Converting Midi to Audio with M-Audio 2496

[Phil]

Hello everyone. I finally did away with the Soundblaster Audigy Mp3
and replaced it with an M-Audio 2496. The card has a real nice sound,
but I don't know how to convert the midi to audio.

With the Soundblaster I would simply insert another audio track, "arm"
that track, and with a single click record all the midi and audio
tracks onto the new audio track. I would export the audio track as a
wav and convert the wav to an mp3.

If I try doing this with the 2496, the audio tracks record onto the
new track but the midi tracks won't.

So what's a boy to do,
Phil

[GDoxta]

What program are you using to sequence your data?

[Phil]

I failed to mention that I‘m using a Yamaha PSR-520 keyboard connected
to the MIDI (5-pin) input and output connections of the 2496 card.

And also, I'd like to know why the Gain control of my Behringer MX602A
needs to be turned almost all the way up when recording with a mic.
The volume faders in the monitor mixer of the 2496 are all the way up.

[Mike Rivers]

In article > writes:

> Hello everyone. I finally did away with the Soundblaster Audigy Mp3
> and replaced it with an M-Audio 2496. The card has a real nice sound,
> but I don't know how to convert the midi to audio.

> If I try doing this with the 2496, the audio tracks record onto the
> new track but the midi tracks won't.

That's because there's no audio in a MIDI track. It's just a bunch of
data that tells something when to play audio. Your SoundBlaster card
had a synthesizer built into it, and that's what provided the sounds
played by the MIDI data. Your M-Audio card is for audio only, and it
has no MIDI synthesizer.

You could put the SoundBlaster card back in your computer if you have
an available slot and use that to play your MIDI files, but you'll
need some sort of mixer to mix the output of the SoundBlaster and the
M-Audio cards if you want to hear MIDI and audio at the same time.

There are a number of "soft synths" out there which use MIDI data to
play sampled sounds that are stored on your computer's disk.
Gigastudio is perhaps one of the most popular, but it's possible that
your M-Audio card came with one bundled with it. If you install a soft
synth, you'll be able to play the MIDI-controlled audio through your
M-Audio card. It will almost certainly sound better than your
SoundBlaster.

--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

[Peter Larsen]

Mike Rivers wrote:
>
> In article > writes:
>
> > Hello everyone. I finally did away with the Soundblaster Audigy Mp3
> > and replaced it with an M-Audio 2496. The card has a real nice sound,
> > but I don't know how to convert the midi to audio.
>
> > If I try doing this with the 2496, the audio tracks record onto the
> > new track but the midi tracks won't.
>
> That's because there's no audio in a MIDI track. It's just a bunch of
> data that tells something when to play audio. Your SoundBlaster card
> had a synthesizer built into it, and that's what provided the sounds
> played by the MIDI data. Your M-Audio card is for audio only, and it
> has no MIDI synthesizer.

In which case windows installs an excellent softsynth, but he has to
select to use it, i. e. to RHFM .... O;-) ... it is explained how to
there. The issue is that the default setup expects him to have an
external synth, so he has to modify the setup to point at the one Steve
Ballmer provided on behalf of Bill.

> You could put the SoundBlaster card back in your computer if you have
> an available slot and use that to play your MIDI files,

Don't, the actual soundblaster may be different, but the soundblasters I
have met do not mix well with other cards, specifically removing them
helps greatly with a DiO2448 because then it works.

> I'm really Mike Rivers )


Kind regards

Peter Larsen

--
************************************************** ***********
* My site is at: http://www.muyiovatki.dk *
************************************************** ***********

[Phil]

(Mike Rivers) wrote in message news:<znr1069624198k@trad>...
> That's because there's no audio in a MIDI track. It's just a bunch of
> data that tells something when to play audio. Your SoundBlaster card
> had a synthesizer built into it, and that's what provided the sounds
> played by the MIDI data. Your M-Audio card is for audio only, and it
> has no MIDI synthesizer.

