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MED FAQ - PAGE 2
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Moving old Amiga mods to PC
You have two options. You can obtain a copy of
Crossdos or a similar program for your Amiga. With this software your
Amiga will be able to read 720k PC floppies. You could then copy your
Amiga floppies to pc formatted floppies on your Amiga. If you have a
harddisk on your Amiga, you may want to look for TWIN software. It works
like this: You fit a null modem cable from your Amiga to your PC, then
run the TWIN PC version on your PC and the TWIN Amiga version on your
Amiga. Or get a copy of the program I use called 'PC2Am' which you can
find on Aminet... You'll need a parallel/serial cable as well, but I
find it the easiest to use. You will then be able to access harddisks at
both sides and, copy/move date across.
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Moving old packed Amiga mods to PC
Powerpacked modules will be loaded correctly,
however, if you packed the Amiga version with the SFCD or SFHD format,
support for those formats was not possible within the PC version and you
will need to download the MEDunpack program from here:
MEDUNPACK
(includes source)
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Audio Playback Problems
If you are experiencing clicks in your audio, or any other sound
problem, here are some tips which may help you:
1. Make sure your sound drivers are the latest available. Most sound
card manufacturers frequently update their sound card drivers to fix
bugs or audio playback problems. They will also occasionally have their
drivers tested by Microsoft, and if their drivers pass, they become
Microsoft Certified. The best driver you can use for your sound card
will be the most recent, and Microsoft Certified. If you are having
trouble finding the most recent drivers for your soundcard, try:
CNet (download.com) drivers or
driverguide.
2. Ensure your video card drivers are also up-to-date. Because MED
Soundstudio scrolls a lot of data across your screen, having the most
recent video card drivers is also important. There are known problems
with some older models of Matrox cards, but most video cards are fine.
The best drivers to have are the Microsoft Certified drivers. Just like
the sound card drivers, if they are up-to-date, they will be Certified
for DirectX .
3. Installing the latest DirectX available allows MED to interface
quickly with your video and sound cards. You can obtain the latest
version of DirectX from
microsoft.com/directx.
You may also wish to install the latest version of Direct Media which is
also available from the MS web site.
If you're having problems playing audio in another program wile MED is
playing, go to Start Menu > Settings > Control Panel > Multimedia, and
make sure you have 'Use Preferred Devices Only' checked. This means all
of the sounds in Windows will be directed through the Preferred sound
Devices. If you have the latest version of DirectX installed, then all
sound will be routed through the DirectX sound drivers. This way, MED
can play sound simultaneously with other sound programs, because DirectX
has built-in sound mixing routines, which allow many programs to play
sound simultaneously.
4. If using Windows NT : Windows NT has a problem inasmuch that it does
not support higher than DirectX 3.0 natively. The result of this is that
MED will not run to its full potential. There is, however, a hacked
version of DirectX 5.0 (for Windows NT) floating around. This is not a
Microsoft product and should be used with great caution and at your own
risk. It has been known to fix problems with sound programs (including
MED), though. You might find it by searching for it on any reputable
search engine.
To summarise: To access your sound and video card, or any part of your
hardware, Windows needs the appropriate software loaded. Using DirectX
allows Windows to access your hardware more directly (hence the name),
yielding greater performance. If you are serious about writing music, it
can be important to make sure your computer is stable, reliable, and as
fast as possible. One way of doing this is by making sure Windows has
the latest and most accurate drivers loaded. There are many resources on
the internet on how to increase the performance and stability of your
computer. To my mind, any tradesperson who is serious will learn the
peculiarities of their tools; and computers are no different.
This FAQ submitted by our beta tester: orpheus (Sam)
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Problems with default pitch
if you have samples in your song playing at DEF, then
save it, and load it again, rarely do they play at the correct pitch.
this is because med is not saving or loading the 'default pitch' value
in instrument properties correctly and altyhough this is being fixed for
V2, you need a work round now!, here is some help from boz, (Alistair).
