Volume of hardware synth...

Whats the velocity look like in PRV?  Check that against the others and see what ya come up with. If theyre high, Zoom all the way out so the entire track fits in the screen, Drag and select all the peaks then grab the note/box with the smart tool and lower them all together at the same time

This sounds like an envelope to me-

Lance

In that case, I'm thinking something is buggy in PRV - I would report this.

It seems as though, although you have the midi track velocity set to 30 on playback, when you audition notes, it plays at a much higher velocity. This should not happen in my understanding of it all.


Lance

When you place notes in the PrV they play at the volume of the last note selected. 
I would  keep the midi volume up and lower the volume on the outboard synth. Or check the incoming signal path of the hardware synth.

Ah gotcha!  Weird.

The volume is loud even when I click on any note in the PRV...just to preview a note. It's like the volume of the patch is jumped to 127 when playback is stopped...but put back to normal (30) during playback or record. That is what is so puzzling about this.

No, I'm not in the studio now. I'm just describing what I experienced today.

Any note I would click on....or play on the controller keyboard is at full volume when X1 is in stop mode. But will play a note at the correct volume when in play mode or record mode. This is the first time I have experienced this. I will try using a different patch on the same midi track tomorrow and see if that makes a difference. I know it has to be something simple...just haven't figured it out yet.

For giggles try selecting a previous note when you can. I don't know what else it could be. Or how to help, sorry

Perhaps you could try unsetting "Zero Controllers When Play Stops" in Edit > Preferences > Project - MIDI. That might cause other problems, though. See what it says in the manual. [Paragraph] Another suggestion would be to adjust the volume on your synth so that most patches are good with a midi volume of 100 (nominal). And if you have one or two patches that are too loud for your nominal settings, edit those patches to normalize the volume.

Just a thought.  Is the local control on your hardware synth on or off?  It should be off, as Sonar takes over the local control in most situations.  If it's on, then try turning it off and see what happens.

Teds_Studio


Thanks again for all the suggestions. My setup is the same as it has always been (when using PA9) as far as physical volumes, etc. I just did an experiment and recorded a track in Cakewalk PA9 and everything works perfectly. I can pull up PRV and click on any of the notes and they play back the same volume when in stop mode as it does in play mode. And I did check that local is off. Strange situation for sure. I even saved the test that I did in PA9 and opened it up the .wrk file in X1. Got the same results...the volume of the notes are louder when in stop mode than when in play mode.

Ted,
   Here's the most likely reason your synth volume jumps on stopping playback: when play is stopped, Sonar sends 4 events on each channel of a midi cable or port associated with a track. These are zeros for pitch bend, mod wheel, sustain pedal, and a "reset all controllers". The first three are always good to have, but the fourth one, "reset all controllers", most likely causes the synth to set its volume to its own 'ideal' value (louder than '30', which is pretty low). Cakewalk PA9 probably never sent those, or yours was configured not to do it.
 
   The exact result is dependent on the synth; at least one of my Roland synths does it and at least one does not.  If none of the other suggestions work out, you can disable Sonar's "zero controllers" as I mentioned above, and the offending "reset all controllers" will not be sent. There is a midi spec that says exactly what synths should do, but they don't all follow every spec. E.g. among others, they should:

• Set Expression (#11) to 127
• Do NOT reset Volume (#7)   <-- if your synth (and my Roland A-90) obeyed this, volume would not jump
• Do NOT reset Pan (#10)

  Bill B