More Info from boston47

Your response has been (& will be) appreciated, gang.
 
I'll comment (as per question #) to date, as best I can.
 
1) On my old Cubase, I was able to 'strip' my floppy disc 'work copy' of all extraneous things thus to free up as much space for any current project being worked on (primitive, I guess, but at the time it seemed to work out well).  That's one thing that drew me to selecting the Gateway laptop I chose, as it was virtually free of needless 'bloat-ware' that come on most others).
[This has partly to do with #1 question & partly with #4]:  Some of the deletions/tweekings were for experimental purposes to see what effects were produced as I tried to test & probe the various parameters/options of the MC5.  Still others were just inadvertent mistakes & fumblings on my part.  Stupid lack of knowledge before clicking on some things I didn't understand, I now realize. (Smart enough to know better,.....but do it anyway?)  At the least, poor judgement, to be sure.
 
4) (see #1 above)
 
3) (As the comment is short, I shall mention about #2 before finishing up with  #3):   As it had been doing when it did work, the metronome sounded thru the laptop speaker(which I preferred).  Those appropriate specs had been selected & clicked:
<project options<metronome<recording<measures<record count-in(1)<use audio metronome<master(output)<OK.  Then make sure metronome icon showed enabled (on). As I said, meter registering OK, but no sound of metronome tick.
 
#2) I saved #2 till last to provide room to be as explicit I can.  As for operating platform, did you want my win7/x64?
First I'll give physical set-up:  Yamaha YPG625 Portable Grand synth connected into its USB TO HOST terminal then routed straight to one of the 3 usb ports on the laptop (with top quality usb cable).  [The other synth terminal says USB TO DEVICE to connect usb storage devices](not used).  For transferring performance data to & from the laptop, the setting that had worked (as per synth manual directions) are: LOCAL-ON/PC2(when using Digital Music Notebook)(as opposed to PC1/OFF)/EXTERNAL CLOCK-OFF/KEYBOARD OUT-ON.  Until about a week ago it worked  just fine; metronome, too.  Up-to-date USB-MIDI Driver installed on laptop [to access: <START<CONTROLPANEL<HARDWARE & SOUND<YamahUSB-MIDI driver(WDM)] .  Then, in dialog pane (titled PORTABLE GRAND DEVICE), OUTPUT 1  & INPUT 1 are clicked on & activated (THRU is off).  The '1' (above the input) is is always steadily flashing about twice per second.  But it did that when the sound was coming thru fine also, & I can find nothing referring to it anywhere as to what it indicates (although I keep thinking it is trying to tell me something about input).
 
Now, on to MC5 settings,etc.:  Open NEW project [normal] & delete all undesired tracks (or open NEW project [blank].
Insert Midi track (after turning synth on & making sure its proper selections have been made or are still in place).
Check off or set up various fields as follows: MUTE/SOLO/AUTOMATION WRITE:off  ECHO INPUT: on or off Tried both ways).
MASTER/QUANTIZE/PRV/EFFECTS/BUS(ES)/SEND:set at default (untouched).  VEL: 0/VOL:100/PAN:0%
INPUT: yamaha (or yamaha-omni)/OUTPUT: 1-yamaha/CH: none (also tried 1,2, & 3)/BANK: checkmark shows/PATCH: none.
Then in the OPTION window: <CONTROLLER/SURFACES: Act Midi Controller-1 (showing).  <yamaha (in INPUT panel below; or sometimes not showing as an option & need to write into Input pane.  OUTPUT pane: yamaha (showing).
WAI display: shows TRACK VIEW & CONSOLE VIEW with checkmarks (Also checkmarked to the right: A...  &  W...). <CLOSE.
Then, finally: <OPTIONS<AUDIO<GENERAL  The following are showing:  Driver Mode: MME(32-bit)/PLAYBACK DEVICE: Speakers(Realtek Hi-Def)/RECORDING DEVICE: Mic. (Realtek Hi-Def)
LAUNCH AUDIO PROFILER: yes (but not everytime).  Then <OK.  My metronome settings are already given in #3 above).
 
