Volume and Pan faders for MIDI Tracks (not working)

[Bob Headroom]

Hi all

Another newbie question (but hey, I guess this is what this forum is for).

I'm currently transferring projects from Cubase SX3 to Reaper. At the moment, the projects just consist of two tracks of audio and two tracks of MIDI drums played through the MS GS Wavetable synth.

In Cubase, the volume and pan faders worked for the MIDI tracks in the same way they do for audio. Here in reaper they do nothing.

Just wondered if anyone can explain why? It's no biggie because I have Superior 2.0 (Toontrack) and will be using that for the drums once set up. But I'd still like to know for curiosity's sake.

Cheers

Max

[hopi]

the vol and pan faders on a midi item in the TCP have no effect on the midi data... but they should affect what you hear as audio coming out of the vsti on that track... they do here

[James HE]

right click the track and you will see a menu item "MIDI tack controls"

you can link the volume and pan of a fader to all, or a specific channel.

I think there are some routing situations where this doesn't work out, but I don't use this much, so i can't really speak to the issues.

[Bob Headroom]

Originally Posted by hopi

the vol and pan faders on a midi item in the TCP have no effect on the midi data... but they should affect what you hear as audio coming out of the vsti on that track... they do here

If I load Superior Drummer and play the MIDI through that, the faders work, as does the metering etc. It's only when it is playing through the MS GS Wavetable synth that the above occurs.

Originally Posted by James HE

right click the track and you will see a menu item "MIDI tack controls"

you can link the volume and pan of a fader to all, or a specific channel.

OK, I gave this a go.

- Link track volume/pan to ALL MIDI channels.
That does the trick, although the controls for the two separate MIDI tracks (one is for drums, the other for cymbals) are linked rather than independent.

- Link track volume/pan to MIDI channel.
I had a play around with this but could not figure if there is a way to make the vol./pan settings indpenendent using it. A;;I managed to do was change the MS GS Wavetable synth sounds from drums to other instruments.



Also, I noticed the "127" on the MIDI faders, so presumably when the faders do work with "Link track volume/pan to ALL MIDI channels" selected, they are adjusting velocity rather than volume???

Thanks for the help guys.

[ashcat_lt]

You're sending Continuous Controller (Volume = CC7, what is pan? CC10?) data to your synthesizer, and it is implementing it however it is programmed to do so. There are only 128 steps in the basic CC, which is why you're seeing 127 rather than some db amount. It has nothing to do with Velocity.

Any given synthesizer on any given MIDI channel has exactly one of each CC to work with. In your case, you've got two tracks in Reaper both feeding one synthesizer on MIDI channel 10. The synth recieves CC7 on Ch10 and doesn't know or care which Reaper track sent it, it just does what it does. As is now, you've got two knobs controlling the same thing. I don't believe there's anything you can do about that. What you would need to do is assign one of your tracks to a different MIDI channel and then send a program change to select the same drum kit on that channel. Problem there being that many of these General MIDI synths don't let you put a drum kit on any channel but 10.

Main question, though, is why are you using the crappy wavetable synth when you've got Superior Drummer? Do you just dig the cheese?

[Bob Headroom]

Brilliant post ashcat_lt.

If I'm honest, my MIDI knowledge is pretty scant and what I did used to know I've forgotten a lot of. So I think my main problem has been a lack of MIDI understanding. Your post clears it up really well.

Originally Posted by ashcat_lt

Main question, though, is why are you using the crappy wavetable synth when you've got Superior Drummer? Do you just dig the cheese?

A very fair question.... No, I'll definitely be using Superior. But at this stage I'm just getting to grips with Reaper and (for my sins) I'm a bit of a completest and so wanted to get my head around what was going on.

Many thanks for the help and explanations.