Sorry I didn't mention it in my opening post, but my Yamaha psr-520
keyboard records midi to the Cakewalk (home studio xl) midi tracks.
There is no problem recording midi. But the only way I know to make an
mp3 file of my song project (for the internet) is to bounce all midi
and audio tracks to a single track, export it as a wav file and
convert the wav file to an mp3 file. I use Musicmatch for this. Then I
upload it onto soundclick.com.

The audio tracks bounce very nicely onto a single audio track, but not
the midi. I like really like this card and want to keep it. The sound
better and there's very little hiss.

Thanks in advance
Phil

[Arny Krueger]

"Mike Rivers" > wrote in message
news:znr1069624198k@trad
> In article >
>
> There are a number of "soft synths" out there which use MIDI data to
> play sampled sounds that are stored on your computer's disk.
> Gigastudio is perhaps one of the most popular, but it's possible that
> your M-Audio card came with one bundled with it. If you install a soft
> synth, you'll be able to play the MIDI-controlled audio through your
> M-Audio card. It will almost certainly sound better than your
> SoundBlaster.

Ironically, all versions of windows since WIN98SE have included a Roland
softsynth. It gets rolled into action if you hook up many different consumer
USB sound devices such as speakers and audio interfaces.

It's always been a bit of a mystery to me why the various people who make
pro audio cards haven't included the commands to load Windows's built-in
softsynth in their .INF files. This may change in the future as vendors
recognize that many consumers see audio production interfaces as high end
audio products.

[Mike Rivers]

In article > writes:

> > Your M-Audio card is for audio only, and it
> > has no MIDI synthesizer.
>
> In which case windows installs an excellent softsynth, but he has to
> select to use it, i. e. to RHFM .... O;-) ... it is explained how to
> there.

Is this excellent softsynth a Windows thing (when was the last time
you saw a Windows manual?) or one that comes along with the M-Audio
card? Do I already have one on my Windows XP (pre-installed by Dell)
that I could be using instead of the sleazy sounding SoundBlaster
compat that's built into the motherboard? If so, how do I do that?



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

[Mike Rivers]

In article > writes:

> Sorry I didn't mention it in my opening post, but my Yamaha psr-520
> keyboard records midi to the Cakewalk (home studio xl) midi tracks.

Right - it records MIDI tracks, but you need the PSR to play those
back. You could connect a cable from the keyboard's audio output to
your sound card line input, play the MIDI tracks from Cakewalk, and
record the audio on a new pair of audio tracks. Then mix the newly
recorded audio version of your MIDI tracks with any other audio tracks
you have recorded, and you'll have the complete song with all the
parts in audio format, ready to convert to MP3.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

[Mike Rivers]

In article > writes:

> Ironically, all versions of windows since WIN98SE have included a Roland
> softsynth. It gets rolled into action if you hook up many different consumer
> USB sound devices such as speakers and audio interfaces.

Well, I'll be hornswoggled! After poking around in the Windows control
panel, I found (under MIDI devices) Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth. In
fact, that's the only MIDI playback device available on this computer.
After sorting through several mixer applets, I found the one with the
MIDI Wavetable Synth on it, unmuted it, and I could play a MIDI file,
but it played back through the laptop's built-in speakers, not through
the VX Pocket card. I don't know how to route it to that, if it's even
possible.

> It's always been a bit of a mystery to me why the various people who make
> pro audio cards haven't included the commands to load Windows's built-in
> softsynth in their .INF files. This may change in the future as vendors
> recognize that many consumers see audio production interfaces as high end
> audio products.

Maybe they did, and they just didn't tell me. And maybe the guy who
was asking about it just doesn't know how to turn it on.




--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

[Arny Krueger]

"Mike Rivers" > wrote in message
news:znr1069694663k@trad

> In article >
> writes:

>> Ironically, all versions of windows since WIN98SE have included a
>> Roland softsynth. It gets rolled into action if you hook up many
>> different consumer USB sound devices such as speakers and audio
>> interfaces.

