Trouble converting MIDI to audio

deltaman

deltaman

New member
I’m in the process of mixing my first song in Sonar HS 7XL. I have 10 tracks of audio and 2 tracks of MIDI. I’m trying to convert the MIDI tracks to audio, but when I select “Bounce to track(s)” from the “Edit” menu, I get a “The specified selection did not contain any audio data.”

The MIDI tracks were created with the Session Drummer plug-in that comes with Sonar, and plays fine when I play them back with the other audio tracks. Anyone have any suggestions as to what I might be doing wrong?

Thanx ,Barry
 
Thanks for the response, however, none of the picks in the Freeze menu are available (except Freeze Options) all are grayed out. Anything else I can try? Thanks.
 
Are u trying to convert them for archive purposes?
Why convert them?

Try to select the track u want to convert. File menu, export, etc...
You'll probably have to export the tracks then re import the new audio tracks.
 
C7sus
The freeze function is grayed out in the synthrack.

Hack1977
I'm trying to mix MIDI tracks that were created using plug-in synths. The MIDI tracks need to converted to audio first otherwise you won't here them in the stereo mix.
I tried the export function, but I get the same error message - "No audio data present".

Anymore suggestions?
 
Solo the drum track and patch the audio out into the audio in and record the drums on a new audio track.
 
This is a very fundamental question, and really has nothing to do with SONAR specifically; The is no way to 'Convert' MIDI to Audio, in the same way that you convert say, yards to meters - which are essentially done by a look-up table. wav to MP3 would be 'converted in a similar way. To take a MIDI file and make it in to audio, you have to send it to a synthesier and record the output. The Synth could be hardware or software. So if you can identify where the synth is in your Sonar rig, you will have a much better chance of being able to perform the "Conversion". I use a completely different approach to the one suggested by C7sus, but it satisfies the same fundamental criterion of running through a synth. Another way to express all this is that the only thing that converts from MIDI to Audio is a synth.
 
Actually it sounds like a bug in Sonar HS. Freezing the synth in Sonar is a way of freeing up processor capabilities by printing the resulting audio from your MIDI track using whatever synth you have assigned to the track in order to add more real-time synths.
 
for teh record (way late to the game, I know... sorry)... you can't convert the midi track to audio, you convert the synth track that is actually making the audio which is controlled by the midi track.

so yea, sonar is telling you the truth - dno't try to convert the midi track.

however, when I do a quick mixdown I just select all and do the mixing and it's smart enough to not try and mixdown midi tracks but instead just uses them to control their softsynths, which is obvious, but somehow doesn't sound like what's happening to you.

maybe you didn't have the synthrack selected or the audio track selected that contains the softsynth that you've patched the midi track's event output into. since the audio comes from one of those two (depending on how you setup softsynths in sonar), you need that audio generator selected.

although I dont' recall now if the synthrack ones actually need to be selected or if they "just work" - I seem to recall the latter being true, but for audio-track-based softsynths you do need them selected for mixing.
 
Thanks. That fixed it.

I'm running sonar X1, which I run on my laptop through the UA-1G audio interface (USB). I read up on the sonar user manual (rtfg) and the sonar forum and tried the "bounce to clip" technique. It worked, then it didn't work anymore. I got the same message the user who started this thread received. So, thank god for this site. I now mute out everything except the track I want to convert, click the "freeze" button on the soft synth track, and sonar mixes down the midi track onto the soft synth track as audio. I move that data onto a clean audio track, unfreeze the softsynth track, and I'm good to go.

Thanks so much. You fixed my extremely frustrating problem.
 
I can suggest using MIDI Converter Studio for converting. I believe there won't be any problem with it as it is very simple and self-explainable.
 
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