The "DEF" note points to the "default frequency" field in the instrument
panel. At first glance, you might assume that this field is directly
editable, but it isn't! Imagine the scene... you've just "acquired" a
brand-spanking-new sample... from a CD let's say, or from a nice
friendly free-sample web-site. This sample is typically going to be at
44,100Hz, the standard for "CD-quality" samples (I had it explained to
me once... something to do with the human ear having a hearing range of
22KHz, and you double it to allow for anti-aliasing or something as
technical as that). Unfortunately, as far as your music-editor is
concerned, 44.1KHz isn't a "standard" frequency for a typical musical
note. The actual nearest frequency is 44701Hz, or "F-6" as it's known in
MED. Orpheus (bless 'im) anwered one of query, in that a "workaround" to
this problem is to not use the DEF note, but to use F-6 instead, and
then put -2 (minus-two) into the finetune field of the instrument. This
way, when you save the module and subsequently re-load it, it will sound
the same, according to the song-tempo you've chosen. There are other
ways to overcome the problem, like slightly adjusting the song-tempo,
pitch-changing the sample etc etc.. As said, V2 will have this problem
sorted but the best advice is Orph's... use F-6 (as opposed to DEF) and
finetune by -2. You could, of course, manually resample in another
sample-editor.
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MED USERS GUIDE TO MIDI
By Andy, The Main Author Of MED Soundstudio Release V1.xx
MIDI support in MED is somewhat complex, partly due to MED's flexibility
and partly due to the inherent complexity of MIDI itself.
A lot of this is dealt with in the excellent online documentation, but I
thought I would take an independent stab at describing the MIDI system.
This guide attempts to clarify only the more basic MED related MIDI
issues. To learn more about MIDI in general, there are plenty of guides
on the net. The overall structure of MIDI is that there are "ports",
each port can send data to a number of "channels". MIDI devices, such as
a synth listen to a channel (or channels). A MIDI device will, in turn,
trigger a particular sound (often termed a "voice" or "patch").
Since there may be many voices (my synth supports 692 built-in voices)
supported by a device, devices organize the voices into banks, each bank
containing up to 128 "programs" (also known as "presets"). Let's explore
this a little more...
PORTS
A port *roughly* corresponds with a connection, or piece of wire such as
the DIN socket on a sound-card. Of course since we are dealing with
computers some the equipment is not physical at all. Most sound cards
support a built-in synth, which ends up being addressed by a port. Ports
from a Windows point of view are also classified as input ports, or
output ports. An input port is used when an external source sends MIDI
into a program such as MED. An output port is used when a program sends
MIDI information to a port.
Input port -----> MED ------> Output port(s)
In general Windows can support multiple input ports and multiple output
ports.
INPUT PORTS
A limitation of MED is that it only supports one input port (although it
can use multiple output ports). To review the input ports on your
machine go into MED and open up MIDI Settings under the MIDI menu. The
third pulldown is reassuringly called "Input Port", check it out, in my
case I only have one input port called "SB Live! MIDI UART" and this
corresponds with the input on my Soundblaster Live! sound card. If you
have more soundcards, you will see more than one entry. You can only
pick one.
To set up MED for MIDI input, follow these steps:
(1) Go to MIDI/MIDI Settings and pick the port (input port) you wish to
use.
(2) Go to MIDI/Input Active and make sure it is checked
Once that is done the current instrument should be playable using a midi
keyboard plugged into the input port. Pretty simple huh? Well hang onto
your hats because things get much more complex for output ports...
OUTPUT PORTS
There will almost always be more than one output port... and the first
one is the most complex! To see this list pick the "MIDI Port Map" from
the MIDI menu. This dialog is probably the cause of MUCH confusion in
MED. for now just check out the pulldown combo box at the bottom of the
dialog which is labelled "Current Assigned Port".
Take a look at what is in that list, but be careful not to select
anything yet! For me the list contains:
Unassigned
Microsoft MIDI Mapper
A: SB Live! MIDI Synth
B: SB Live! MIDI Synth
SB Live! MIDI UART
Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth
Initially the list above the combo-box contains a similar looking list,
except it doesn't start with "Unassigned". Don't worry about that list
quite yet.
