whats going on with windows 7-64bit and midi/soundfonts?

coolhotfun

New member
Can't really just describe this whole situation in a short paragraph. well here's how it starts. i used to play around with experimental audio back in 97 to 2000. Then i started wasting my time playing video games and then 06-09 social networking. Was thinking of getting back into the tunes but there wasn't really any audio only sites and the traffic's on youtube so figure i'd look into learning video editing. Did that last year and got the hang of adobe premiere.

About to start playing around with audio again and then make video for that. Used this program called digital orchestrator. It had digital audio alongside midi. I had the hang of it and other programs got too many options going on. What i was getting into for making the music was no more digital audio but it was all in midi. I'd take samples of quick bits of noises and then using this vienna program i'd assign them to trigger when you'd hit midi keys. Save that as soundfont files. Then i'd go and place the midi dots in the orchestrator.

Usually when you think of midi its the bad default sounds you'd get where the instruments that sound awful. I was getting into trying to make beats from bits of noises. And the past couple years had found out about this melodyne program. So now i could see what note pitch sounds were in and have them be in the same key as piano. Then i could change the patch and have it play the sound effects instead and it would be in the same key. I could also multiply the samples and have them strech across the whole keyboard. Make beats from the quick bits of noises and also do melodies with them. I've got a cd with 6000 classical midi files and open that you see all the notes and can take riffs and change stuff up.

Yeah you could make the beats with digital audio by placing the wav samples. But for the melody ideas it has to be done in midi.. i'm not gonna paste a wav for every keyboard note and you gotta go find the correct octave note file. meh.

I fire up the digital orchestrator to start working on music. I used to have the orchestrator plus program i bought back then but there was some kind of glitch where it wouldnt record midi to digital audio.. so was using this digital orchestrator pro and it works ok. Some things are changed and i'd rather use the plus but whatever. So i go to start working and things are ok but every couple minutes the working area goes grey and i gotta minimize and maximize it back to clear it up. Its not just orchestrator.. i noticed this type of screen area going grey in the video editing program virtual dub. Thats newer so its something going on with my computer setup, not because of using an older program. Here's a screenshot recording of what that looks like going on in virtual dub the screen areas going grey and you have to minimize and maximize to clear it up.

youtube/watch?v=mXfj4KaQPnI

here it is in dop
youtube/watch?v=PRU926wBko4

pain in the ass, trying to work on music and the screen goes grey every once in a while. The screen would flash sometimes and on some of those it'll go grey. I'm there.. what a downer, i gotta look into whats causing this. Bad trip for a couple weeks. Thought it might be video card. There's a video port in the motherboard as well tried that, still doing it. They're both nvidia so went and bought an ati card, still doing it. Erased the hard drive and reinstalled windows to see when the screen greying out starts. Install this k-lite codec pack and right after check the virtual dub and dop and it starts with the grey screen areas. Erase the hard drive and reinstall windows, dont install k-lite and start on the updates and installing programs and it starts with the grey screens.. so wasnt k-lite.

Thought it might be hardware. Went and bought an upgrade kit.. had a dual core got a 3ghz quad core with 4gb ram. Still doing it. System was fast but still waiting for the hard drive so went and bought a 200$ solid state hard drive with no moving parts. That wouldnt fix the grey screen but now it was going quick. With xp was maxed out at 3.5gb ram so wanted more and got the windows 7 64bit and took out the 4gb ram and got 8gb ddr3. That 512mb ddr3 video card might be holding things back so got a 1gb ddr3.

ok now all the hardware was up to snuff. I install the windows 7 and figure i could still run those old programs because its 32bit compatible. well i go to install half my old programs and it says ya can't. I think its cause they're like 16 bit or something. Can't even use my scanner or hp printer i got a couple years ago. meh. So i've got this windows 7 and cant use it for making audio. Premiere would install so could still use it for video editing, take advantage of the 8gb ram and 64bit. Gotta be able to run xp though to use those old programs. Somebody mentioned virtualbox where its a window in 7 and it would be like another computer. Installed xp but you cant use your soundcard, you have to emulate one and pick what they have. So cant use the soundfont bank manager. meh.

Came up with the idea to install 7 on the ssd drive and xp on the 7200rpm drive and when you power up the computer hit f2 and choose which drive to boot off. Now if i wanted to do video editing i'd go in 7 and for making audio go in xp. Thought it might be windows updates causing the grey screens because when i first install xp, i'd check virtualdub and dop and it would be fine. So thought i'd just not do updates on the xp drive and do my surfing around with 7. Well couldnt install half the things in 7 so they had to be installed in xp. I start out with like my video card drivers disk and sound card drivers disk. The video card drivers disk was new and also ran this update program it had. Didnt do any windows updates and check the virtualdub and dop and got the grey screen going on. Well cant do anything about it and have to install all my programs so whatever i'll just work around this grey screen going on every couple minutes and have like a blank notepad window i'll quickly switch to and back. If i minimize and maximize dop it'll reset where the cursor was and go further back. meh.

