can't select midi output in HS02

[Kemmrich]

Hello,

I have an Dell Inspiron laptop that came standard with a ESS maestro PCI type soundcard that seems to have a wdm based midi driver installed. When I launch HS2002 (just installed) it says no midi output selected. I go to the midi input output screen and there are no inputs to choose (that's OK) and the Microsoft MIDI Mapper is listed in the output section.

If I select the MS midi mapper and press OK, HS continues to tell me I have not selected any midi output device. Has anyone seen this and what can I do about it?

One other important piece of info is that I did install the Tascam US-224, but it was not present when I installed HS and is not present now. I will try connecting that to see if the US-224 shows up for midi output. I didn't disable any sound devices when I installed the us-224 and everything seems enabled now.

Thanks in advance,

Kevin

[Major Tom]

Are you wanting to use internal midi(your soundcard's midi playback ?) to playback thru your speakers ? On my desktop, when I use the WDM drivers, the soundcard's midi device is not available, MS midi mapper is, but that's for external midi devices. I don't know why Sonar would tell you no midi out selected, with midi mapper selected unless you have something enabled that is looking for an external midi device, and nothing is connected. First, I would run the wave profiler. If you have Windows 2000 or XP first try using the soundcard drivers that are on the windows disk (Microsoft approved), then Dell's or ESS's latest. Try checking the "Always use MME drivers" box in the Options/Audio/Advanced dialog, re-run the wave profiler, restart Sonar. I have to use the MME drivers to use internal midi.

[Major Tom]

Oh yeah, I'm not hip to the ESS thing, but does that even have an external midi port ? if not, that's probably why you're getting that error, I think the Midi Mapper is a windows operating system external midi port driver thingy that always shows up as an option, but would probably return an error unless there was a port available...

[Kemmrich]

Tom,

Thanks for the input. I guess the underlying issue may be that I don't have any external midi device hooked up at all. I was hoping to just use any internal software midi "device" that was already supplied by the default sound card.

I can play *.mid files via windows media player and while the "interpretation" of all the instruments is not perfect it is passable. I was just playing around trying to convert some of my wife's midi files into a wav file so I could practice burning a CD. I'll just have to investigate how to use the internal midi drivers or just get a cd burner for her PC, which I was planning to do anyway.

Thanks again,

Kevin

[Major Tom]

In that case go to Options/Audio to bring up the dialog box, chose the advanced tab, Put a check in the "Always use MME interface even when WDM drivers are available" box, restart Sonar, and I bet that you will have your soundcard's midi device available. It won't hurt anything and you can always go back. WDM drivers are notorious for not working 100 % with many soundcards in Sonar. I cannot use the WDM drivers in my setup because the internal midi is not available. If you are running Win 98 or ME they won't work at all, its a newer spec and a lot of card manufacturers haven't gotten it right yet...I just went thru this exact situation myself.
If not go to control panel, open up properties for the soundcard, open the Audio tab and make sure you have the soundcard's midi device, something like ESS synthesizer, or 2nd choice Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth chosen as the default device in the Midi music playback box.

[Kemmrich]

Major Tom,

Change it to "Major Genius" -- modifying the audio to use MME made the "Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth" appear in the Midi Output list -- very cool.

Thanks,

Kevin