Only one midi device will work at a time?

Not sure what process you are going through. Have you opened preferences MIDI-->Devices and made sure they are both checked?

I use multiple MIDI devices. Both hardware synths and in and out devices. It's definitely possible to use more than one at a time but the routing and setup needs to be correct.

Start with the MIDI device preferences check and go from there.

im somehow comforted to see that someone else is in the same boat as me ha. Biker boy im certainly no pro but 99% of my experience has been working with midi and im positive ive set it all up correctly. I rinsed and repeated several times. I have an old oxygen 49 midi keyboard that i think ill try just to see if that works.

Hmmm.. well now that you mention it I did have my mpd set to akai omni. I guess biker boy was right I technically did not have it hooked up right. I'm so used to only having one device that omni is mainly all I use. If I would have set them each to their respective track ones would that have solved the problem?

Yes, I have had a wind controller, midi guitar controller and a keyboard controller all playing and recording at the same time.

I have (all USB connections):

Maudio MIDIsport - one hardware device but 2 MIDI in/out ports.
Maudio Uno
Edirol PCR-300 (shows up in Sonar as multiple ports)
Novation controller
Cakewalk UA-101
Doepfer Dark Time (or Dark Energy, depending on how I connect things).

All work without problems at the same time. So there's no issue in Sonar that prevents multiple MIDI ports being used at the same time.

Therefore the problem would indeed appear to be routing or possibly drivers. Firstly, are you sure you've got the track(s) you want to accept input set to "input echo"?

After that, check the routing, and try and avoid the "omni" setting.

As for the driver side of things, it's a good idea to install hardware manufacturer's drivers for MIDI devices if they provide them rather than rely on Window's built-in native support, especially if the manufacturer's drivers are multi-client.

It may be that if the native drivers are being used Windows is seeing them as sharing a driver and therefore only allowing the first connected to be used. I've not seen this myself but have seen it turn up as an issue on other forums (not just for Sonar) a few times.

My first suspicion though is either input echo is off or routing not set correctly. I've certainly been caught out by both many times :-/

That might be the problem but if you have all your inputs set to omni any attached MIDI device should still work, it's just that they will all play all tracks. If one isn't working at all I doubt that's the problem.

You've got all input echo buttons lit on the tracks you want to hear? You'll have to turn them on only one will be on by default.

ASG


I did not have the input echo buttons on. But I restarted my computer, and now it's working fine now? Anyways I've never use any channel other than omni? I heard someone mention that the default mpd channel should be 10? So let me get this straight you set your midi device to a specific channel, then whatever tracks are set to receive midi data from that channel, will respond whenever the controller that's said to that channel triggers something, right?

No FFB is talking about ports. Each device including soft synths have ports. Each has 16 channels. A lot of devices don't use channels and will respond no matter what channel is fed to them. Others need a channel to work. 

If the soft synth supports multiple outs all you need to do is set the drums out to the audio track you want. If you use SD 3 it supports multiple outs. Most drum sample players do. 

Again that's down to the synth. To see what I mean open Session Drummer 3 and go to the mixer page. You'll see at the very bottom of each drum an output number. Set to one by default. You can change each drum output to the one you want to use.

In the case of SD3 twelve but it is a synth setting. Once the output has changed select that as an input to an audio track and you'll have that drum through that audio track.

There's a track template included that will set Session Drummer 3 up like that for you.

Damn that's genius. That would definitely save me a USB input. My mpd is USB though, so is need a cable that's half USB half midi jack to hook up to the Yamaha, and another one that's have midi coming out of the Yamaha and half USB going into the computer, would that work?

Try using a small USB 2x or 4x hub if you're short on USB jacks.
 
Steve

Will using a 2x or 4x hub cause a delay like daisy chaining? my mpd does not have midi ins and outs, only one usb and thats it. and it also relies on that usb for power ha so i guess daisy chaining is out of the picture for me.

Kev999-

I have some stuff daisychained myself (especially if working live without a computer). It's not my preferred way of working though.

Interesting.