Issues with FxFloorBoard for MK1 Desktop 2022-08-25

[My ForgeName]

Hi,

as per your request, I would like to provide you with feedback on the current version of FxFloorBoard. I'm by no means and expert using FxFloorBoard, but I believe I found a couple of issues. I'm running:

FxFloorBoard Version: FxFloorBoard for MK1 Desktop 2022-08-25
OS: Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS 64 bit, Gnome 42.4 on Wayland
Katana firmware: 4.0

1. At first start, I chose "Auto select KATANA USB" and "Katana 50" as Katana Model in "Midi settings". After auto restart, the stored patches on my Katana are briefly shown, then FxFloorBoard crashes and the window closes. Restarting FxFloorBoard leads to the same crash, over and over.

After disconnecting the amp, I can uncheck the "Auto select KATANA USB" option and have to manually select "KATANA:KATANA MIDI 2" as Midi in and out. (Do I have to use different MIDI ports for in and out?)

FxFloorBoard now connects to the amp and is running stable, but has the following issue.

1. Stored patches are shown in the left hand pane under KATANA, but clicking on them doesn't change the channel on the amp. FxFloorBoard shows the selected channel in the box over the "PEDAL Fx" button, but nothing happens. The "Connected" button is solid green.

After importing the same tsl files to the LOADER section in the pane, I can select it from there and the amp settings are changed accordingly.

I suggest to solve these two issues first, before looking at the other issues I noticed.

Happy to answer any questions and looking forward to test a new version.

regards

P.S.: Just tried the "KATANA:KATANA MIDI 1" setting for Midi in and out. It changed from panel to channel A1. Then I tried to switch to channel A2 and FxFloorBoard crashed. When restarting FxFloorBoard, the window shows, but then instantly crashed again.

[gumtownbassman]

Thanks for your report, I have uploaded a newer version which should fix the crash issue, was due to some Katana patches originating from GT-100 files, a fix has been applied for that.
The Midi device to run the editor on Linux must be "KATANA:KATANA MIDI 3" as this one has the access for "editor mode" switching in the Katana, and is the only device which send patch and system data.
If you would like to try the latest version (17th September 2022), I am hoping it will bring a better experience for you, Thanks again for try this out.
Cheers
Colin.

[My ForgeName]

Hi,

thanks for your quick fix and reply. The last version has fixed the channel switching issue. Unfortunately I already found another issue:

• "Quick save to file" of a stored patch on the amp leads to a crash and leaves a 0 bit file in the default patch folder.

Not really a bug, more of an inconvenience. When importing my existing patches I noticed that:

• Most patch names in the "Loader" section are ending/showing a quotation mark at the end of the name. And the numbering of the list starts with 5 instead of 1.

• Importing a patch for GT-1000 leads to a crash. Not that this patch is intended for the Katana 50, but maybe you want to somehow handle this behaviour? Will attach the patch to this message.

And maybe you want to consider these two feature requests:

• Could you make sure to save assign.kat, license.txt and preferences.xml files to the installation folder. Otherwise, if you start FxFloorBoard via a desktop launcher, or a link, you end up with two different sets of files/settings, depending on which launcher you use to start FxFloorBoard. I'm linking directly to "KatanaFxFloorBoard" and not to "AppRun" if that makes a difference?

• For MK 1 owners. Could you somehow show, which effects/settings couldn't be activated, when importing a MK 2 patch? This way one would know how to replace/simulate the missing effect, if possible. Would be ideal, to make this information permanently available and not only showing it, when importing the patch. Ideally not only showing which effect couldn't be activated, but also displaying it's settings.

One more thing. Is there a way to edit, or remove a patch in the "Loader" section?

