Its getting worse

Complements of Robomusic...

Basic beginners setup tutorial:

When you first get MC there are a few things that will be necessary to get it up and running. First to install it you need to fake out your computer to make it think it has an older version of DirectX intalled, usually it is not necessary to actually install the older version, just go to support/music creator/FAQ/ and find the link for “dirextX 8.1 was not detected on your system” there is a patch there download it to a folder of choice and with the installation Cd in the rom driver double click that file and it will install off the CD making the computer think it has directX 8.1 . Actually you will still have DirectX9, and MC will not care in the least.

Now for audio, midi playback and recording setup. Open the program it will usually run the wave profiler for you the first time you open it. You will get two pop ups to start with first a Tip of the day box will display, if you want you can scan thru a few of those, when done close it then a project box will display, close that also. Go to the top of the screen and find options, left click that and a box will appear, find audio click that and another box will display it has several tabs at the top the first is “general”, you will see tow thin boxes that are named playback and record wave devices, they should contain the name of your sound card, if it does not then run the wave profiler again to see if it adds it. Once that is right set the buffer slider to around the middle to start with that will save another problem later. Go to the advanced tab and check the box “Always use the MME interface even when WDM drivers are available” this will force the system to use the older windows MME drivers just incase your sound card does not support the newer WDM drivers, and will give you another option for midi playback. Now go to the input monitoring tab and unhighlight anything in the large white box, proceed to the drivers and driver profile tabs and make sure that your sound card is listed there as well, click okay and go back to options/midi devices, here a box will display that has two side one for midi input and the other for output, if using a midi keyboard you will need to highlight the input that the keyboard is plugged into, for out put if your sound card has it’s own midi synth chip you can highlight that, if not highlight Microsoft synth GS, that is an internal synth chip that will playback midi. DO NOT highlight Midi Mapper, it does not play sounds. Now the program should reproduce both midi playback and wave file output.

One point to remember is that midi is not sound, a midi track or file is just a complex data stream, that tells a synth chip what note, instrument, volume, timing, velocity, etc. to play at, it takes some kind of instrument that can decifer that data and produce sound from it like a synth or keyboard. Audio files are actual recordings of sound waves on the hard drive, the two are vastly different, MC is a program that brings the two worlds together to co-exist.

Take the time to go and do the tutorials they will give you a solid basis for using MC. A lot of the folks that come here are beginners, and have read the box that says this is a snap and will have you making songs in a few minutes, while that can be true if your system is setup right, computer recording is complicated and has many variables. Be patient and ask questions, read many posts, and find other sites that are related to music, I personally have bookmarked 7 different forums that I participate in and many are far advanced over my thick head, so I am learning everyday.

The manual is not that great. This is Cakewalks entry level program and they don't seem to spend a lot of time on the support for MC. There are things in the manual that don't even apply to MC, which is an extremely watered down version of Sonar. That being said, you can get MC set up properly and learn to use it.

If you want a book that has some excellent information, Scott Garrigus has written a bunch of books for various recording programs. Just go to this page, http://www.garrigus.com/powerbooks.asp, and select, from the right side of the page, whatever software you have. You will be taken to the correct book for your needs. I reccomend Scott's books - you will learn a lot.

Hey Thanks, I will check into these. I have made a little headway recording with the guitar but I can't hear what I am playing along with the previous tracks. Is it possible to have monitoring? I understand help files tell you how then they tell you it won't really work. What would be the proper way to do that?

Is there a difference between coming out the pre amp out and doing what you just described.

I'm sorry it is pre amp out of my guitar amp.

Hi - I have been reading this thread for the last few days. I think I'm having the same problems that you are having, and I was wondering if you ever figured out how to solve the problem.

The crazy thing for me is that I actually did follow the tutorials and had session drummer working for about three days. Then I must have screwed something up, because I can't hear anything anymore. I went back and read over two tutorials from Robomusic (start up for beginners and using session drummer). I even was thinking of re-installing the whole MC program. Have you figured it out yet? If so, please share how you fixed the problem. If you haven't, be advised that I have sent an email to cakewalk tech support, and I'm hopeful that they will be able to give us the fix - I would be happy to share it with you if I get anything.