MixMan
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Sudden Poor Quality MIDI Sound...
I used to have a Creative Sound Blaster PCU 128 sound card.
Now I have installed a brand new E-MU 0404
When playing MIDI on my keyboard, through Pro Audio 8.04, my MIDI sound are now totally changed.
Before it used to be very nice and soft sound, filled of a little echo.
Now it is a very flad, harsh and hard, completely dead short kind of sound.
I would believe that the MIDI would be even better with my new card, not worse...
What have I done wrong??
Control Panel - Multimedia - Midi Music Sound configuration = the E-MU card
Control System - System - MIDI Sound property = the E-MU card
With the Cakewalk TOOLS - MIDI DEVICES - MIDI OUT set as the E-MU card, and the track Instrument port/channel set as the E-MU card and the Default & source set as "none" there is NO SOUND AT ALL!
With the MIDI OUT source set as the Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth, the midi sound is working, but of this very poor quality. What can I possibly have done wrong...??
Another little question....
Working with a keyboard and Cakewalk Pro Audio 8.04....
How do one get all these wonderful groovy drum & bass sound of the new rap & house music?
Is this possible at all with MIDI, or is it only sound files which can be used for this??
Thank you very much for any good help or suggestion!! .-)
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kayehl
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RE: Sudden Poor Quality MIDI Sound...
2007/03/29 17:21:29
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My guess is that the emu is probably not optimized for playing midi from the sound card, its optimized for using with pro level hard and soft synths. i think it may be possible if you have enough irq's and pci's in the computer to use the midi from one sound card and use the emu card for recording and playback, but i dont recommend it, instead i recommend using other hard and soft synths instead of the sound card midi. i think overall you'll be more pleased with your results that way.
i think a lot of the groovy drum & bass sounds probably come from loops although im not too familiar with the styles so i could be wrong. It is possible to use midi as a starting point for creating your own bass & drums, just start with good sounds, and learn to work with sequencing, editing, recording, processing, and mixing until you get the sound quality you are after.
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MixMan
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RE: Sudden Poor Quality MIDI Sound...
2007/03/30 10:46:12
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Thank you very much for your answer!
I have to admit being a total novice as it comes to MIDI configuration & setup....
The way I understand this is that my new sound card is not at all able to handle MIDI by itself. Somehow I can use one, or maybe several, MIDI software synthesizers to be connected to the MIDI in of the sound card, and then to send the result back to the sound out of the sound card. This way I can use several different soft synths with lots of different sound abilities...?? I guess I have to set the soft synth itself as the MIDI-in unit of the Cakewalk configuration then..??
I assume that it might be difficult to find a good full version soft synth for free??
Thank you a lot again for any help, I'm really pretty lost right now. Far from "Plug'n Play" .-)
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philbob
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RE: Sudden Poor Quality MIDI Sound...
2007/04/02 22:02:09
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Hey Mixman, Your Sound Blaster had banks of sounds already built into the card itself.Synth A and Synth B, if I remember right?.Also you probably had the soundfont banks which you could use to load your own sounds,or perhaps ones that you'd downloaded from the net? Your new EMU card doesn't have the onboard synths or soundfont banks,but EMU provide the Proteus X LE software synth instead. The 'Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth' that you heard is just the basic software synth that comes with windows.It's better than nothing, but not much better!  So,have a look for the Proteus X LE.Maybe it's already been installed on your PC when you installed the 0404 software?.If it's not there,have a look on the CD(s) which came with your 0404. Phil
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rumleymusic
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RE: Sudden Poor Quality MIDI Sound...
2007/04/05 20:10:19
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This has nothing to do with your EMU midi configuration. Midi does not carry sound, just controls the triggering of sound. Before, your sounds were playing from the Creative Synth, now they are playing through microsoft integrated sound (pretty bad stuff). I'm not sure you can use the proteus with pro audio 8 since it is a vst plugin...anyone?
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philbob
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RE: Sudden Poor Quality MIDI Sound...
2007/04/06 05:15:17
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Hmm I'm not sure either,haven't used PA for a long time.But failing that,maybe the Proteus LE can be used in standalone mode?
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Jose
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RE: Sudden Poor Quality MIDI Sound...
2007/04/19 17:32:33
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hi, I'm new here; I only know a little about this sound card stuff; But the Microsoft Windows GM synth sounds are pretty accurate in my computer, and all I have for editing Midi through Cakewalk is a regular -el cheapo- sound card, nothing like what you have.
Have you done a TOOLS menu, MIDI DEVICES submenu, MIDI PORTS subsubmenu reconfiguration after installing the new card? I think you have to tell your Cakewalk program which Instrument Definitions to use, and that depends on your card's sound synthetizer; You select those by choosing your available Input Output Midi Ports, or something like that. I remember Tech Support telling me that years ago when I started using Cakewalk. The bottom line is that you might need to re-configure Cakewalk's audio and Midi parameters. Cakewalk software will find whatever Midi Synth is available in your computer during a re-config.
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MixMan
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RE: Sudden Poor Quality MIDI Sound...
2007/05/15 12:38:42
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OK!
Thank you for answers!
Starting to get a hold of all this now.
First of all, I have seen plenty of forum posts regarding problems with the E-MU card and Patchmix. After many hours I thought you needed to be an ingeneer to get a hold of it all! :-)
In my case I had a lovely MIDI sound from the Sound Blaster.
The reason I didnt get the E-MU to play was that I didnt even know that I would need a softsynth, and the Proteus LE to connect these softsynths to Sonar LE was not even installed. Had to look it up on the CD to get that part right!
Then I managed to connect a softsynth and everything was good for a start.
I also had hours of hours of trying things out before I finally managed to get the sound directed correctly through Patchmix.
Now I've downloaded a few more free softsynths and starting building the possible sounds to use.
What I so far miss the most is some proper drums and normal instrument sounds more than all kind of typical synth sounds.
Apart from that I am very happy about the sound card and my high quality records. It's the very first computer soundcard I've ever heard of that you can pull the volume all way up to the top and still here nothing at all!! - Just as if the whole card was unplugged, UNTIL you start playing...!!! :-))
I still have quite a few more things to learn about this stuff, but so far its a very good start from where I were, and no dount a much, much better solution than the old creative sound card. Only a pity that the best softsybths are at a very high price...
Well, that's that, so thank you again, guys! :-)
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