Soft Synths or Virtual Instruments 1.

[JohnG]

If you set up Synthfont with the defaults, then move the file over into c:\Program Files\Synthfont\ .

When you go Files/set default sound font or Ctrl+H then you can point it at the Chaos sfark file. It'll unarchive it into a temporary directory. It'll tell you where. It'll then ask you whether you want to change the settings of the current MIDI file to point to the new bank.

Eventually you can move the unarchived sf2 file from the temporary directory back into the program directory and delete the original sfark file.

Make sense?
JohnG.

[freeway]

Hi John

Well finally my BB is up and running as it should had to reinstall all my Goliath Dvds and the Play upgrade again . Also downloaded Midi Yoke and VST Host now how do I go about getting them to work with Play within CWPA ?
would you mind running through the proccedure with me.

Many thanx

Barry

[JohnG]

Hi Barry,

Before I run through what you need to do let me provide a little background to what we're trying to achieve here, if I may.

Imagine we have several pieces of MIDI equipment which only have MIDI interfaces and I want to connect them to my laptop which only has a USB port or two. So, I have a Yamaha MU128 sound module, a Roland SC88 and an older controller keyboard.

Then what I probably need is a box that allows me to connect many MIDI devices to a single USB port. This ought to do the trick: www.thomann.de/gb/prod_ali_2_AR_163798.html


The MOTU Micro Lite.

5 MIDI ports to one USB port. What I can then see within Cakewalk is 80 channels of MIDI spread across 5 ports both input and output. I can then set up the MIDI ports in CWPA9 so that it can 'see' the 2 ports for output to the MU128 and the SC88 and 1 input from the keyboard. I do that by going to 'Options/MIDI Devices' and selecting the ones I want by clicking on them.

Then I can tell the CWPA9 which port to use for what track in the main tracks window.

So far so good?

The problem we have is that all the things we want to connect are inside the computer. We want to connect CWPA9, a program, to PLAY, a software sample player, another program.

So instead of the MOTU device we load 'MIDI yoke', a freebie. This provides software input and output ports, 8 of them.

So we load MIDI yoke into our computer, and when it's set itself up, we reboot so it becomes active. If, at this point, you start CWPA9 you will see 8 MIDI yoke ports if you go to 'Options/MIDI Devices'.

Okay so far?

Next we want to load PLAY. But it's a VST application, so we need to wrap it up in a VST hosting program. That's what VSThost does. So we download VSTHost and unzip it into any directory. I made a new directory within 'C:\Program Files' called 'VSThost' and put all the files in there.

I then right clicked and dragged the 'vsthost.exe' file over to the desktop and selected 'create shortcuts here'. That gave me the icon to click on to start it up.

Start up VSThost and you'll probably get lots of messages regarding ASIO devices. I did, but in my case I think it uses the underlying Cubase software to do its checks. VSThost will look for an underlying audio interface to connect to.

When it's finished doing its searches you will see a screen with two little boxes in it, input and output, and a line connecting the two. You can move these around by dragging them.

Click on Devices/MIDI and select from the MIDI Inputs only the number of 'In from MIDI Yoke' connections you need. You can start with just one initially, number 1.

Okay, now we want to load PLAY into VSThost, so click on 'File/New PlugIn...' or Ctrl+N and navigate your way to where you should find 'play_VST.dll'. It's either in a Steinberg directory within Program Files called 'Vstplugins', or it may be within the East West directory. If you can't find it try doing a search in the Program Files directory.

Any way, we need to point the 'Look In' mechanism within VSThost at the directory where that file is. And then click on that file and then 'Open'. Wait a second or two whilst it loads and then we should see a third little box appear. If we drag that to a convenient spot we'll see it's connected between the in and the out box.

At the top of that little box is a tiny control know next to the 'i'. Runing the mouse pointer over it will give you 'Plugin Edit'. Click it and PLAY will open. Now you can load your samples into play the way you did before. And set the MIDI channel in PLAY for each instrument to the channel of the file in Cakewalk.

In Cakewalk you can direct each MIDI channel by double clicking its Port entry to a MIDI Yoke interface. Then playing the file should get directed to VSThost, in to PLAY and out to the speakers.

At least it does with me. Any problems along the way just ask.

If you need to load more than one sample player, you can set it up with a second midi yoke port, load a second VST and have PLAY working alongside ARIA or any number up to 8 players all loaded into VSThost. Depending on RAM and processor power.

Hope that helps.
JohnG.

[freeway]

Ok John...... ..

Having probs installing MidiYoke into Win 7 can't really move on until I get this sorted ...Ill do a bit of Googling to sort this out and get back to you soon ok....

