Been a long time user if GP live and something been bothering me for a while. I don;t use song lists or anything like that. Strictly as VST host.
Quite often I’ll power up and there will be small changes that occur in my panels and settings. For instance a VST could all of a sudden be “ON” even though I save the initial MIDI value to OFF.
Other things are tuning knobs "mapped to a VST’s tune/pitch parameter.
Other things are cosmetic - like the background color in a none mapped blank panel.
The worst though is the unpredictable nature how it recognized 2 identical USB Midi Keyboard controllers… even though I explicitly named them differently in Windows, and am careful about the order I boot things up. Sometimes it mixes up one for the other. I tried clearing out the USB assignments using USB view, but it still randomly happens.
The bottom line is while GP is a great program and I still use it, it Doesn’t give me that total confidence that other programs do. I never know when some little thing or setting or level etc. will be just bit off…
One thing I’d look out for is if your controller keyboard is sending MIDI messages you are not expecting.
I’ve had an issue before where a VST would randomly change some parameters, but only occasionally - could not work out what was happening. Eventually found out it was due to a couple of faulty / dusty knobs on my controller sending midi control messages without any physical input, which were being acted on by the VST.
So maybe check your midi monitor for 5 mins, and check there’s nothing unexpected?
My workflow now is to always tick the boxes to filter out unneeded control changes and sysex in any midi input boxes (wiring view) from my controller . Any values I need to change live are mapped to a widget, and the widget mapped to a specific midi message from my controller. That way I can be confident things only change when I want them to, the changes are visible, and the amount of possible changes are restricted.
Regarding the Windows midi inputs, that has always been a pain, and is totally down to how Windows handles MIDI. For years we have followed the mantra of plugging gear into the same physical USB connectors (if you don’t you end up with multiple devices registered in Windows), and turning on the kit before starting any program using MIDI.
As @npudar already mentioned, this is not a “Gig Performer issue”… it’s caused by Windows.
Even if you painstakingly take care of the sequence and port where you plug in your controllers, everything may change with the next major Windows update…
What a user can do, or rather what one definitely should do, to handle these Windows effects within Gig Performer, is to use GP’s “Rig Manager”!
Rig Manager allows you to create name aliases for your controllers, which you would then use in your rackspaces (instead of using the physical USB-names of the devices).
These aliases are available as “Midi device aliases” and also as device-alias dependent “Control aliases”. Sounds difficult, but it’s no rocket science.
Say, you create a Midi-device alias named “Main keys” which you can just “learn” with a single press of a key on your keyboard controller. After that (“Main keys” should be shown in green color), you can define as many “Control aliases” as you need, which will be connected to your “Device alias” name - NOT the physical device name!). I.e. create a “Knob 1” alias, learn it with a knob on your controller, create “Main VOL” alias, learn it with a fader on your keyboard, “Mute all” learned with a controller’s button… etc.
All these Control-Aliases will then belong to the corresponding “device alias”.
I.e. the control-alias “MAin VOL” will not belong to the physical USB-device named " Roland A800Pro(1)" - it’s corresponding with the device alias “Main Keys”… whatever USB device it may represent! (the device can be re-assigned with a mouseclick and a press of a key.)
If you once succeeded in establishing the before mentioned “aliases” in all your rackspaces, you are able to correct every setting in every rackspace with just one or two clicks in Rig manager.
Whenever Windows enjoys its “name canging game” again, enter the Rig Manager, re-associate the “new” midi device of your keyboard controllers device-alias, press a key and you should be good to go…
as long as all widget mapping and all midi blocks in all of your rackspaces are created using these aliases and not physical devices or physical midi messages!
Something similar has happened to me in the past. This was due to the fact that I did not save the snapshot, so it I think it stayed based on the last time I use it (or reverted back how it was saved in the variation).
But this may not apply to you because I heavily use the capture variation setting to songparts tool (little disc). But, I figured maybe this could help you…
So, in your case, maybe use the little disc icon to save the widget settings in the variation and maybe that will fix this issue for you (?)