MIDI 101 Question: Virtual Instruments vs. Keyboard on MIDI playback

Nate74

HR4FREBR
I was recording a really talented piano player/singer the other day and he says, "hey, can you also record the MIDI out?" "no problemo" I say. I hook a MIDI cable into the back of my MOTU 828mk3 and his keyboard, set up the MIDI track in Sonar and not only get the stereo analog signal but also the MIDI recording.

I'm sort of new to MIDI so I've been messing around with what you can do with the track but it has led to some questions,that I'm sure are basic but still been frustrating me.

I can assign the output of the MIDI track to my Yamaha S03 Keyboard and have it play any of the instruments on the keyboard and it plays back beautifully. But when I try to assign a virtual intrument to the track, it seems to only be able to play about 50% of the notes. Is this a MIDI issue, an issue of latency in the audio chain or something completely different?

The isntruments I've been messing with are all various freeby VST instruments.

BTW, I use a MOTU 828mk3 as my interface for MIDI and Analog via firewire into my PC.
 
How much RAM do you have? The more RAM the better with softsynths. Also, freebie VST's may not be the most efficient on whatever resources you have available.

Try using DimProLE that comes with Sonar and see if that doesn't work better.
 
Are you giving it time to load all the samples? I know with EZ Drummer the samples are 44,100, so if you record in 48,000 for example, it has to convert the samples and it takes a minute or two to import them.
 
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