Happy to try and comment on an upcoming version.

regards

[gumtownbassman]

Thanks again for your analysis, great to get feedback !!
I now see the issue with quick save, and seems to be a problem on linux only, maybe a file write permission thing.
Have not seen the Loader section names with quotation marks yet, but will keep looking.
The Loader numbering also relates to midi controller patch numbering, so the first 5 places are allocated to the Katana channels (5 for the 50watt, 9 for the 100watt) so that in one midi bank you can select 128 patches, so in the loader section the 50 watt Katana can have a maximum of 123,patches ,and the 100 Katana can have up to 119 Loader patches.
That is where the Midi Controller device settings comes into play, where you can add a midi controller device, so to change/select up to 128 patches, and also use the patch/global "Midi Assigns" to control up to 16 concurrent parameters.

I have added an exception to the patch file code to not allow GT-1000 patches to load, the trip up was the Mk1 Katana uses GT-100 format *..tsl files , so the file header search was looking for device phrase "GT-100" (phrase must contain GT-100) which was also seeing GT-1000 as a valid match.
To write/insert/delete a Loader patch, just click on the Write button and select the patch in the drop-down combo list, depending on which patch, certain options will appear, delete will be one of them.
But beware the Loader has issues with selecting the correct patch to delete, and requires further work on that, i sometimes deletes the wrong patch.

Not sure what you are doing with the 'app linking' and there is no installation folder as such, the folder and app are transportable, so the executable writes the settings relative to where it is placed and run from, the 'shortcut' link should only enable the executable to run from within it container folder, and write settings files within it.

The differences between the Mk1 and Mk2 after the Mk2 firmware 2 update are now so vast, that a comparison might not be that useful, with things like the "Contour" control, I don't se the information on "Contour selector 2 using Contour map 4" as being much value, same with the three global EQ's as each patch can now select a global EQ, so the patch user does not know what the EQ settings are (this is going to be an issue for MK2 users too sharing patches but no-one realizes it yet), same for the Mic settings, where you have Mic1 or Mic2, those won't mean much to a Mk1 user.

Thanks for your valued feedback
I hope to update again soon.

Cheers

[My ForgeName]

Thanks. I'm happy to help and do a minor part in supporting your enormous effort.

Regarding the quick save issue. I maxed out permissions for all relevant folders. The issue still remains. I ran FxFloorBoard from terminal and also using strace. Here are both outputs, in case they are of use for you.

Output terminal:

floorBoardDisplay::autoConnect() x 1
midiIO::sendSysxMsg:  "F07E000601F7"   MsgType= "identity"
midiIO::sendSysxMsg:  "F041000000003311100000000000001060F7"   MsgType= "name"
midiIO::sendSysxMsg:  "F0410000000033120001000000017EF7"   MsgType= "send only"
libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile

Output strace:

ioctl(7, SNDRV_SEQ_IOCTL_QUERY_NEXT_PORT, 0x7ffe2e5a70f0) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
ioctl(7, SNDRV_SEQ_IOCTL_QUERY_NEXT_CLIENT, 0x7ffe2e5a6fc0) = 0
ioctl(7, SNDRV_SEQ_IOCTL_QUERY_NEXT_PORT, 0x7ffe2e5a70f0) = 0
ioctl(7, SNDRV_SEQ_IOCTL_GET_CLIENT_INFO, 0x7ffe2e5a71a0) = 0
clock_nanosleep(CLOCK_REALTIME, 0, {tv_sec=0, tv_nsec=0}, 0x7ffe2e5a7450) = 0
write(12, "\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0", 8)        = 8
write(12, "\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0", 8)        = 8
write(12, "\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0", 8)        = 8
poll([{fd=10, events=POLLIN|POLLOUT}], 1, -1) = 1 ([{fd=10, revents=POLLOUT}])
writev(10, [{iov_base="+\0\1\0", iov_len=4}], 1) = 4
futex(0x7ffe2e5a67b8, FUTEX_WAIT_BITSET_PRIVATE|FUTEX_CLOCK_REALTIME, 0, NULL, FUTEX_BITSET_MATCH_ANY) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
futex(0x55fe370207f8, FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE, 1) = 0
poll([{fd=10, events=POLLIN|POLLOUT}], 1, -1) = 1 ([{fd=10, revents=POLLOUT}])
writev(10, [{iov_base=";\3\5\0 \0\0\1\0\0\0\0\v\0\37\1\27\2 \0\202\3\n\0\33\0\0\1 \0\0\1"..., iov_len=76}], 1) = 76
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/home/XXX/Documents/Gitarre/Katana-MK1-FxFloorBoard/XXX/Panel.tsl", O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC|O_CLOEXEC, 0666) = 35
--- SIGSEGV {si_signo=SIGSEGV, si_code=SEGV_MAPERR, si_addr=0x28} ---
+++ killed by SIGSEGV (core dumped) +++
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

