hit midi pad, trigger samples in PC? umm....how?

T

tee diddy

New member
aaack.......I feel old and stupid. Ok, I know midi and I know PC audio, but I started in the days when these two worlds were sepearate.
So here I am with a Kat midi drum pad thing, and a PC with a midi in jack.
And I have lots of nice samples stored on my PC hard drive.

I want to assign a sample to each pad, hit the pads, and make the pc samples play and also have all the midi notes recorded in the pc as I hit the pads.

Is this what a "virtual sampler" does?
Does it have its own sequencer to record the midi notes?

Is there one package that can do this really EASILY? I dont care if can't do ANYthing else, that's fine with me!

ok, thank you.

and, I run Win98 with Samplitude 6.0 and a lot of other junk.
 
You have to watch most software that claims to be a "sampler" - in hardware terms, this means that you can digitally RECORD sounds and then edit them, loop them, etc, to be played back by a MIDI keyboard and output from the audio out jacks on the hardware sampler.

Software samplers should be just a software version of this, but almost ALL of them are NOT. The vast majority of software samplers do NOT record, they only edit and play back samples. Since you have Samplitude, this wouldn't be a problem - you could capture any sounds you want with Samp, then import the wav files into the non-recording soft sampler and tweak away.

What you probably need is a program like cakewalk's Sonar. It has some soft synth/sampler modules, (more with the XL version) and does full-blown MIDI SEQUENCING, which does what you describe. the MIDI editor in Sonar (and others, which seem to have copied the basic editor in Sonar) allows you to visually tweak all MIDI notes for length, start time, and note #, all from a Piano Roll window, with your mouse. The MIDI file can be saved either as a standard midi file, or as a Sonar project which can include digital audio.

I've been using Samplitude running on a Win98 machine for several years, synced to Cakewalk (Sonar's predecessor) with no problems whatsoever. I've never liked the way Cake does audio, after being spoiled by Samp, so I use Cake for MIDI, and Samp for audio.

All you need to run both programs on the same computer is a software midi cable, known as Hubi's Loopback - it's available on the Alexander Samplitude site.

http://alexanderpublishing.com/SamplitudePro/downloads.html

Hubi's is fine for Win98 but won't work with XP or 2K, for that you'd need one called MidiOx (not sure where to get that one) -

If you go that route, remember both programs have to be set to the same SMPTE frame rate (sync options) and that one has to be the master, and the other set to SLAVE. I've had good results both ways, so it depends on your preferred way of working.

Hope that helps some... Steve
 
thank you Steve - anyone else with ideas too?

Thank you Steve, I appreciate the amount of thought you put into my prob and your answer!
This helps me narrow things down a LOT.
Anyone else with ideas, please feel free to continue to contribute to this thread, too.

Did I mention my main sequencer is an Atari 1040ST with C-lab notator software sync'd to my pc? <laughing<.....

hmmm......I guess that means my pads input to the Atari seq would record the midi notes while staying in sync to the PC, and if the midi is set to thru, with that midi signal hitting the PC's midi IN......hmmm, I think this is coming together in my mind.....

Thanks Steve........its getting clearer!
 
A word of warning. Most softysynths are not very fast when it comes to realtime response. That's not a big deal when playing back midi files but when triggering them while performing it can be an issue. Especially on fast stuff like drums.
 
Boy, ain't that the truth - I remember the first time I tried to use a Roland soft sampler that came with my SK88 keyboard - you could play a lick, get a cup of coffee, let it cool, and drink it while you listened to yourself... I'm hoping they're not as bad with newer drivers, faster machines, etc, but I'm definitely not gonna ass-U-me they'll be realtime til I hear it... Steve

I'm planning on using hardware modules for monitoring when I lay tracks with the new system, then assigning the tracks to soft synths for playback. Haven't worked out the details yet, but I hope that will work...
 
Latency.....hmmm........damn

Thanks for all the GOOD advice - I was afraid the latency might be an issue.

Ok, if I can score a firewire Midi interface you think that might do it for me?

I wanted a standard USB but I think that aint gonna cut it, speedwise.

Is a standard PCI card-based Midi interface going to be faster than USB?

And, no I dont have USB 2.0, and I don't want the added expense to upgrade ( I know it;s fast, but I already have firewire)

Btw, I have settled on a system: Kat pad to Atari midi IN, Atari midi out to PC midi in. Samples all set up in Propellerhead Reason, all Audio through Samplitude.

Thank you guys a lot, you have already saved me from some wasted time (and money!).

TIM
 
USB 1.1 is just a little faster than a standard parallel port if I remember correctly - the USB1.1 spec is at about 12 mbits/sec, or 1.5 MBytes per second. You can get 3-4 tracks of 16/44 audio thru that connection, OR (not and, but OR) use it for a MIDI interface. I've used a parallel 8x8 MIDI interface for several years with no noticeable latency, so the USB should work.

However, I've seen reports of probs with P4's and USB, the RME website mentioned some problems with it - USB polls the bus constantly, so all those interrupts kinda suck for audio machines IMO. I'm gonna stick with either serial or parallel for my next interface because of this - I haven't seen any straight MIDI interfaces with firewire - I guess the MOTU stuff, but it's more an audio interface with a midi connector...

And yeah, a PCI card would have less restrictions at least from a hardware standpoint - I think even first generation PCI cards were spec'd at 33 MBytes/second... Steve
 
Most latency is caused by the processing speed of your computer and the slow speed of the midi protocol itself. Any computer interface like USB or Firewire is so much faster than midi that I can't imagine the type of interface making much of a difference. But I could be mistaken.

Latency isn't an issue for playback but it can be pretty annoying while playing if it gets bad. If I were you I would look for a hardware sampler to use while performing. There are a lot of older ones you can get for a few hundred bucks.
 
Hey Tex, my comments on USB (or as RME calls it, UnSatisfactoryBus) were aimed at the general havoc it tends to raise with constant timing of an audio workstation, NOT that it isn't fast enough to handle MIDI without noticeable delay - USB is about half again as fast as a parallel port, which I've been using with no complaints.

However, when it comes to 48 tracks of digital audio playing back from one machine, I try to eliminate any and all "extras" from the machine including anything that thinks it is more important than the stream of WAV files coming off the drive thru the PCI bus.

That's probably the main reason I don't want to have to use a USB dongle with the new version of Samplitude - I have NO INTENTION of even ENABLING USB on an audio computer. (Nor AutoInsert Notification, Screen savers, NIC's, etc)

The nice thing about Hardware Profiles is that you can still have all that stuff in the machine for when you need to download new drivers, or back up huge audio files to a separate machine - you just log onto the Profile that lets you do the housekeeping stuff, then go back to "Bare Bones" for tracking, mixing, etc... Steve
 
knightfly said:
The nice thing about Hardware Profiles is that you can still have all that stuff in the machine for when you need to download new drivers, or back up huge audio files to a separate machine - you just log onto the Profile that lets you do the housekeeping stuff, then go back to "Bare Bones" for tracking, mixing, etc... Steve
Click to expand...

I tried using seperate profiles in Win98 and they never seemed to really work for me. It was a while back but I think I was trying to use them to get around some IRQ conflicts but it seems like they still need their own IRQ even if the device is disabled?

I got sick of messing with that stuff. That's why I bought the Radar ;)
 
buhh you know what I meant;

you can use recorded sounds to trigger other samples.
my expression capacity is not too good at saturday..
 
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