> Well, I'll be hornswoggled! After poking around in the Windows control
> panel, I found (under MIDI devices) Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth. In
> fact, that's the only MIDI playback device available on this computer.
> After sorting through several mixer applets, I found the one with the
> MIDI Wavetable Synth on it, unmuted it, and I could play a MIDI file,
> but it played back through the laptop's built-in speakers, not through
> the VX Pocket card.

Yes, it's playing through the sound card on the laptop's system board.

> I don't know how to route it to that, if it's even possible.

My recollection is that you there is no user interface for rerouting it.

>> It's always been a bit of a mystery to me why the various people who
>> make pro audio cards haven't included the commands to load Windows's
>> built-in softsynth in their .INF files. This may change in the
>> future as vendors recognize that many consumers see audio production
>> interfaces as high end audio products.

> Maybe they did, and they just didn't tell me. And maybe the guy who
> was asking about it just doesn't know how to turn it on.

My recollection is that you there is no user interface that needs to be
accessed to turn it on.

[Mike Rivers]

In article > writes:

> > Well, I'll be hornswoggled! After poking around in the Windows control
> > panel, I found (under MIDI devices) Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth.

> Yes, it's playing through the sound card on the laptop's system board.
> My recollection is that you there is no user interface for rerouting it.

So how does it know where to go? Seems like if the VX Pocket is the
default audio device, and I have the "use only the default device" box
checked, it should route the softsynth audio there. When I click on
About, it shows the Roland logo and also lists the "VXpocket out #1"
as the audio output deveice for the synthesizer. Very puzzling.

But . . . there's a choice of VX Pocket devices. There's "VXpocket #1,
which I think got set when I was playing with Cubasis on this computer
(came with the US-122 that I reviewed). When I change that to
"VXpocket Audio Card (WDM)", I get playback through the VX card. Maybe
the "#1" variation is an ASIO driver. Seems like maybe that's what let
me use the VX at 24-bit resolution.


> My recollection is that you there is no user interface that needs to be
> accessed to turn it on.

Since I don't normally have any other MIDI sound devices on the
computer, the Wavetable Synth is the only choice in the pulldown
window for MIDI. When I plug in my USB MIDI Interface, that appears in
the pulldown window. So maybe if there's another MIDI interface in the
system (like the original poster, who had a MIDI keyboard plugged into
something, unless I'm getting this mixed up with another thread) all
he has to do in order to get his MIDI tracks to play out the sound
card is to select that and make sure he has a WDM (rather than ASIO or
something else) driver selected for it.

You might guess, correctly, that I don't play many MIDI files around
here any more.

I love laptop computers. They're so much easier to throw across the
room than desktops, and they do a little less damage to whatever they
hit.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

[Phil]

(Mike Rivers) wrote in message news:<znr1069693239k@trad>...

> > Sorry I didn't mention it in my opening post, but my Yamaha psr-520
> > keyboard records midi to the Cakewalk (home studio xl) midi tracks.
>
> Right - it records MIDI tracks, but you need the PSR to play those
> back. You could connect a cable from the keyboard's audio output to
> your sound card line input, play the MIDI tracks from Cakewalk, and
> record the audio on a new pair of audio tracks. Then mix the newly
> recorded audio version of your MIDI tracks with any other audio tracks
> you have recorded, and you'll have the complete song with all the
> parts in audio format, ready to convert to MP3.


I think you got something there Mike. Tell me if this sounds right.

I connected the two AUX Outs from the keyboard to the two soundcard
inputs. This worked and I recorded a Midi to audio track. But, even
with the keyboard volume all the way up, the midi to audio track
wasn't loud enough. I was able to get the volume loud enough by
turning the track's volume control all the way up and I also had to
turn up the trim control.

Thanks,
Phil

[Phil]

(Phil) wrote in message >...
> (Mike Rivers) wrote in message news:<znr1069693239k@trad>...

