Sonar and Midi port sharing.

[Jim Y]

OK.
I have Sonar 1.3.1 under WinXP
2 s/cards - Santa Cruz and Audiophile - each has 1 midi port.
I have midi hardware which has PC editing software which appears in Sonars tools menu. It would be nice to be able to open a prog to edit my sounds while Sonar is open but it won't let me - because the midi ports are in use!
First of all...
The "share drivers" option is no use - it only applies to audio ports. Cakewalk inform me that Sonar will not share midi drivers.
The midi ports ARE multiclient.

I've looked at Hubis and Midi Yoke - they are not the answer as I can see no way to place them on the actual ports - they are designed to patch application midi ports together. What would be needed is a virtual "Y" chord that splits a midi in as 2 seperate devices and another that appears as 2 outs that actualy feed the real midi out.
Getting extra midi ports won't help either (and not selecting them in Sonar) because then I won't have access to my midi gear in Sonar.

Maybe this can be solved by getting Sonar 2 but I haven't seen it mentioned in the specs. I'm not sure what puzzles me most about this - the fact that something so basic can't be done or that I seem to be the only one with the problem.

[James Argo]

Maybe this can be solved by getting Sonar 2 but I haven't seen it mentioned in the specs.

..Unfortunately, it's not. I got SONAR 2XL and still lock all the MIDI ports. I also got firmware to load the setting of one of my primary external synth, still I have to do it BEFORE I run SONAR. If in case I want to load my previous saved setting with my firmware, I should save the project, close SONAR, open the firmware, load, close, and go back to SONAR... It's not cool, but look in the positive sight, it reminded me to save my project periodically...




PS. It's my 1000th posts.
1K silver member.

[crosstudio]

have you looked for a Sonar StudioWare panel for your particular gear?

i wrote a gigasampler type of application a few years back and i was able to share midi with cakewalk8 and 9. i could have swore i was using Hubis but maybe i had written my own.

if i remember for certain i'll put another post in.

[Jim Y]

Yeh, there is the Studioware option, in combination with Sonars Sys Ex tool. If all you need to do is save a synths progs and associate it with a project, the Sys Ex Librarian does the deed. However, not all of my kit has Studioware and I don't have the time to produce my own.
With some midi gear, the pc editing tool for it is often a major reason for buying it, usually the only sane way to use other than pre-set sounds.
There is a hardware solution - extra midi ports and use merge and thru midi boxes so that the editor prog is on a seperate parallel connection. Sonar releases a port if all its ins and outs are deselected, but you can't do that all the time - you lose the instrument defs and have to reset them.
I don't know why Cakewalk lock the midi ports. It's probably something to do with midi timing, something people criticise about the pc platform so maybe they're just playing safe by locking anything else out of the midi ports?