So yeah installed all my programs on the xp and whatever i could on the 7. Its pretty much just for the video editing though. Can't even use my fast ssd drive because now i'm stuck in xp here for most things. Thought i'd try and go find some kind of new audio recording programs and drop the dop already. But there wasn't even any midi slider in the windows 7 volume mixer. I had this creative 24bit live 5.1 soundcard and the installation cd wouldnt install stuff in 7. Didnt have any sound but then looked around and got drivers and have sound but there's no midi. Can't install soundfont bank manager to assign soundfonts that'll play when you do midi.

I have a laptop i listen to wireless internet radio in the car and got an external soundcard earlier this year.. so its newer from creative but its external and you plug it in the usb. Thought i'd try that on this with windows 7. In my xp laptop it has a midi volume level. Well on 7 there's no midi and cant run soundfont bank manager. Might work with an internal soundcard but thats enough hardware horsing around. Betcha i'd get a card and there'd still be no midi. Looked around the net and sounds like since vista they've phased out midi.

Would be nice to let go of the past and dump the xp and get new music making programs and only use the 7. But i've got to be able to make something like soundfonts where i can assign sound samples that'll get triggered when midi dots play. I'm sure these higher end audio multi track recording programs still use midi because guys have their keyboard plugged in. Well i dont use a keyboard i just manually move dots and stuff. They probably dont use soundfonts though so what do they use in those programs? I'm sure they dont just use whatever stock sounds are in the keyboard.. but if its midi it wont have any and you'll have to use something like a soundfont? I dont really know much about this higher end stuff. I had just learnt enough to get the job done with what i was doing.

Things are still fine and all i've got to do is deal with this screen working area going grey and then minimize and stuff.. i'll work around it for now. But what i picture is looking at whats going on with them phasing out midi and my old programs not working and are there any new programs where i could still make music this way. Sounds like things are getting phased out and whats it gonna be like in 20 years.. i cant keep running xp here and whats going on with soundcards like this soundfont bank manager.. to make soundfonts it seems like the only program is vienna and thats from back then too. jeez.. you cant go do this melody stuff with digital audio. with midi its so much easier because you can just change instrument patches and instead of piano its some other instrument but still playing those same dots. I'm sure they're still using midi but whats going on in those high end programs for soundfonts? they must be able to make their own keyboard sounds with something... ok so long rambling on but no i couldnt have cut it any shorter.

Bad scene over here and still havent solved the grey screen problem. Its not just dop its virtual dub.. plus even in adobe premiere there was some screen area snafus when you'd render. Working in it would be fine but when clicking render i'd switch to another windows and it'd have refresh problems in that rectangle progress bar area. Here's a screenshot of that.

youtube/watch?v=6Q_kiaOQujg

Seems to have cleared up in windows 7 though. I could kind of fix that in xp by going into the display control panel and turning down the hardware acceleration all the way down but then it pretty much disables the video card. Even then with that at its lowest setting still got the grey screen in virtual dub and dop. So turned that back to normal. But yeah.. meh on all this.

ok so first, we'll start with are there any new music making programs where i could do something like soundfonts and midi with windows 7? and what goes on in those programs with the midi volume control if there's none in the mixer. Maybe they get high end video cards that arent from creative or something.. I'm just glad i could still be able to work on the music the way i could at least pull it off.. when i ran windows 7 it was like oh.. thats like going back to square 1. allright.. so found this homerecording forum and we'll see what kind of ideas ya guys come up with. For now i can at least pull it off but in 10-20 years i'm gonna be screwed.
 
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hello? anybody out there? so what kind of multi-track recording programs are out there these days that have digital audio alongside midi. And whats going on with how that midi is controlled like what used to be soundfonts if they dont have that any more?

was looking at this page pcmusicstuff.com/compare.html Recording Software Comparison Chart. Out of a couple dozen programs only two are midi compatible. whats going on out there nowadays with the midi and what do they use for soundfonts if thats not around any more? hello, anybody out there?
 
huh.. i guess nobody's out there. oh well. i'll have to look around and search for multi track recording programs that do midi and see if they're made for windows 7.. and what happens with what controls the midi if it's not soundfonts nowadays and what it does for midi volume levels if there's no main windows mixer slider for midi. hmm.. oh well thanks for all the help anyways. meh.
 
It sounds like the problem is your programs. Windows 7 64 is capable of MIDI, I use it almost every day. What you want is a DAW like Cubase that has a sequencer built in. Typically I would either send the MIDI out to an external device (like a keyboard) or use it to trigger a VST instrument. Cubase comes with a few but there are several out there that can be used with a variety of DAW programs.

