I would like to add that there may well be something to Mr DucatiBruce's pondering that somehow the Staff View events improperly overrode something in the routing.  Or maybe there is something in however he actually did things in that process that we may have missed.

I think I will try that out to see if it causes issues for me as well, just in case.

Bob Bone

I just fired up X1 and:

1.  Inserted Rapture - loaded a sound
2.  Inserted Dim Pro - also loaded a sound
3.  inserted 2 pairs of audio/midi tracks
4.  assigned each pair to midi output synth, audio input synth output
5.  opened staff view and placed many notes on staff to generate events - did this for each midi track
6.  playback was normal - I made no adjustments to midi channels at all

So, I think there was something else involved with correcting the OP situation, or his setup is fundamentally different than what I did as a test of that hypothesis.

Any thoughts?

Bob Bone

Bob, Miroslav is a derivative of Sampletank. it's a multi timbral synth a la Kontakt - multiple midi tracks pointing to various midi channels on the same synth.

I just had a play in X2, with Miroslav & a couple of other similar synths.

Drawing notes in Staff View each note event is assigned midi channel 1, regardless of the tracks midi channel setting (eg track points to ch 8, midi note event points to ch 1) but they play "correctly" according to the track midi channel setting.

I tried entering in tracks with no midi channel set & then setting the track, with midi channel set & then changing channel after note entry, copy & paste to tracks with & without midi channels set and I couldn't break it. All tracks played correctly according to the track's midi channel setting.

The only way I could get all tracks to play ch 1 on the synths was to set the track's midi channel to none, then the midi event channel setting takes effect. If I'd changed the midi channel on events to ch 2 that's what would sound. 

Which all sort of makes sense to me, but then I'm back here on XP so YMMV ;)

Greetings all. Just for reference, I made no changes to the routing of the synths. I simply reopened the file, went into the staff view and right-clicked and edited each file changing the MIDI channel from 1 to whatever was needed. Now, here's the problem. Anytime I add new notes via the staff view editor, they all default to Channel 1. So, after entering the notes (which currently only show up as quarter notes no matter what I change the default display resolution to) I had to manually edit each one to change the channel. This could be a problem. SONAR 5 still assigned channel 1 to each note, but it somehow always worked out that the main track was assigned to channel 4 (for instance) instead and played perfectly. Even when I opened a SONAR 5 project in X2 this worked. Also, please someone correct me on this if it isn't so... They way I see it, the MIDI editing via the staff view has taken three steps back. All of the other advances are really nice, but this was formerly one of the main strong points I gave in the argument that classically trained musicians should use SONAR. Before SONAR's staff view was comparable in many ways to Finale in the way the note entry and editing via mouse worked. Now, the workflow has slowed me down considerably. Instead of simply clicking on an eight note icon and entering rows of eighth notes I have to click and enter a quarter note (no matter what I have tried), then right-click it, edit it be the length I want and the channel I want. Click OK. Rinse and repeat... Please tell me I'm missing something in the documentation.

saxmeister, are you setting the midi output on the track to Miroslav & channel whatever? When I do that it over rides the note event channel number.

I can't answer on the staff view note length entry query - I haven't entered anything in SV for years

@ducatibruce2: Yes, I went back and did several tests to make sure and every time I entered notes on the staff view and set the MIDI track's channel to the individual channels they still played on Channel 1. So, I have had to go through and edit each part to change the channels to match the part after entry. Very frustrating, especially since I can't find a quick and easy way of converting these notes to a different channel, no matter which view I use. And this is with multiple virtual instruments.

The multitimbral virtual synths I have tried so far:

• Miroslav Philharmonik
• Garritan ARIA Multi player
• Cakewalk's own TTS-1

Even when recording the parts from keyboard entry I am having the same issue. Apparently, since the MIDI controller I'm using it outputting on Channel 1, each note is set to Channel 1. And, on playback, they all play on Channel 1.

I did a test and had the MIDI controller output channels 1-4 and whatever I entered via the controller on a specific channel would actually be rendered in the staff view with the correct channel applied.
Not to mention the irritation of trying to enter something on staff view and, if the note is lower than a bottom line E on the staff, it can't be edited from the staff again since it can't be selected with a right-click, so I can't change the channel, note length, velocity, etc. unless I put it on an inner space or line, then edit to change it to the correct note.

I'm about to give up on the staff view, which I have used longer than most of the users of this forum have been alive! Cakewalk was always the easiest for this, but now...?

Whether you enter data via the staff view, the PRV or record it live, the embedded channel number in the MIDI sequence can always be overridden and does not require editing of individual notes. However, this is true only if each MIDI track is routed to one and only one channel. 

I am not a staff view user, so there may be subtleties there that I am not aware of, but I record all my MIDI data playing live on a keyboard that transmits on channel 1 by default and I almost never change that setting. Consequently, all the data I record has channel 1 embedded in the sequence. Whenever I'm using a multi-timbral sampler, I simply tell SONAR which MIDI channel to use for each MIDI track by selecting it from the dropdown list in the track header.

I don't have any Garritan products, but this does work with every sampler I do have, including Miroslav and the TTS-1.

There have been times when I've needed to split a single MIDI track into multiple tracks so that I could assign different notes to different voices (channels) within one synthesizer. For example, taking a drum track and separating out the bass drum so that it could be played by a different sampler. But in this situation I clone the original MIDI track and delete the bass drum notes from it, then delete everything except the bass drum from the clone. This takes all of 5 seconds in the PRV.

Okay, so thank you to all who have attempted to help me. I had a late night epiphany this evening and I think I have finally sorted out my MIDI channel issue.

So, I imported a new MIDI file exported from Finale and started a new project with MIDI orchestration. I continued to have the issues mentioned before. Even after going through the online help and documentation I had not discovered the issue. I was setting the channel on each individual note, on each track, on the IN/OUT section.

Then, this evening it occurred to me. I was setting the channel on the arpeggiator instead of on the main strip! I changed that et voila, All is right with the world.

Thanks to all of you for your patience. As a long-time Cakewalk user I felt a bit daft after struggling with this simple thing such as a user interface change for weeks now. But, thank you all for your help.

Now, if I could just find that magic button that changes the score editor interface back to the one from SONAR 5!

For reference: http://www.myersmedia.net/work/sonar_x2_duh.png

I was working with a file this evening and had everything set up for GPO, which worked fine. Just for the heck of it, I made a copy of the project so I could switch it to TTS-1 to see how the file sounded there. I had to enter in RPNs to shut up TTS-1's MOD Depth (which is awful and has no equivalent in GPO anyway). I punched these in via list view and found that I needed to set *both* the channel and track number for these (all 16). Basically, as someone indicated, the channel number in the data stream is likely overridden by the track's channel setting. But I set the channels anyway just to be safe.