Except for the first entry, the dropdown list is a list of possible
output ports that Windows supports. The order depends on how Windows
sorts the list but should always start with Microsoft MIDI Mapper, which
isn't a real port at all! In my case my SB Live! supports two built-in
MIDI synths (A and B), these are built into the sound card, it also
supports a single real external port, that you can plug your own synth
into, look for the word UART which you saw on the input port as well.
The word UART refers to the bit of hardware on your sound card that can
send or receive serial data. Finally, the entry "Microsoft GS Wavetable
SW Synth" refers to windows own capability to generate MIDI sounds,
without the specific MIDI support of the sound card. If your sound card
does not support MIDI output directly, you should still see this entry.
It actually uses the normal WAVE output port to play.
Another more basic way to review the output ports (especially if you
have reason to doubt MED!) is to go into the windows control panel and
choose "Sounds and Multimedia". On the Audio tab the last pulldown, uder
"MIDI Music Playback" should contain the SAME LIST, without the
"Unassigned" or "Microsoft MIDI Mapper" entries.
The MIDI port "Microsoft MIDI Mapper" is not a real port at all. I
recommend you don't use it. Future versions of MED will probably present
this choice in a different way. The MIDI mapper is a kind of virtual
port that can route and transform your MIDI output to a number of ways
based on Channel, Port, Patch, Key and Volume. Again, unless you want
majorly confusing things to happen I advise against using this infernal
thing.
Now you understand the types of real physical ports you may have access
to it's time to return to the "MIDI Port Map". When MED references a
MIDI port it uses a simple number (1, 2, 3 etc.). Originally this number
directly corresponded to a physical output port, but this can result in
difficulties when a MED tune is moved from one machine to another.
As an example consider two computers, mine and yours. My computer has
the physical list:
1) Microsoft MIDI Mapper
2) A: SB Live! MIDI Synth
3) B: SB Live! MIDI Synth
4) SB Live! MIDI UART
5) Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth
Your computer could have the physical list:
1) Microsoft MIDI Mapper
2) El Cheapo MIDI Synth
3) El Cheapo MIDI UART
4) Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth
This is quite possible since, although I am outrageously rich from all
the sales of MED, you are presumably very poor after having had to buy a
copy, and all you could afford was the "El Cheapo" card that only has
one built in MIDI synth.
If I now compose a song using "B: SB Live! MIDI Synth" and send it to
you, you would end up playing it on "El Cheapo MIDI UART", since that is
port 3 in both cases. This would mean that unless you had an external
synth, you would hear nothing. Worse still, compose to port 5, the
"Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth", you don't even have a corresponding
entry, which will result in an error.
To resolve this mess (some may contend an even bigger mess was created
to take it's place!) The MED number is actually a "logical" number, and
the relationship between "logical" numbers and physical ports is
controlled by the "MIDI Port Map". This map is maintained using the
"MIDI Port Map".
Initially the map is a kind of "do nothing" thing because the default is
for virtual port 1 to map to physical port 1, for virtual port 2 to map
to physical port 2 and so on. To meddle with this map pull up the "MIDI
Port Map" and take a look. The upper list is in order of virtual ports.
To change the mapping for a particular virtual port, select the entry
you want to change, then pull down the combo below and pick the physical
port you wish to map to. Through use of the "unassigned" entry, it is
possible to map a virtual port to nothing, this is a kind of black hole
for MIDI and nothing will play on this port.
INSTRUMENTS AND DEVICES
These concepts are very specific to MED. MED plays instruments, which
may be of three basic types, Sample, Synthetic or MIDI. A sampled
instument plays a sample, resampled to get the right pitch. A Synthetic
instrument uses a built-in sound generator.
The case we are interested in here is a MIDI based instrument, which
ends up generating MIDI information and sending it to the appropriate
port and channel (or channels). Try bringing up the "Instrument
Properties" dialog and use the "Instrument Type" radio buttons to select
MIDI.
The "MIDI Properties" area of the dialog now becomes enabled. This is
where you can select the logical port this Instrument will send on. The
"Output Port" pulldown selects this. By using this pulldown the port to
send on is selected explicitly.
Remember that from a MIDI point of view a specific channel should be
used, so the "Transmit Ch" spinner selects that.
So given this, what role does the "Device" pulldown play?