As far as making your own samples I can't help you there. Never done it myself.
 
I have to say honestly that I saw the size of the first comment and my eyes glazed over and I hit the back button on the internet browser. I seriously can't read for that long. Glad Tetrafish answered with a remarkably shorter response :) Not that I have read the original question yet....

Apologies for my laziness :)

Steve
 
It sounds like the problem is your programs. Windows 7 64 is capable of MIDI, I use it almost every day. What you want is a DAW like Cubase that has a sequencer built in. Typically I would either send the MIDI out to an external device (like a keyboard) or use it to trigger a VST instrument. Cubase comes with a few but there are several out there that can be used with a variety of DAW programs.

As far as making your own samples I can't help you there. Never done it myself.

ok when he says DAW that means digital audio station.. so like a multi track recording program. heard of cubase before. sequencer, dunno what that is. VST instrument dunno what that means.

external device.. no i'm not using anything external, i have a midi keyboard but there's no input to plug it in. Used to be able to do it thru the previous sound card's joystick port with a converter plug. i'm too uncoordinated to play regular keyboard so i just move the midi dots around by hand. so yeah that would just trigger whatever soundfont samples i have going. what do these programs use if they dont have soundfonts? what are they using to assign their own samples to play when they hit the keys?
 
I have to say honestly that I saw the size of the first comment and my eyes glazed over and I hit the back button on the internet browser. I seriously can't read for that long. Glad Tetrafish answered with a remarkably shorter response :) Not that I have read the original question yet....

Apologies for my laziness :)

Steve

well basicly, parts of my screen areas get colored grey and you have to minimize and maximize the program to clear it up. erased the hard drive and reinstalled windows to try and diagnose whats causing it. replaced all the hardware in the computer costing like a grand and its still doing it. if you checkout the youtube links you can see what i'm talking about.
 
i noticed this DSK Music SF2, free SoundFont player.

rekkerd.org/dsk-music-sf2-free-soundfont-player/

DSK Music has released DSK SF2, a free SoundFont player for Windows.

DSK SF2 features

•Load unlimited file size files.
•Bank and preset selector.
•Midi channel selector.
•Note control (Bend, Retrigger).
•Amp. envelope.
•Multimode Filter.
•Advanced LFO with output route.
•Midi automation & learn.
SF2 is available to download as a freeware VST instrument for Windows PC.


would that be something like the soundfont bank manager where you would load up your soundfonts then when you have midi dots it'd play those noises? see.. its a "VST instrument" whatever that is. is that like a plug-in in the multi track recording program? nobody's playing around with midi out there?
 
DAW = Digital Audio Workstation

VST Instrumets are a collection of samples (or soundfonts) that can be triggered by MIDI data. A great example is EZ Drummer (google it).

A sequencer is a program or device that allows you to edit and arrange your MIDI data (or as you say, it's where you move around the dots).

If your interested, to connect a MIDI device to a computer you need an interface. Sometrhing like this. M-AUDIO - MIDISPORT 2x2 Anniversary Edition - 2-in/2-out USB Bus-Powered MIDI Interface

Here's a full featured DAW with a MIDI sequencer. It's very cheap and you can try it for free. REAPER | Audio Production Without Limits
 
so this vst intruments is like sf2 files? cause thats what soundfonts are. i dont know if its the same thing there..

sequencer.. yeah but i need digital audio alongside midi like digital orchestrator used to do.. i think some of the multi track programs do both at once.

that little midiman box.. yeah thats what midi looks like.. sort of like old mic plugs from the 80's where its got like 5 pins.. and you're saying you can plug that in usb? interesting. however.. i'm uh, not at the point yet where i need to plug in a keyboard because there's no programs yet to "move the dots around" with. dop 'll just go "grey screen" in about 30 seconds after i fire up betsy.

"DAW with a MIDI sequencer".. is that like a multi track recording programs that can do digital audio alongside midi where i can move around the dots and have something like soundfonts that'll get triggered once it plays the dots? um, maybe u can go checkout digital orchestrator and find me some kind of "recent" program that does the same thing without too much "bells and whistles" that i dont need. thanks lol.. sorry i'd like to get into all the details of stuff but had a 6 pack. so "tomorrow" we'll look into it.

hang on.. was looking at this reaper.fm/ site and the screenshot looks like its not too busy with dozens of windows they usually try to cram in a screenshot making it look more awesome. but yeah.. um.. does it do stuff like dop and uh, is there something like a "soundfont bank manager" where i can assign my .sf2 files? ok i'm out.. ran outta gas a couple hours ago. ugh. meh.
 
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