> I think you got something there Mike. Tell me if this sounds right.
>
> I connected the two AUX Outs from the keyboard to the two soundcard
> inputs. This worked and I recorded a Midi to audio track. But, even
> with the keyboard volume all the way up, the midi to audio track
> wasn't loud enough. I was able to get the volume loud enough by
> turning the (new midi to audio) track's volume control all the way
up and I also had to turn up the trim control. (Then I could bounce
all tracks onto an audio track with a good audio mix.)
>
> Thanks,
> Phil


I'm at it again early today. I found that if I do the following, I can
get the new audio track (containing the midi sounds) to record into
the red:

1. Change the keyboard's volume default setting from 100 to 127
2. Turn the keyboard master volume control to the max
3. And raise the velocity levels in the piano view of the Cakewalk
project
from the default setting of 100 to 127

But what is it with the low volume levels with this soundcard? I can
just about hear the metronome count-in thru the pc speaker. And as I
said earlier, recording thru the mic requires that the gain control be
turned up almost all the way. With the soundblaster I had to turn it
up very little. And all faders in the monitor mixer of the delta
control panel are all the way up.
Phil

[Mike Rivers]

In article > writes:

> I connected the two AUX Outs from the keyboard to the two soundcard
> inputs. This worked and I recorded a Midi to audio track. But, even
> with the keyboard volume all the way up, the midi to audio track
> wasn't loud enough. I was able to get the volume loud enough by
> turning the track's volume control all the way up and I also had to
> turn up the trim control.

Nothing wrong with doing that if you can stand the noise. The problem
is that your keyboard's analog outputs are probably scaled to a
"non-pro" or "instrument amplifier" level, perhaps as much as 20 dB
lower than the level that your M-Audio interface requires to reach
full scale digital level.

Does the sound card's mixer or driver applet have a switch to select
the nominal input level (typically +4 dBu to -10 dBV)? If so, make
sure it's set to the -10 level. That will get you more gain at the
input of the sound card and increase the record level on disk.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

[Phil]

(Mike Rivers) wrote in message news:<znr1069767824k@trad>...
> In article > writes:
>
> > I connected the two AUX Outs from the keyboard to the two soundcard
> > inputs. This worked and I recorded a Midi to audio track. But, even
> > with the keyboard volume all the way up, the midi to audio track
> > wasn't loud enough. I was able to get the volume loud enough by
> > turning the track's volume control all the way up and I also had to
> > turn up the trim control.
>
> Nothing wrong with doing that if you can stand the noise.


Well actually the keyboard is TOO loud this way. I have to plug
headphones into it to get the sound down.


> The problem is that your keyboard's analog outputs are probably scaled to a
> "non-pro" or "instrument amplifier" level, perhaps as much as 20 dB
> lower than the level that your M-Audio interface requires to reach
> full scale digital level.
>
> Does the sound card's mixer or driver applet have a switch to select
> the nominal input level (typically +4 dBu to -10 dBV)? If so, make
> sure it's set to the -10 level. That will get you more gain at the
> input of the sound card and increase the record level on disk.


I don't believe I have this switch. But I found that if I connect the
two AUX Outs of the keyboard to the soundcard by first going thru the
Behringer MX 602A (I'm using Line In 5/6), I can raise both the
"level" control of 5/6 and the "main mix" control of the mixer to give
it the boost it needs.

I can also maybe try:
1. Uninstalling and reinstalling Cakewalk.
2. Uninstalling and reinstalling the 2496's drivers.
3. Record from 1/2 instead of Mon. Mixer

Phil

[Phil]

(Phil) wrote in message >...

> I can also maybe try:
> 1. Uninstalling and reinstalling Cakewalk.
> 2. Uninstalling and reinstalling the 2496's drivers.
> 3. Record from 1/2 instead of Mon. Mixer
>
> Phil


First I tried going into the computer and moving the card to another
slot. Then I tried all the above and nothing happened. I'll just have
to work with what I have.

Thanks anyway,
Phil