Devices are an attempt by MED to convert the specifics of port and
channel into concepts the user is presumably more familiar with. If you
feel more comfortable specifying everything in terms of port and
channel, you do not really need to mess with MEDs device support.
Consider a real situation where you may have three different synths.
Each one can be referred to as a device. Each synth may listen on one or
more channels on a particular port (probably the UART port, since these
are external devices). To save having to remember the port and channel,
there mappings can be specified once through the "MIDI Patch Names"
dialog. In this dialog you can name all you physical devices (Append New
or Insert New) and specify the port and channels this device uses. If
you do all that once (you can save the list to disk) then when setting
up the instrument you can select a device name instead of directly
specifying a port and channel.
BANKS and PRESETS
A bank is a way of making a set of up to 128 voices available.
There may be up to 16384 banks. Because there can be so many banks it is
common to specify bank numbers in two parts, referred to as the MSB and
LSB. The astute will recognise 16384 to be 128 x 128, so each number can
range from 0..127. The notation MED uses is to display the bank number
as a single number, 0 to 127 for small bank numbers (when the MSB is 0),
and to use a separating "/" for larger bank numbers (MSB/LSB). As an
example, the bank number after 127 is shown as 1/0. To get the actual
bank number take the first number, multiply is by 128 and add it to the
second.
A couple of bugs in MED make this a little odder. MED actually allows
128/0 to be specified, don't do this! Also the edit field is too small
to show a large number (such as 100/122 correctly, you may have to
scroll the edit box!
The preset (more correctly termed program number) specifies one of 128
possibilities within a bank. Theoretically a single channel could
address up to 16384x128 voices, that is over 2 million possibilities!
This is quite rare, so in practice only a subset of the available banks
are used.
For example, my synth only allows the values 0, 64, 126 and 127 for the
MSB, these correspond with "XG Normal", "SFX Normal", "XG SFX Kit" and "XG
Drum".
Since each selection of bank and program corresponds with a voice, and
the assignment of these voices can vary widely, MED allows these
combinations to be named, and the names to be stored. MED calls these
"Patch Names" although I would prefer the term "Voice Names". This is
done through the "MIDI Patch Names" dialog. Because of the madness of
all these different mappings, some standards exist. MED supports two
standard mappings, GM or XG. GM is short for General MIDI, which most
synths support, XG is an superset of GM which, (for example) Yamaha
support.
Going back to the "Instrument Properties" dialog, you can specify banks
and presets by name rather than explicitly by number.
MIDI PROPERTIES - INPUT CHANNEL
There is a field on the MIDI PROPERTIES dialog called "Input Ch".
Oddly this is enabled even for non-MIDI instruments. This is because
this is only used for incoming NOTE ON messages. The channel the NOTE ON
is for is used to determine which instrument to trigger, which could
easily be a sample.
The value for this field is 0..16, MIDI only supports 16 channels so
what is up? The answer is that the special value 0 means listen on ALL
channels, 1..16 means a specific channel, 0..15.
Since the sample value can be set for multiple instruments, a selection
process is used to determine the appropriate instrument to trigger.
The following tests are made in order, the first to succeed determines
the instrument to play:
(1) First the "current" instrument is checked, if it listens to a
specific channel, and it matches, that instrument is triggered.
(2) Check all the instuments for a specific match. The first found is
selected.
(3) If the current instrument listens on ALL channels then the current
instrument is selected.
(4) Check all the instruments for one which listens on all channels. The
first found is used.
If none of the steps succeed, the current instrument is used by default.
MIDI THRU
There has been a lot of reports that MIDI THRU does not work, this is
unsurprising for two reasons.
Reason 1: I interpreted this as the need for ALL data coming to the
selected input port to be forwarded to the selected THRU port (see MIDI
Settings for these values). It is possible this is not what it should
do!
Reason 2: More fundamentally, under the covers this uses the Windows
call "midiConnect". The first parameter is the selected input port, the
second is the configured "thru" port (on the "MIDI Settings" dialog). I
expected this to do what I wanted, simply pass all data flowing into the
input port, directly to the thru port. Reading the Microsoft
documentation another way, it is possible that this actually re-routes
all data sent to the thru port, to the input port! Since this makes no
sense to me, V2 will probably stop using this bit of Microsoft black
magic and instead will explicitly connect the ports.
