pjmnash wrote:Hi!
I seem to have a shotgun wedding of MIDI to audio tracks.
MIDI refuses to record unless accompanied by its audio mate, so I accommodate by officially marrying MIDI #1 to audio track #1 and having two tracks of the same data--well, almost.
Then MIDI track #2 refuses to speak unless married to an audio track, so I try to marry it off to audio track #2.
BUT MIDI track #2 wants audio #1's spouse! [naughty, naughty.
]
And then I get a muddled track because in playback, MIDI #1 and audio #1 are out of sync.
I'm really confused and dealt with this problem for a long while. I'm just not very technically talented.
Please help!
Desparately seeking sanity of sound--and a sound mind!
Thank you for your time and coveted talent & expertise.
pajama nash
Hey, Pajamas!
I'm doing my best to figure out what you're talking about, and I think I hear a couple of things going on. Let's start with some basics:
1) MIDI tracks just send notes to instruments. Wherever they are doesn't matter; MIDI just sends notes.
2) When those notes come back as audio is going to depend on a few things:
---is the MIDI instrument an actual box or keyboard in your rack gear? I mean, a hardware instrument, not a virtual instrument in the computer.
-----if the answer to the above is yes, then how is the audio coming out of it?
--------is the audio going straight to an amplifier and speakers?
--------is the audio going into an audio interface, such as a MOTU 2408?
--------is the audio from the 2408 going back into DP?
--------is that audio going back into DP being played as "direct hardware play-through?" Or is it being played through reverb, compressors, or any other plugins?
3) Is the instrument a virtual instrument?
---if so, is the audio from the virtual instrument going to an Aux track or an Audio track?
-----if the virtual instrument is playing through anything other than the Main Out tracks, does it have plugins on its audio track?
If you read what I wrote carefully, you'll realize it's all about routing the audio. MIDI occurs instantly. But the audio that comes back from the instrument that receives that MIDI can either be instant (direct hardware playthrough), or it can have anywhere from a slight delay to a lengthy delay (playback through plugins). While plugins can be compensated in time by plugin delay compensation, the picture isn't always that simple. If you've got audio being routed in from an external instrument through an Aux track, with no plugins, then that audio may be out of time with other audio that's being produced inside DP and is playing through tracks with plugins. Each plugin adds some delay, and while DP can match the output of all audio tracks with plugins so that they come out together, it can't do the same for an aux track that is bringing in external audio. At least... I don't THINK it does. It may do that now. I know for a while it didn't. I have all but quit using audio from my external hardware boxes, so I just don't remember now whether it can compensate that audio for the delay in other tracks, or not.
So, you see, this can get confusing.
The idea of having a MIDI and an audio track for each instrument makes sense from a historical perspective: that's ALWAYS the way it happened, and it is still the most flexible way to do it. It may not seem flexible when you've just got one track of MIDI and one track of Audio, but if you start adding a dozen MIDI tracks, all playing to the same instrument, then it makes sense. They can all play on the same audio track, but you don't have to have a dozen instruments to accommodate them. Just one will do. You simply address all your MIDI tracks so that they output to the same instrument, and then that instrument can simply play through a single stereo audio track.
Some (most, in fact) VI's will output to more than one audio track. So, if you have a flute and a guitar, they can each have their own audio track, even if they're using the same basic virtual instrument, such as MOTU's Symphonic Instrument, or Garritan's Personal Orchestra. Real hardware instruments can do this, too. My Kurzweil 2600 has 8 audio output channels. I can treat them individually, or as 4 stereo pairs, or I can combine them all into a single stereo pair. Virtual Instruments like Mach Five2 can output to something like a hundred or more audio tracks; not that you'd necessarily want to do that. But you could if you wanted to. You could load a hundred instruments in a single instance of MachFive2 and output a hundred audio tracks with a hundred MIDI channels running it all. (the actual numbers may vary higher or lower; I'm just making an example)
Now... here's where it gets troublesome: when you've got two instruments outputting audio, but one has a delay from plugins and the other one doesn't. In some cases, DP can compensate automatically for such delays by delaying everything else as long as the longest delay on any track, but that doesn't work in all cases. So, you have to think about your routing. Is there a way to make your audio match up? Sometimes you can just be sure that the non-delayed audio gets routed through a track that has the delays in it, and it will all clear up. The worst case scenario is that you shift your MIDI track 40 or 80 milliseconds later, so that its audio track comes out delayed like other audio tracks. That's a worst-case-scenario when nothing else works.
Oh, and I left out a big factor: in the Hardware Setup window, you can set the buffer for usually multiples of 64: 128, 256, 512, 1024... and that determines the amount of delay that DP automatically builds into ALL its audio (except when it is set to direct hardware playthrough). Setting the buffer higher gives the CPU time to "think" before playing, which is sometimes necessary if there are a lot of plugins to process a lot of audio. Setting the buffer lower creates low-latency so that you can actually record while playing along with other tracks, and you won't hear much delay. A buffer of 64 will make the latency almost negligible.
As you can see, there are lots of variables. It's hard to answer questions about it, because nobody can see exactly what you're doing or talking about, and there are a LOT of things that you can be doing.
Some Digital Audio Workstations are set up differently. Logic, for example, lets you select an instrument from a menu, and suddenly you've got a track which records MIDI and plays back audio. Seems like an easy way to do things until you want a dozen of those instruments. DP lets you set up one instrument, and then drive it with as many MIDI tracks as you desire. For me, that's just a more natural way of working, for that's the way we always did it. And we already talked about the multiple audio channels that even a single VI can output to. Feels perfectly natural for me to set up VI's that way. But yes, you MUST have an audio track set up for a VI before it will allow you to send MIDI to it. Be glad for that; if it wasn't for that, you'd be blaming all sorts of things in DP for your own failure to provide a connected audio-out. It would be that much more to troubleshoot. At least DP doesn't even allow you to get as far as assigning MIDI if you don't plan to listen to it. It MAKES you assign an audio channel. Until there is an audio channel, it's not a virtual instrument!
I'm not saying it's easy to figure all this out, but I AM saying that until you do, it's going to be tough to use DP. You must have a basic idea of what's going on. And that, in its simplest form, is that a MIDI track is playing MIDI instantly, while an Instrument (somewhere) is receiving that MIDI, then that MIDI instrument is outputting audio to either an amplifier, or it's going back into DP, or it never actually LEFT DP, and then either through automatic delay compensation or through your own careful routing and understanding of the situation, all the audio tracks eventually come out of DP in sync with each other. The things which affect delay are: direct hardware play-through, playing through effects (plugins, reverb, compressors, EQ, etc.), plugins themselves (some like Waves L3 Limiter have a fixed delay of something like 80 milliseconds), and most of all, the BUFFER settings in the Hardware Setup dialog (Menu found under
Setup/Configure Audio System/Configure Hardware Driver).
Just start asking yourself, where does your audio come from? How is it routed to where you want it to go? (Check you BUNDLES WINDOW for the answer). The virtual instruments included in DP do not have multiple outputs. One instrument = one audio output. But you can send as many MIDI tracks to them as you want, as long as they all are intended to play the same instrument. Want two or three different instruments sounding at the same time on that Modulo plugin? Then add another instance of Modulo. If you were using MachFive2, then you could add as many instruments as you wanted to the same plugin, and assign them different MIDI channels.
I've written pages, and I don't know if I've answered any of your questions or made things worse, but I hope you know more about it now. It's all in the manual, though it's not always the easiest thing to understand. But they have to be concise when writing manuals, so sit and let it absorb until you understand what each word is talking about.
Good luck with it!
Shooshie
