New Midi user in panic state

[BardAlgol]

Hey folks,
I'm terribly new to making music on the PC. Infact this is my first day. Today I went out and bought and installed the Axiom 61 key midi controller and the Komplete Synths box set from Native Instruments. I got it all installed on my laptop now but I can't get the sounds from the programs (Absynth, FM-8, massive, etc) to be triggered by using the keys on the Axiom. Only by pushing the keyboard keys on the screen. I'm sure there must something I haven't done to tell the programs to use input from the Axiom but this is all terribly new to me so in my panic, I can't find anything that says what to do to tell the software that I'm using the Axiom.

Also, I can't seem to get the VSTs (Absynth, Massive, etc) to show up in the Ableton Live that came with the Axiom, I choose the location of them but they don't show up in the workspace on the record screen.

If someone could help me out getting setup to get it all working together with this I'd be very grateful. Sorry if my wording is convoluted compared to the proper terminology, I'm completely in diapers when it comes to all this newfangled software instruments.

 

[gecko zzed]

You've installed Axiom ok, I presume?

Okay . . . try this as a starter.

Run Absynth as a stand-alone instrument.

Click on "set up"

Click on "audio and midi settings . . ."

Click on "midi"

See if axiom appears as an "input interface".

If it does, so far so good. If not, then I have no answer.

Make sure it is enabled, i.e. it is shown as 'on'. Just click on the 'off' if that is what is showing.

Try that . . . that should get you going.

If not . . . then again I have no answer.

I can't help you with ABleton Live, not being familiar with that program.

 

[BardAlgol]

Hi, thanks for the input. I got to the midi device page as you described but what appears is "microsoft wavetable synth 65" (?) but it's not saying Axiom anywhere. I've clicked this option anyway but nothing is happening still. Pooh.
I sure wish they sold classes on using this stuff like they do guitar lessons!

If anyone else has any suggestions - I'm still open!


EDIT: By Crickey it's on there now for some reason (magic I guess) and "wavetable synth 65" is gone from the Midi input list - no idea what that is/was cos I've never installed any software on this laptop except for today, Whew! I got the oogy boogie going on now! Well, at the least I can push keys and twist knobs and "things happen" so that's what I wanted - thanks so much man!!!

 

[gecko zzed]

I am gla dthat you've got it going.

And yes . . . it is probably magic.

The "wavetable synth 65" is probably the standard sound generator that resides within the laptop when originally set up.

 

[BardAlgol]

Today I can't seem to get Abysnth to work right. I was having a good time just checking out sounds the other night but today it makes static when I try to play anything. If I adjust any of the sound card latency settings or sample rate the program just freezes up and I've gotta pull out the battery to power it off. My system exceeds all the requirements and has 4x the required ram. What could cause it to work the first night and not a couple days later?

The booklet mentions using specific ASIO drivers for the sound card, where can you get additional drivers? I looked at my computer guys site but it doesn't mention Steinberg or ASIO on his various Sound cards. Incase I have I have to upgrade to get this kit and kaboodle all working reliably everyday - what Brand & Model of sound cards do you folks use?

 

[dementedchord]

are you trying to play it from the system disk???? alott of system disks are slow on laptops and it becomes more important to have a secondary disc for sounds than even on a tabletop... in addition to the speed problems you get bottle necks when the puter interupts the audio to do basic housekeeping...

 

[BardAlgol]

I hate to sound totally stupid, but I'm new to this. By "system disk" do you mean am I running Absynth from the hard drive? Yes, I installed it on my hard drive as per the instructions. Are you saying I should have installed it on an external hard drive cos they run faster than the laptop hard drive and this can be the source of my clicks and drop outs on the fuller sounding string presets? The CPU meter never gets above 1/4 or even 1/3 with the fullest sounds but I get the static and glitches which is irritating to say the least. Can I simply drag/drop the folders into an external hard drive in windows explorer if I buy one or does Native instruments have some wacky rule about moving files once they've been installed? That was the craziest installation I ever hoop-jumped through getting this thing started up!

Thanks for putting up with my newbieness...!

 

[dementedchord]

yeah you read me right about the system disk... in my puter i have three disks... one for the system ... one for recording/playback... and one for sample libraries...

 

[Joseph Hanna]

Hold on now...things are getting pretty tangled up rapidly.

There are some things to understand before you start throwing switches that you'll never recover from.

It's good to know that there are indeed some sample playback softsynths that rely heavily on "streaming" samples from a hard disk. Those "Samplers" in turn relay heavily on 1) ram 2)hard drive speed 3) hard drive health. A few examples of these needy plugs would include Sample Tank, Mach 5, Kontakt.

In this case Absynth is not a plug-in that streams samples. It has presets that rely on the on board filters ect to create sounds.

As long as your hard drive is up to spec there is NO reason you can't have Absynth live happily on your internal drive. In fact I believe that's the right place for it.

Now as to your problem. Don't do ANYTHING that you can't recover from. I suspect that there is either a setting in Ableton or a setting in Absynth that's causing the problem.

Even if this is NOT the case and it turns out to be a hard drive problem at least exhaust the simple solutions before you start to wretch things around.

The best advice I can give is from Will Rogers "if you find yourself in a hole....stop digging".

Try a new Abeton session at a simple 44.1/16 bit rate with no other loops. What happens??