Microtuning / VST MIDI effects how to?

Hi all-

I want to try adding a microtuning MIDI effect. I notice that some synths (not ones I have ) would let me choose a non-even-tempered scale, but wouldn't this be best handled by a little MIDI effect that bends all the notes? Seems Sonar HS doesn't have such a thing.

I downloaded Tobybear's MicroTuner VST plugin. But that raises more questions. In the DX-VST wrapper, should it be an audio effect? A tempo-based effect (whatever that is)? Or a synth? It would seem to be none of these. I've set it up as a synth, and patched the MIDI in into it... but then it seems you can't do anything with the MIDI that comes out of it.

Is there any way out of this? Is there a simple microtuning plugin that will "just work", or can I somehow persuade SHS to play ball with a VST MIDI effect?

Thanks for any help.

-Tim

Having Googled about a bit, I think the answer is that it is a known limitation of Sonar that you just can't do this.

So, no stretch tuning or Arabic tuning for me then.

This is not a trivial problem. MIDI can dump microtuning information to a compatible synth to set its scale, but the basic information sent by MIDI is not pitch, but note number. Using a pitch bend message would have to be applied to all the notes in the track, i.e. bending/re-tuning all of the notes of a chord the same way, so your chord will still be in the original tuning relationship--just higher or lower. Even if other problems, primary of which is the sensitivity of the synth to the bend (which is not specified as cents of detuning, but as a 14 digit binary with possible 0-16,383 values) you are going to be limited to a monophonic track. You could presumably record the number of monophonic tracks needed to comprise your chords and carefully calibrate a continuous pitch bend message so that each single note met your desired pitch, but that would limit your live input options to a series of monophonic/single keystrokes messages from a MIDI controller.
 
As you note, the way this is generally handled now is to do the detuning in the synth itself, so that the synth interprets the same note number as a new frequency. I have heard that there are some DAW's that can set a whole project to a new scale applicable to some of their included synths, but I am not aware that any can do that with just any synth, including those with no built in microtuning capability.