This is where I am at the moment, before trying anything else.
 
 
After only 5 hrs. sleep last night, must do something about that now.  Be back later tonight.
 
Thanks to all chiming in on this,
Phil Armstrong
 
P.S. As Granpa Amos (of The Real McCoys) said about 50 years ago: "If brains was gunpowder, I wouldn't have enough to blow my hat off my head!" (Good ol' Walter Brennan)
 
 
 
 

"win7/x64"
 
MC 5 is not compatible with 64-bit OSs. To work best with a 64-bit OS, MC 5 should be run in 32-bit emulation mode.
 
"Up-to-date USB-MIDI Driver installed on laptop [to access: <START<CONTROLPANEL<HARDWARE & SOUND<YamahUSB-MIDI driver(WDM)]"
"Driver Mode: MME(32-bit)/"
 
I don't know if the Yamaha driver being WDM and the Driver Mode set at MME makes a difference, but try the WDM Driver Mode anyway.
 
I don't think you have to worry about running out of hard drive space any time soon. Didn't you write that it's a 500GB HD? My DAW has a 300GB HD; I've had it for about 4 years and it was my do-everything computer until last month. I still have 87% space left. But I'm a slow worker.
 
 

You got it backwards, Herb. Eighty-seven percent empty.

Cool. I did not know that.
 

Phil,

Don't be so hasty in writing MC5 off as a "$40 lesson learned"......just yet. And don't worry about thread length here. This place is so active that we encourage you as Beagle did to keep all the same issues in one thread. If you have a totally different question, that is OK to go in a new thread.

When I first got MC4, it took me almost  2 weeks to get  sound. I was trying to get sound from the lappy card and then I finally got a dedicated interface and it took a bit of experimentation to get it set up right. A little side note here: My Dell lappy has NEVER given me sound from it's internal sound card while using MC4/5...and I have tried many time and in various ways.

It is not possible to make irrevocable changes to MC5 so that it will never run. short of deleting actual sections and modules in the program files, which I doubt seriously that you did that unless you did delete program sections, it's not possible to do that from inside the program. So that is not your problem.

It is simply a matter of getting the right GEAR (ie: external sound card/interface) and getting the setting for inputs and outputs set up correctly. Even though I say it's "simple" as you are experiencing, it can often be a task.

I found that it was also helpful at times, AND EVEN NOW, to reboot after making settings changes. Sometimes my soundcard looses sync with the program and a shut down and reboot for BOTH are needed to get it going again.


My suggestion is to set it up with your soundcard as the input & output for AUDIO  under the OPTIONS AUDIO tab, using the MME audio drivers for the factory internal soundcard.... it should run the wave profiler, if not you can run it manually to locate the inputs and outputs available to that driver... then insert 1 audio track into a project. Highlight that track by clicking on the track..... use FILE>IMPORT>AUDIO and search for either a wave or MP3 in an existing music folder. Click on it to import it. You should see the wave form in the track.

That proves there is audio there to play. click play and see if you get music. let us know... because from THAT point, some of the guru's here in AUDIO can get you going, even with the factory card. You have to listen to what they tell you and do it exactly.   Believe it or not, we don't want to see you fail. we want to see you get it working and start writing and contributing in the songs forums. We're not cake staff, we're just other fellow users who have ALL been through the startup/beginner phase that you are now going through.  Stick with it, and get through it and start making music.

If you want to jump to a different DAW, you will likely have the same issues there. You have to have the inputs and outputs set up correctly with them and they all have their own learning curves as well.


If you call it quits now, you will never experience the joy of working with recording in MC5.

If you want to throw in the towel, I can't prevent you from doing that, I hope that you don't quit so easily.

ADD: I've seen a number of people walk away in disgust... for various reasons, they didn't want to listen to the advice and stick it out. On the other hand I have seen many who did stick it out, listen to the advice, experiment on their own, come in and post within a week or two....EUREEKA.....I GOT SOUND!!!! IT WORKS!

Also, we need to see the numbers, like I/O buffers, buffers in playback queue, etc.