MIDI Metronome
Having had my last question so speedily and expertly answered (thanks Xon Xoff). I thought I’d ask about something else that’s been bugging me for a while.
The NTrack metronome. I can get it to play via the PC speaker with no problems at all but when I try to use the MIDI option I get nothing. I know I’ve had it working in the past but had a good go at it the other day and had no joy. I tried changing various MIDI settings but without success.
Any ideas.
Thanks
Martin
| Quote (plumbum @ Feb. 01 2007,14:14) |
| Having had my last question so speedily and expertly answered (thanks Xon Xoff). I thought I’d ask about something else that’s been bugging me for a while. The NTrack metronome. I can get it to play via the PC speaker with no problems at all but when I try to use the MIDI option I get nothing. I know I’ve had it working in the past but had a good go at it the other day and had no joy. I tried changing various MIDI settings but without success. Any ideas. Thanks Martin |
Hi Martin,
I don’t use the metronome but since I seem to be on a roll, I’ll have a go.
Version 5 here - things may be different in earlier versions.
First up, open Preferences, goto the MIDI tab and MIDI devices and make sure you have some MIDI devices enabled. N-track doesn’t need to use one of these devices for the metronome but it might help later…
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{Sidebar. MIDI is “instructions” to a device to play a sound. It is not “sounds” in its own right.
In the old days, MIDI devices were all pretty much hardware modules that sent instructions to each other to play notes.
When the PC came along MIDI instructions could be “recorded” on a PC and then transmitted out of the PC to one of the MIDI sound modules. The Roland MPU 401 was one of the first hardware devices for a PC to enable this to happen.
Then someone came along and built a little MIDI sound module into a soundcard. At first they were cheesy, 80’s game console type sounds, and then, as things got better, the cards progressed to more realistic sounds, and more advanced features (eg soundfonts). But realise that the soundcard module is just playing the MIDI instructions the PC sends to it… but this time we have the luxury of being able to stay in the box.
And now we have VSTi (VST instruments). These are plugins that can accept an MIDI stream and play sounds for us. Even better.
So, we need a MIDI stream, and a MIDI device that can make noise for us. Some PCs still have MPU401 style outputs so that MIDI can be sent to external hardware modules. If you choose to send MIDI to such a “device” with a hardware module on the end of the cable, your MIDI instructions will spill out of the cable, all over the floor and you won’t hear anything.
}.
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Anyway, make sure you select a MIDI device that can actually make some sound. The MS GM synth thing is bound to be in there. It’s not very good for what we want but it will possibly do for now to test things.
Now CNTRL-leftclick the metronome icon, select “Output to MIDI” check box, place the cursor in the device selector next to the check box and select a suitable device. Click the TEST button and hopefully you should hear something. If not, try another output device. I see that “n track drums” is in there. That should work.
Make sure that the MIDI channel is set to “10”. This is the one usually reserved to drums sounds. Other channels may generate sounds but they may not be very useful.
It is possible that if you if you select a sound source that is part of your soundcard you may have it muted or turned down. Check the windows mixer for that.
X
.
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Do yourself a favor…The metronome is not that great since it relys on the Microsoft midi synth: Make yourself a midi track, paint in some hi-hat quarter notes and run it through another software synth (the soundfont player SFZ from www.rgcaudio.com is free…)
| Quote (TimOBrien @ Feb. 01 2007,15:55) |
| Do yourself a favor...The metronome is not that great since it relys on the Microsoft midi synth: Make yourself a midi track, paint in some hi-hat quarter notes and run it through another software synth (the soundfont player SFZ from www.rgcaudio.com is free...) |
Actually, I second that.... or make a drum click track in Fruity or Acid or something.
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| The metronome is not that great since it relys on the Microsoft midi synth |
While the MS Synth isn’t a good option for using as the sound of the metronome, it’s not the metronome’s fault, and it a way it’s not the MS Synth’s fault either. It’s up to the user to select a MIDI device that doesn’t have any built-in latency, of which all software synths have, when needing to keep things in sync.
The MS Synth is an old software synth that has been around since Win95 days in some form or other (though not included as the MS Synth in the OS until Win98 SE as part of DirectX and as a add-on via DirectX in Win98 Original— before that it was included with Interactive Music Architecture, but wasn’t exposed to all applications).
It’s original reason for existence was to give a consistent MIDI synth sound, and a relatively good sounding one considering everything, regardless of the soundcard. It still does that, but times have changed. Remember back to 1995-1998 computer sounds.
Back in the old days the only onboard MIDI synth was FM and those sounded really crappy. These days almost all home soundcards have some sort of MIDI synth that is way better than the the MS Synth.
Of course that gets back to the original problem. Not all soundcards are created equal and some have no onboard synth. For folks with those soundcards the MS Synth is their only option…in other words the MS Synth should be last resort for all of us…but it still has a use.
HI
The integrate sound in the mothercard is bad. The MIDI for hardware ( PCI or external instrument) is better.
My option:
http://www.sonicspot.com/metrobus/metrobus.html
Thanks for all your comments. Well, the good news is that I’ve got it working. I can select Delta AP MIDI as the MIDI device since I have a Delta 2496 sound card. I think where I was going wrong was not having the right device (NDrums) selected in the dialog (I didn’t realise it was a drop down).
As you say I can program a click track or I’ve started using a TonePort for recording which has a very good metronome. It was just bugging me that I couldn’t get it working.
Thanks again for the help guys.
glad you got it working. for your (or anyone else’s) general edification, you could also use n drums. Of course, I haven’t figured it all out myself either, but you could create a simple pattern in ndrums and create a midi file just to start it. As I say, I haven’t had much opportunity to fiddle with n-drums, but in theory, you should just be able to create a midi track with the note c3 at the begining and that be it. you wouldn’t be able to use another midi device, but at least it would be better than MS synth.
-Fish