Question about changing recording input

[John Rofrano]

[Richard Chyan] ” Is it possible to change the audio recording input to my MIDI device? I mean when I play my korg microkey and record it using “microsoft sound mapper” or the “direct stereo sound mapper” it’s fine but it also records the backing track that I’m playing along to and I don’t want that. I just want to record the MIDI input. Is this possible?”

Try using the Windows Classic Wave Driver. That should allow you to select an individual input. The Sound Mapper simply records everything it hears (as you have seen).

[Richard Chyan] “I mean on the MIDI tab it recognizes my korg microkey as an input, but when I go to the “audio device” tab it doesn’t have it there. So I suspect that MIDI and audio are two different things.”

They are completely different things. MIDI is note-on/note-off information. Sort of like a digital piano roll. It does not make any “sound”. It’s just the commands to tell a musical device when to make sounds.

[Richard Chyan] ” If that’s the case, is there a way I can track a MIDI file in vegas?”

Vegas doesn’t support MIDI recording or playback. The MIDI tab in Vegas is only for using MIDI surface controllers for mixing. Not for sound.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Danny Hays]

Sony does make Acid that has midi capabilities. To bad Vegas doesn’t do this. I prefer Cakewalk Sonar to Acid. It comes with great audio effects and virtual instruments.

[Danny Hays]

I should add Vegas does generate midi timecode so you can have midi instruments or other computers chace it.

[Dave Haynie]

Where does the backing track come from? Your PC or Keyboard? That would be the problem with what you’re doing. Particularly if it’s on the PC, the Microsoft Sound Mapper has a tendency to merge everything together.

Windows 7 and maybe Vista make this more difficult for you. In XP, you could fire up the Windows mixer (usually the speaker icon on your toolbar), select “Recording”, and you would see all of the possible inputs to the Microsoft Sound Mixer for recording purposes. Uncheck everything but your sound card’s input channel, and you get a clean recording.

Fortunately, as long as you’re recording in Vegas, this is not really a problem. The Windows mixer is, as it sounds, a mixer.. it was designed to let you control multiple inputs going to the recording application, and multiple outputs going to your audio output(s) (this latter is actually nicer in Windows 7, as it allows any application using the Windows mixer to show up as a channel in the mixer). But just like the real world, you can “unplug” your sound device from the mixer, “unplug” the Vegas recording input from that mixer, and hook ’em up directly.

Go to Preferences in Vegas, find the “Audio Device” tab. You’ll probably see the “Audio device type” set as “Microsoft Sound Mapper”, and the Default audio recording device the same. Go to the “Audio device type”, and look at the pulldown menu. You’ll see “Microsoft Sound Mapper” which is the aforementioned sound mixer, and “Direct Sound Surround Mapper”, which is the idea, only using Microsoft’s Direct Sound API. You should also see “Windows Classic Wave Driver”, and, if you have any more advanced drivers for your sound device, you’ll see them mentioned as well… for example, I have “Behringer USB Audio” (a fairly stupid audio device I’m using for headphone monitoring) and “US-1800” (Tascam multi-track recording interface). If your sound device is shown there, select it, and you should be good to go.

Otherwise, select Windows Classic Wave Driver. You should hopefully see your sound card show up in the default outputs, and most importantly, as the “Default audio recording device”. That’s the direct connection of which I spoke.

At this point, you should be recording just the input from your keyboard’s audio outputs. That’s not MIDI, that’s audio. You can logically think of your keyboard as two components: a controller (the keyboard) and a synthesizer. When you hit a key, that can generate a MIDI event, which is available at the MIDI port if you set the keyboard up for that. And you’ll get another MIDI event when you release the key, maybe even some for sustain effects, depending on the keyboard. All MIDI does is describe in a common language when your fingers are doing on that keyboard… it’s not sound. This data (probably not actually MIDI data within the keyboard, but you can think of it that way) is also routed to the synthesizer in your keyboard, which interprets that key-pounding as musical notes. That’s the sound that comes out of your keyboard’s audio outs, and presumably, the thing you want to record.

If, for some reason, your backing music actually originates on the keyboard, you need to stop that, or stop routing to the main keyboard outputs (many keyboards have a secondary audio output set). But I suspect you’re playing along with sounds from the computer… which should be fine, as long as you understand how to keep them from looping back to your PC’s recorder.

-Dave