NO SOUND AAAARRRGGGHHHH

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vinni smith

Post by vinni smith » Sat Mar 27, 2004 5:34 pm

Hi all. Glad I found this place!

I have just installed Home Studio 2004. Everything seemed to install correctly, however I cannot play and hear anything in Cakewalk. My CD plays music and all my irritating XP warning noises all work but I cannot play any of the Tutorials in Cakewalk. I have gone into options and set the MIDI and Audio in and outs to creative sound blaster and nothing.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I would appreciate any thoughts on the matter.

Vinni


vinni smith

Post by vinni smith » Sat Mar 27, 2004 6:07 pm

I guess I should tell you that my system is Windows XP.

I have a Sound Blaster card but I did not by a specific music related one yet. It is just what came with the computer. I understand that I should eventually get a great sound card but should I not still be able to hear the tutorials?

Thanks for any help you can give me.

Vinni

andychap
Posts: 685
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Location: UK

Post by andychap » Sat Mar 27, 2004 6:55 pm

Make sure you have direct X 8 installed.

When you select the midi out on the SB Live shoose either the A or B synth and then go into instruments highlight all 16 channels on the left hand side and click General Midi on the right hand side. Then highlight channel 10 and click on GM drums.

This should set you up with some basic midi sounds from the SB card.

Go into your audio options again and run the wave profiler again. This should set up the audio aspects of the card automatically. If nothing changes then search you cakewalk folder for the AUD ini file or AUD configeration file and delete it.

Start Cakewalk and the wave profiler should run automatically and set up the card again. You may have to reset your midi ins and outs again but that's no problem now.

Your CD's and media player etc will play because they use the sound devices that are mapped out by win XP according to which drivers you are using. Cakewalk does not use these settings except to adjust volume and properties of your sound card in the cards mixer panel.

vinni smith

Post by vinni smith » Sun Mar 28, 2004 3:23 pm

Hey Thanks for the speedy reply Andychap!

I have looked on that computer and it does not seem to have directx.

I have it on another unit but cannot seem to transfer it over. It wont let me email it either.

Here is the sutpidest question of the day. How can I get Directx8? It did not seem to come with the Cakewalk program. I got it somewhere in the past, however on this computer.

Thanks again for all the help.

Vinni

andychap
Posts: 685
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2003 7:26 pm
Location: UK

Post by andychap » Sun Mar 28, 2004 4:05 pm

Providing Home Studio is already installed then you can just down load the latest vesion of DirectX from the Microsoft site. It come as a self extracting installation. Or iy can be set to install direct from the microsoft site. I would have thought that XP would have some version of DirectX already with it, maybe you should get the site to do the auto update scan and let it tell you if you need it.

vinni smith

Post by vinni smith » Sun Mar 28, 2004 4:48 pm

Ok,

I downloaded directx9 from the microsoft site and installed it. Very easy.

I performed all the adjustments you outlined. I can now listen to tutorial #5. It is an audio track only. The midi tracks still don't play.

Another stupid question. Do I have to have a midi instrument attached to my soundcard port for these tutorials to play? I do not have a midi keyboard yet but I do have the cables. It probably would have been helpfull if I had given you this info from the start. :?

I wonder if I am going about this whole thing wrong anyway. I plan to put drum patterns down and then, one by one, track each instrument and I really don't have any midi instruments to record other than a keyboard player and it seems to me we can record him in the audio mode as well. As you can guess at this point, I am completely midi illiterate. I hope I can put the drums down without a keyboard as well. If not, I will go out and shop for what ever I need.

Thanks for your help man! You are one smart dude.

Vinni

vinni smith

Post by vinni smith » Sun Mar 28, 2004 5:07 pm

Man, I feel the need to save a little face here. LOL I am not a COMPLETE moron as it may seem. I am a professional musician with 3 CDs behind me. The second was recorded and produced on Cubase by Bruce Lowe in LA. He produces for Madonna, Micheal Jackson and Micheal MacDonald.