I also changed the default patch folder path in settings to point to the Katana-MK1-FxFloorBoard/saved_patches/quick_save folder, but to no avail.

As for the quotation marks issue, I noticed that there seems to be a general issue, when importing patches. When importing my standard bundle file, some patch names are truncated. I’ll attach this file to this comment. After importing you will find four “AD Highway” patches. They should actually read something like “AD Highway 1,R”, “AD Highway 1,S”, etc.

The Loader deleting the wrong patch, really is a bad issue…

Using the Write button to delete a patch doesn't’ seem overly intuitive to me. I would expect something like a right-click on the patch in the Loader to rename, or delete. But I guess, once you found out how it works, you can live with it.

The “app linking”, simply put, is an icon you can use in the Linux version of a Windows task bar, to start a program. Instead of opening the file explorer and click your way to the FxFloorBoard executable, it’s a one click on the icon. Just a matter of convenience. FxFloorBoard yet writes a new set of assign.kat, license.txt and preferences.xml to the home folder, instead of the Katana-MK1-FxFloorBoard folder. No big issue. In case someone else is reading this, you can create a soft link in the home folder, pointing to the corresponding files in the FxFlooBoard folder. Problem solved.

Thanks for enlighten me on the difference between the two Katana versions. I was assuming that there have been added further effects. In this case I would’ve found it useful to replace e.g. Distortion_Mk2 with Distortion_Mk1 and try to match the sound. But as it is, this certainly is obsolete.

As always, take my comments as suggestions and I’m looking forward to any new version.

regards

[My ForgeName]

Hi,

fyi. I’ve been playing around with the patch folder path, to see, if I can get the „Quick save to file“ function to work.

I noticed, that the patches in the „Saved Patches“ dropdown field top right are only shown, when the path is set to „/home/XXX/Documents/Gitarre/Katana-MK1-FxFloorBoard“. Any other path will leave this dropdown field empty.

On the downside, even with full access read, write, execute permissions , „Quick save to file“ still isn’t working. Neither is „Save as Tone Central Patch (*.tsl)“ from the „File“ menu, again leading to a crash with an empty patch file. .

„Save currently open patch file (.tsl, .syx)“ on the other hand is working, when manually adding the „.syx“ extension. However it is only working once. The next time I’m trying to save a patch as a „.syx“ file, the file save dialog doesn’t pop up. Using the alternative „*.tsl“ file extension once again is leading to a crash.

regards

[gumtownbassman]

Hi,
I have uploaded an updated Linux (only so far) version with fixes to the file save/quick save issue, patch names in the loader, and the non-katana *.tsl files.
Thanks for your patience and your valued feedback :)
Cheers
Colin.

[My ForgeName]

Hi,

thanks for the new version. "Quick save to file" appears to be working now.

Could you explain, what's the difference between "Overwrite loader" and "Insert into loader"?

Maybe you would consider to add an explanaiton for these buttons, when hovering the mouse over it, as other user might ask the same question? Hitting "F1" aka "what's this" doesn't give an anser.

I just noticed, that the imported patches aren't truncated any more and the trailing quotation marks are gone as well. Great job!

regards

[gumtownbassman]

The button descriptions may be a bit ambiguous,
"Overwrite Loader" means to replace a selected patch in the Loader patch list.
"Insert into Loader" means to squeeze a new patch in between two existing patches in the Loader list.