Expression pedal latency in 2024 (rev. 3.2)

[Jack Liu]

Hi all, this is my first post here. I first wanted to say thanks Dave for the great product. I'm having a problem with my FCB1010 with EurekaProm 3.2 though, where the expression pedals are uncomfortably laggy in PP mode. This problem seems to be documented in a few other threads:

Expression Pedal Latency (last updated 2019)

EurekaPROM 3.1 Expression lag With AxeFX II MKII (last updated 2020)
EurekaProm3 IO - Expr. Pedal IO (last updated 2022)

Here's what I can add to the past reports. I tried slamming the expression pedals as fast as possible, and recorded the output in both REAPER and Ableton Live, which I've attached here. You can see the filters move at a relatively slow and constant rate, despite me maxing the pedals in an instant. Someone in the first thread described it as "a backlog of midi signals that continue to affect the target parameter after I stop moving the pedal," which feels like what I'm experiencing too. In fact, I can see on the unit itself that the MIDI light continues to blink for maybe ~0.5 seconds after the pedal bottoms out.

In these clips the FCB1010 is connected to my computer using MIDI to USB, but I also repeated this experiment where I connected it to a Line 6 HX Stomp directly via 5-pin MIDI, and it behaved the same.

Is there any update on this? I feel that this issue cripples the EurekaProm in some very essential use cases (wah-wah, volume swell, etc). Thanks!

[Jack Liu]

Ah, I forgot to attach the clips:

https://streamable.com/d49wym REAPER

https://streamable.com/9or2me Ableton Live

[Dave]

Hi Jack, and thanks for the kind words.

Yes, there is a tradeoff we made on the expression pedals that isn't great for quick pedal movement. We found that large jumps in pedal values had some really bad sonic characteristics for some MIDI-based effect units, so we "smooth" the output to prevent large steps. If you slam the pedal from one extreme to another, you can feel the lag. For small movements, you shouldn't notice anything, because no smoothing would be required.

Sorry if it's causing issues with your usage.

[Jack Liu]

That makes sense, it's good to have a definitive answer on this longstanding topic. I do think I can feel a little lag even when making smaller movements, but it's something I can work around for now. Perhaps in a future revision, the smoothing could be enabled or disabled, depending on what your use case is. From the previous threads, it looks like it'd be an appreciated option. 😁