Will I ever see the Midi light?

[dsw7777]

Running PT 7.1 on M-powered thru a firewire 410 on a Mac. Have an Edirol pcr-a30 as my "controller". I'm trying to do simple things like record sampletank sounds, drums and other midi data.

I've used an older version of PT awhile back but did very little with midi, so I'm okay with basics of recording, tracks, etc.

I have several questions for anyone who knows this midi stuff:

1 - In 7.1, do I create an Aux track, load Sampletank into and then route that track to an Audio track for recording (with the correct bus ins and outs)? I spent hours yesterday trying every combination of different tracks, routing, etc. I could hear sampletank but could not record. Very frustrating.

2 - The Edirol has at least a dozen controls on it - but the only ones that seem to do anything are the volume and pan - are there other controllers that integrate with PT a little more seamlessly? I've also noticed that even though the volume is all the way up on the Edirol, the volume is a lot less than just clicking on the keyboard within Sampletank itself. Would an m-audio product like the ogygen 8 integrate better than my edirol since it's their product? I notice in the Mac midi setup utility there is listing for some of the roland workstations buy not my particualr Edirol.

3 - how should the controller be connected? It's got midi in & out of course, but also spdif, 1/4 ins and outs, and usb. Is midi still passed thru the usb connection or do you always have to connect the midi ports to the firewire 410?

Any help would be greatly appreciated - I'll give it another shot tonight!

Thanks, Dave

[Stig Eliassen]

1) Create a stereo instrument track, and insert SampleTank there. When you record-enable this track, you are ready to record midi if your controller is configured and set up correctly.
Assign a valid hardware input on the instrument track, and assign the outputs to your master (i.e. Main 1-2).
Record-enable it, and check if it works. The record button on instrument tracks enables midi recording, not audio. If you want to record SampleTanks outputs to a stereo audio track, you either:

a) Assign the instrument track outputs to i.e. bus 1-2, or

b) Create a send on the instrument track, and set it to i.e. bus 1-2. Here you need to raise the send fader so you can record a good signal.

For both example a and b you need to assign the stereo audio track inputs to bus 1-2.


2) I'm not familiar with this controller, so you should read the manual. Many VI's have midi learn capabilities where you touch a control in the plugin, and then move a fader/knob on the controller to assign it. Now they're linked, and you can record the fader/knob movements into PT.

3) I'll leave this question for someone who actually use this particular controller.

[randyT]

3. When a device has a USB midi capability what you do is load a midi driver for the device (usually comes with the device) and the driver will setup the AMS automatically. Once the midi driver is loaded you should then be able to see the device in the PT midi port input/output selections. If you use the USB interface then only hook up the USB cable. The USB cable will carry all the midi signals and the regular midi cable is not needed. If you hook up both the USB and the regular midi cable you may get wierd stuff like double midi notes being recorded etc. so it's a bad thing to do.

randy

[dsw7777]

Thanks guys - will give it another shot tonight!

Dave