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Loopback Gives you 4 New MIDI
Ports
If you download and install Hubi's Loopback from:
Hubis it will give you 4 new MIDIports called LB1 - LB4. You set
your MIDIprograms to send to one of these instead of the actual MIDIport.
You can make the virtual Loopback port send to the actual MIDIport
instead. Why bother?
Because up to 4 programs can send to the same virtual port at the same
time without colliding.
The actual routing is made with a program that ends up in your
Hubidrawer called: HWMDCABL.EXE
Start it and right click on it and you get a patchbay window with the
inputs to the left and outputs to the right.
You have to start another instance of the program again to make another
patch.
There are instructions on setting things up, but it 'is' a matter of
trial and error to get it to work the way you want it to!
If you try it and have problems, ask in the closed reg user mail list.
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Users MIDI Questions and Answers
Question:
I can use my midi keyboard to input and hear
samples (both during input and playback) and I can input midi notes
using the keyboard and hear the correct sound during playback but I
hear no sound during MIDI note input. This is the case for both v1.4
and v1.5. I think the MIDI setup etc is OK (it works in a miditracker
program called Midget ) but I'm no expert.
Am I doing something wrong?
Any help would be gratefully appreciated!
Answers:
There may be a way to work round this problem using MidiYoke
browse to: MIDIOX
this sites program/help should let you patch round this problem.
I can confirm that you should be able to hear MIDI notes as you enter
them with your current version of MED (or all versions, for that
matter).
I work with MIDI all the time, and hear notes as I enter them. I
realize this might be too obvious, but have you checked your MIDI
Settings under the MIDI menu in MED?
Do you have external gear requiring MED to pass notes thru to?
The checkbox and path for it is designated here.
Your input and output ports might be set right, but if Thru isn't,
you will only hear the notes as you play back the composition, and
not as you enter them.
Hope it helps!
Eric Lyon
Question:
I ordered a Waldorf synthesizer module and a midi keyboard and they came
today. I've been trying to get them working all day but I don't know any
thing about midi. I don't have any midi sockets on my computer instead
I bought a midiman with two midi sockets (in and out) which plugs into
the U.S.B socket on the computer.
I've been trying to use med to control
the synth but I haven't got anywhere. I don't know whether it's the midi
settings in the synth or in med or the way I've wired everything up.
I
waited a long time for it to arrive and now I'm desperate to get it working
can anyone help?
Thanks
Martin
Answers:
Martin,
Sweet... hope you have fun with it... I'd suggest you read through my MIDI
FAQ... more MIDI help,
it has a few side notes related to use in MED. I'm hoping it'll be
helpful.
MED has a few odd quirks... Often numbers have to be 1 higher to
account for 0 being no change.
This is true with LSB Bank select and
patch selection. Aside from that... just be sure the MIDI is enabled in
the menu.
-Eric
With MED just make sure midi is active, open instrument properties & click
'midi' in instrument type, change volume, in midi properties 'Transmit channel'
select a channel number, then click the downward facing arrow to the right of
'Output port' & select 'Out-A or B USB Midi (Whatever version it is) mine is
MIDISPORT 2x2, then you should @ least get a sound..
Chris
Martin:
I'll mention instrument volume right up front, because it's a headache .
When you created a MIDI
instrument in prior versions, the volume of the instrument defaulted to 127,
or full volume.
This isn't the case anymore. It defaults to 0. I have no
idea why, but it does.
If you believe the rest of your setup is correct,
this little setting may be the key. Go into your instrument properties for
that slot, and make certain the volume in "General Properties" is set to
127.
I have a synth and a module hooked up to MED via a Midiman 2x2 USB port, so
might be able to give you a walkthrough on setup. Regardless of your system,
I'm assuming you've installed whatever drivers are necessary for the Midiman
(from the included CD or disk), I'll cover the various settings in MED to
make certain it's connected properly. If your problem is with general setup,
I'll cover that, as well...