Thanks

Barry

(Update ....found this one called Loop Be seems to be a good free alternative to MidiYoke for Win 7 ...Ill let ya know how it goes ..)

[JohnG]

I've heard good reports of LoopBe but never used it.

You might have to figure that one on your own but I expect it's very similar.

John.

[freeway]

Ok got Loop Be in midi devices in cw.....got as far as loading Play in VST Host but now need to load the samples can't remember how I done this its been so long ......getting there slowly but surely ;D

Cherz John

Barry

[JohnG]

a switch over on the top right goes from player to browser. In browser mode you can add instruments.

Keep at it!
JohnG.

[freeway]

Got that John silly me ......

But finding it all a bit too confusing to be honest got Play playing my Goliath samples in VST Host no problems but it doesen't give me the option of setting my ports to play in cw . Maybe I might just stick to Sonar less complicated but Ill keep messing about with it you never know the problem could be staring me in the face.

Also not sure if this Loop Be actually works although it does show up in Devices in cw and vst host .

Ok back to the grindstone for me

Talk soon

Barry

[themd21]

Hi John

I've in the last few months been using Windows 7 but its use of GS sounds is just useless to the point that I have to convert a file to GM to get it to play. Roland VSC wont install so thats not an option.
For sequencing or altering files I've been using Calkwalk 9, and for listening to files Van Basco, which also has conflicts with Windows 7 GS.
Any thoughts?

Best Wishes

Jimmy

[JohnG]

Dear all,

It would appear that I've got some humble pie to eat regarding SynthFont!

For some time I've been aware of this piece of software and heard excellent reports about it, but without using it myself. I had been told that it was a replacement in many ways for the Roland VSC software.

And it's true, in may ways it is, but not in every way!

It can play MIDI files and also render them to audio using Sound Fonts. And an excellet job it does with a good sound font loaded. IMO.

But ... and it's a big BUT, it doesn't present itself as a MIDI device within Windows so one cannot direct the output of a sequencing program at it, like VSC or the Yamaha SYXG50 do so, as far as I can tell after playing with the s/w yesterday, one is unable to direct the output of e.g. CakeWalk or XGworks at it, even after trying it with MIDI Yoke.

Unless anyone else has another POV?

So, I apologise profusely that I have misled various people on this forum for my mistake. SythFont is not a complete replacement for Roland VSC or SYXG50. It is however a terrific piece of software.

Lesson learned? Don't recommend anything you haven't tried yourself despite good reports from others.

Sorry.

Embarrased,
JohnG.

[themd21]

Hi John
Roland VSC has the same problem with Windows 7. In fact from what I've read so does everything else.

Jimmy

[JohnG]

Yes, from what I've heard Win 7, although many are singing its virtues in other ways, is not as well put together for multimedia applications as XP was. It seems okay if you have drivers designed for it or for Vista but many bits of older software are problematical.

I'm afraid I'm sticking to XP for the forseeable future.
JohnG.

[steveb]

Hi Jimmy & JohnG,
I find SythFonts great for sound fonts but for editing it is somewhat restricted, I have had to go back to Cakewalk9 to modify my midi files. As far as Roland VSC is concerned, I am using Windows7 Ultimate and I have installed Windows Virtual PC which has Windows XP Mode, and VSC works quite well in that program. VSC is not compatible with Windows7 without XP Mode.

[JohnG]

Hi Steve,

You should Find LoopBe1 compatible with Windows 7, This replaces MIDIox. MIDIox is a little program that pretends to be a set of MIDI ports but inside the computer, each port has the usual 16 channels.

LoopBe1 is one internal MIDI port with 16 channels. When it's loaded it appears as a tiny 'MIDI plug' icon in the system tray to show it's loaded and active.

SyFonOne (or Syphon1 if you prefer) is another little program that loads a Sound Font library and then responds to MIDI input from a MIDI port to play back the sounds. It comes from the same place as SynthFont.

Once you've installed it and started it, it puts a tiny icon in the system tray. Choosing options from its pop up menu, the window looks like this:



Here you set the MIDI port that it will respond to, in this case LoopBe1, the audio output port, either a windows standard one or an ASIO driver (here I'm using the speakers attached to the screen), it allows you to test the response for glitches adjusting the buffer size and latency to suit. You can also then define which Sound Font you want to load and whether you want it to load into play mode at startup.

Using the E-MU ASIO driver I can latency down to 4 ms without any playback problems.

Next you tell Cakewalk to output to MIDI port LoopBe1 (Options/MIDI ports/Output Ports) and using just GM presets, unless you have some fancy Sound Font loaded, when a file is played it should use the fonts in SyFon and play okay.

Hope this helps you?
JohnG.