mixing down midi

egon spengler

on sonar 3 how do you mix down audio and/or midi onto one master track?

Beecher

Ive never used Sonar but if its like any other sequencer ive used midi cant be just converted to audio. The 2 solutions I use are either connect a line out from my soundcard to a line in on my soundcard, open a new audio track and mute all the previous audio tracks, press record with the new audio track and as the track plays all the midi tracks should record to the new audio track. Or if you are feeling lazy set your soundcard to record what you hear, open a program like audacity, press record then play your sonar track. It should record everything the soundcard is outputting like your sonar track.

squibs

Where is your MIDI coming from?

If it is coming from a software instrument (VSTi) then you can select the relevant tracks, mute the others, and do "bounce to tracks" selecting a new track as your bouncedown track..

If it is an external midi synth, then connect line outs to inputs on soundcard, set up a stereo master track with correct inputs, arm the track, and hit record.

If it is an internal hardware synth on the soundcard then the soundcard mixer should have a way to select the internal synth as the recording source. Set up a stereo master track with correct inputs, arm the track, and hit record in Sonar.

This is based on memory but should be fairly accurate.

egon spengler

ive got two sound cards operating, one processes midi, the other is an m audio delta soundcard, both are routed through an 260 multitracker...what i want to do is create a stereo audio track which records the entire mixed project (a combination of midi and audio) and which can then be exported as an mp3 file.
ive tried all the i/o settings, none seem to work

Anima

Surely thats not necessary? Can you not just export all tracks at the same time?

egon spengler

exporting to audio leaves out the midi tracks. I need to record both onto one track so that I can export it to a wav/mp3.

squibs

Does your second soundcard have a hardware MIDI synth on it? What is the make of the card?

egon spengler

i think the sound card that processes midi is a 1-trust sound expert mpu-401

squibs

Hmm - is it one of the 5.1 cards shown here?

http://www.trust.com/products/productgrp.aspx?grp=SOUNDCARDS

I don't think any of them has onboard midi synth. In Sonar, look at a midi track in your song. In the various channel settings what does the "out" area say? I suspect you are using a software wavetable VSTi synth such as Sound Canvas. Bear with me - we're nearly there.

egon spengler

i really havent a clue as regards this, the trust sound card is the output, delta ap midi is the input

mordeith

Beecher wrote:

Or if you are feeling lazy set your soundcard to record what you hear, open a program like audacity, press record then play your sonar track. It should record everything the soundcard is outputting like your sonar track.

Seems like the easiest option to me

squibs

Originally Posted by Beecher
Or if you are feeling lazy set your soundcard to record what you hear, open a program like audacity, press record then play your sonar track. It should record everything the soundcard is outputting like your sonar track.

Seems like the easiest option to me

'What you hear' is usually a feature of creative labs sound cards. Doubt if the trust will have this.

You can do the lineout of the trust to the input of the other sound card like a previous poster said and record to a new track.

i really havent a clue as regards this, the trust sound card is the output, delta ap midi is the input

Okay - look in your midi options - what midi devices are configured? My problem is that your trust soundcard doesn't seem to have a midi synth on it, nor does the delta. You don't have it connected to an external synth and you're not using VSTis. Are you using the microsoft GS wavetable software synth maybe? Open sounds and multimedia in your contraol panel and see what it has for midi playback.

egon spengler

im using a microsoft gs wavetable sw synth, the midi devices in the midi options are the same ones ive mentioned for the input and output settings

squibs

I don't have that microsoft synth set up on my machine (I disabled the internal soundcard and it isn't available on the soundcard I use). That is a truly dreadful quality synth - don't use it.

Sonar comes with Roland VSC - a decent quality VSTi general midi synth. I didn't install it on my system 'cos I use an external synth, but that's neither here nor there. Use that (Insert->DXi Synth->VSc) and change the output on all your midi tracks from the trust card to VSC. Then select all you midi tracks and use Edit->Bounce to Tracks.

If you can't figure this out, connect the line out of the trust to the line in of the other card, create a new audio track, arm it and hit record.

egon spengler

thanks for the help squibs, using the dxi synth works although the midi quality is terrible, the latter method i dont think is possible with the set up i have

squibs

The VSC plugin is not the best although it should sound an order of magnitude better that the microsoft wavetable synth.