Anyway, I AM midi illiterate but I do know quite a bit about recording. I really want this option in my home so I am not completely dependant on others. I chose Cakewalk because every said it is to nice and reliable and so far I do really like it.

If you have the time Andychap, please visit my site for a couple of sound clips. I would be interested in your opinions.

http://vinnismith.com/Soundclips.htm

thanks man

vinni

andychap
Posts: 685
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2003 7:26 pm
Location: UK

Post by andychap » Mon Mar 29, 2004 8:36 pm

To get your midi to play you must set the outputs in the options menu. Choose one of the entries that relate to your soundcard, usually they are called A and B synth. If these don't work then try looking at the ones that come with windows like the GM/GS synth. Remener whichever one you choose you must move it to the top of the list or it will choose the others first.

vinni smith

Post by vinni smith » Tue Mar 30, 2004 2:55 am

The only two options I have are

Creative Sound Blaster MPU-401
and
Microsoft MIDI Mapper

If I try to click on the Microsoft one and put it on the top it says that I have not chosen an output.

Guest

Post by Guest » Tue Mar 30, 2004 6:05 am

Hi Vinnie

Just thought i would mention that your midi 'sounds' will sound very average/cheesy with a generic sound card and no midi module connected to your pc. Don't let this put you off midi!!

There are some fantastic sound modules out there with some unbelievable sounds....also there are some nice sound cards too so you can incorporate some pretty sweet effects and also use sound fonts.

Of course, if you already know all of this then just tell me to p*ss off!! :wink:

Good luck.

andychap
Posts: 685
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2003 7:26 pm
Location: UK

Post by andychap » Tue Mar 30, 2004 8:30 am

vinni smith wrote:The only two options I have are

Creative Sound Blaster MPU-401
and
Microsoft MIDI Mapper

If I try to click on the Microsoft one and put it on the top it says that I have not chosen an output.
By the looks of that you have not got the drivers installed properly. Every creative card has an onboard synth of some kind. I would go to the Sound blaster site and get the latest drivers for your card. You will need them to get the full functionality out of that card.

XP installs the basic drivers for that card but only the basic. Even though the basic midi sounds are a bit basic you can load soundfonts into the memory on the card. These soundfonts can accumulate up to half the total value of your system RAM so as you can imagine you can get some decent ones.

I still regularly use a 42 Mb grand Piano soundfont and a 25 Mb Fender Jazz bass soundfont. The Cadenza strings ones are also very good.

You have got to get the most out of what you have got. That way when you move on to something better you will know what you are looking for.

vinni Smith

Post by vinni Smith » Wed Mar 31, 2004 5:03 am

Hey Yall!

Well thanks to your help Andychap, I finally got the midi to play!

I was just given this Pentium 4 computer by my job and the hard drive was wiped before they handed it over to me. Well, today I asked for any install discs they had and they gave me about a half dozen. One of them was, of course, the Soundblaster CD. I installed it as you mentioned and voila! Actually, it sounds pretty darn good.

And Guest, who ever you are, that sounds like pretty good info. I don't know squat about this stuff. I really don't. I especially do not understand MIDI. I have been a guitar player all my life and have really never had any use for MIDI even though they use it on my CDs. I just don't understand it. Any advise you can give me on this topic, I will gladly accept.

Ok, now that I know this system will work for me, I am going to dive in and if I need to buy more stuff, then so be it. Watch out checkbook!!!

Vinni

andychap
Posts: 685
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2003 7:26 pm
Location: UK

Post by andychap » Wed Mar 31, 2004 10:51 am

Glad you got sorted in the end Vinni. Now you're on the path to making music on your computer.

If you think you have just had problems getting that lot sorted, in the words of Bachman Turner Overdrive, You ain't seen nothin yet :wink:

Check out this site for some pretty good soundfonts. Make sure you download SfArk and SfPack so that you can unpack the soundfonts after you have downloaded them.

http://www.hammersound.net/

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