has anybody had any experience with this, or even known about a workaround? As it stands I cannot have the plugin reset the launchpad lights on song load.
I would post this on Ableton’s forum as well, just expect to see more audio developers here.
To recreate, just build a new plugin that initialises a initialisedMidi bool to false, then in the processBlock function:

if (!initialisedMidi)
{
    midiIn.addEvent (someMidiMessage, 0);
    initialisedMidi = true;
    return;
}

The someMidiMessage will not go through to the launchpad hardware (I would guess no hardware at all). If I add a midiIn.isEmpty() check, the launchpad reset message will go through (and adding impulse in the AudioSampleBuffer will be audible, etc).

if (!initialisedMidi && !midiIn.isEmpty())
{
    midiIn.addEvent (someMidiMessage, 0);
    initialisedMidi = true;
    return;
}

I wish it was my lack of understanding the prepareToPlay/processBlock/releaseResources cycle, but with debugger I found out that the message was actually sent out, just silenced.

I hope somebody else has seen this same problem, eg. sequencer plugins I figure would suffer from this same thing.

2

Hi, have a read of this, maybe this will help?

3

Thanks for the link, but in my case the processBlock function is actually fully executed, I don’t even have to start transport first. I can inspect the MidiBuffer before it goes out, and it’ll have the message. Just simply blocked (doesn’t matter if it’s a note on or any other message, in this case it’s a launchpad reset message B0 00 00, but I’ve tested note on/off as well). My only idea left is setting ‘Plugin is a Synth’. If that doesn’t help, I will have to talk with an Ableton dev I guess.