Issues with midi?

Hi guys
 
I'm getting back into recording again after a break of a few years. I've re-installed sonar PE6 and i'm having some midi issues. I've never actually used midi before (just guitar,bass and drums) but i decided i'd like to add other instruments to the mix. I purchased a behringer umx61 usb midi keyboard and pluged it in. The issue i'm having is that none of the soft synths make any noise. The only thing that works is the Gs wavetable Sw synth. It has serious latency issues and i'd like to use the supplied synths. Session drummer 2 doesn't make noise either. It loads the kits fine but the is no sounds. Audio records and playsback fine.
My soundcard is a crappy soundblaster live 5.1 and i'm using KX drivers. If i can get this to work properly i'll update it to a m-audio one, but i'm not keen to splash the cash if i cant get this darn thing to work. I've been through the manual, the book sonar 6 power and all over the net but i'm completly stumped.
My input is the USB audio device and the output is PSYN 2 (as an example) although i've tried every conceivable combination of inputs and outputs. There was a webpage that showed you how to set the kx driver for sonar but that page is now dead. I don't think this is the issue as audio is fine and the midi is sort of working.
My weekend of recording fun has turned into a weekend of frustration. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
Leroy

Thanks craig

I'm using ASIO drivers.
There is no activity on the midi meters, i.e. no flashing bars when i hit the keyboard.
My computer has an AMD1.8ghz with 1meg of memory and i'm running windows XP sp3.
I forgot to mention that i also tried a midi plug with a soundcard joystick plug to no avail.
The midi keyboard is a behringer UMX61.
The synth rack is just set up on a single midi track by clicking the synthrack button and selecting the particular one.

Leroy

Since you have a USB keyboard, check to make sure its listed in the Windows Device Manager. If Windows doesn't recognize it when you plug it in, then Sonar won't either. Try unplugging the cable, wait a few seconds and then replug it. You should get a message from Windows notifying you that the device was connected. If you don't get that, you should uninstall and re-install the keyboard driver making sure you follow the instructions. USB devices usually have you install the driver BEFORE you plug in the USB cable.

You should be able to get the SoundBlaster working, but I recommend you switch to WDM mode in Options-Audio-Advanced. Also go to Options-Audio-Drivers and make sure just the SoundBlaster drivers are selected and not the Realtek drivers. Otherwise you could have a conflict between the 2 sound devices. Then go to Options-Audio-General and press the Wave Profiler button which will configure your soundcard.

When using a softsynth on a MIDI track, make sure the output of the MIDI track is set to the softsynth.

I take it your setting the output of your soft synth track to your sound card? Midi track output to soft synth, softsynth output to soundcard.