Let's find out if everything's connected correctly...My setup is for using
the synth to enter notes into MED, and hearing them played back on the
module.
If this is your case, the proper cables are MIDI Out from the synth
to MIDI In-A on the Midiman. Then another cable from MIDI Out-A on the
Midiman to your sound module's In-A (my module has two Inputs, A and B).
The
USB cable from the Midiman handles the communication with MED.
Now fire up MED. Open "MIDI port map" under the MIDI menu in MED. The
dropdown box for "Currently assigned port" should list your Midiman 2x2 (A
and B ports, both in and out). Choose the A-Out one for now.
OK out of
there, and move to "MIDI settings" in the MIDI menu. Your "default MIDI
ports" section has drop-downs as well, and should include your MIDIman ports
(A in and out, B in and out). If you're like me, the synth is for entering
notes, and the module for playback. If so, In-A should be your input port,
and Out-A your output port. OK out of there.
Now create a MIDI instrument in slot 1 to test it. Click the "Instrument
Properties" button, and choose MIDI as your instrument type.
Type 127 next
to Volume in "General Properties". "MIDI properties" below is now ready for
you to provide information. Leave "Input Channel" on 0, and change the
"Transmit Ch." to 1. Your "Output Port" should already by set to "Out-A,"
but if not, choose it from the drop-down menu. OK out of there.
Finally (and
very importantly), choose "MIDI Active" from the MIDI menu. This step is
along the lines of adding a volume for the instrument in that it's one of
those easy-to-miss steps that keep you from hearing anything.
Cross your fingers, and hit a key on your computer keyboard. You should hear
the note now.
Now, to use your synth to enter notes into MED (and hear them as you do),
you have to make certain that "Input Active" is checked under the MIDI menu
as well. Once you've done that, you should be able to hear the notes passed
to MED from the keyboard, and on to your module.
I've not covered setting up MIDI devices and patch names within MED. If
you're hearing output now, and need help with that, post it in the support site
forum.
I hope all this helps. I know it's covered in the Help files
in one form or another, but sometimes it's a greater help to have someone
walk through it with you,
Enjoy your module and synth!
Eric Lyon
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Higher Quality Drums
The art of good tracking starts not with your song or
with the notes you enter, but more importantly the samples you use and
there is one way to increase the quality of the drums samples is in MED
itself. By using the 44mhz ( 'shift+4' ) function, the drums in your
song will become much clearer and smoother in many respects. What this
does to your sample is to play it back at the same frequency rate as a
CD music disk. First of all, all your drums should be sampled at a rate
of 44.100hz, 16 bit and either mono or stereo, tip - the bass drum or
toms can in this case be down sampled to 22.050hz and will still sound
really good at the 44k function in the play back and also this will
reduce the overall size of the samples. What this does is the drums
instruments like hi-hats and cymbals will become much clearer at this
rate and also will be played back at the correct speed too. To enter a
44k note within your song is quite easy, place the cursor at the place
you wish to enter your note and instead of pressing the desired key, use
the keys SHIFT + 4 at the same. If you have done this correctly you
should see 44K in place of the the usual C-5 type note and then just
continue to do the same for the rest of your drums within your song.
Note: This 44k function only really works on drums and not really any
other instrument. You can use other frequencies other than 44k these can
be 22k and 11k use the following keys to produce those frequencies:
Shift + 2 for 22K Shift + 1 for 11K But you will soon notice that these
frequencies produce lower quality results.
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WAVE Boosting
Another simple tip to get the most out of your samples!
(Works better with 'MONO' sounds)
Simply load in a mono wav and click on 'Instrument
Properties' and then convert the sample into stereo (see image). Exit
this menu and then open the 'Sample Editor' and select one side of the
sample (the choice is up to you - if you don't select a side, it will
automatically select the top half of the sample by default) Once it's
highlighted (this is done by holding the 'left mouse button' down and
scrolling to the end) go to 'Edit' and then select 'Invert Phase'. This
will 'flip' the sample over (turns it upside down) and boosts the
overall sound. It also 'spreads' the sound too and creates a 'sort-of'
cross over effect.
You may need to turn the volume down a bit on the inverted sample
because of the boosting effect.
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