Help....setting up Roland PC-200 with Cakewalk Pro...

hello, i'm having some problems with my roland pc-200 mk2 keyboard..
i use it with a terratec dmx 6 fire 24/96 and reason and everything was fine since today..
but now the midi select button is always on and i can't turn it off in any way.. i tried to change the mid channel, to reset the keyboard but nothing happened... can someone help me please???
Thanks

Luca

Some drivers do use software, and in the other post you mention a
C-media AC97 soundcard/chipset, which AFAIK lacks any MIDI hardware.

XG drivers, if they say SY100XG or SY50XG, that is a software synth.
It is a nice one, and its control panel allows you to adjust latency.

Look at the sounds control panel, see what is listed for MIDI
device. Besides the Yamaha SY-XG technology, another popular one
installed with soundcards is Microsoft's GS Software Wavetable.

Soundcards with hardware MIDI wavetables tend to be more expensive,
and the sound built-in on motherboards rarely includes it. It is
cheaper to include a software synth on a modern PC, which doesn't take
a big CPU hit running it, than to provide MIDI synth hardware.

Either one, some sound cards do have hardware MIDI synthesis (Santa
Cruz, SB Live/Audigy, among the popular cards). Realtime response
software synths are a combination of both the sound card and the
software, so you may need a different sound card just to get the
latency down low enough.

Maybe, Cakewalk's Sonar version includes softtware synths which run
within it, using DXi (to run using WDM drivers, so if your soundcard
has low latency WDM they can be near enough to realtime to make no
difference).

But you may need to replace the soundcard in order to do that,
because the soundcard's drivers have some delay in them. If it is too
much, no software synth is going to be realtime on them.

A hardware synth, though, is always realtime.

Right, you can change devices and pick one which has lower latency.
All software realtime audio generation is stuck with latency.

If the synth you have is Yamaha's SYXG series, the control panel for
it has a latency adjustment. It defaults to about half a second,
because that is most stable for simple MIDI file playback, lowest CPU
usage. If that is what you have, try adjusting it, see if its fastest
response makes it playable and *still* allows the CPU to run other
tracks.

On a fast PC, it isn''t a problem, generally, for one channel of
live playing. It is when you do a lot of other channels that the
cumulative CPU usage can be too much.

Very fast systems can do better.

Either a combo of a fast response soundcard (which your built-in
sound may not be) and a software synth which can use WDM or ASIO
drivers for fast response, or a hardware synth. Either on the card,
like the SB Live/Augidy, or an external synth.

You can find a lot of nice hardware synths at most music stores.
They tend to be more expensive than basic sound cards which have
hardware synths on them, but they do sound nicer.

--
Jeffery Jones| *Starfire* |
** Muskego WI Access Channel 14/25 <# *Starfire Design Studio* <# *Graphic Reflections and Websites* <#>

If you want immediate gratification when you hit keys on your MIDI
controller, my suggestion would be to buy an external tone generator.
Hook up the controller to the tone generator, and then you'll get
sound immediately through this hardware synth. Making the software
process keypresses and convert them into sounds is what is causing the
latency. Another solution (which corresponds with my personal setup)
is to have a keyboard with an internal tone generator and its own
speakers. Since you've already shelled out for a MIDI controller,
though, your best bet would be to get a hardware tone generator for
the equipment you already have.

-Brad

Ok my setup is pretty basic...like the diagram
below shows.

PC-200 o-- (Built in sound card)

No other devices or software are used.
So where doyolu think the problem comes
from?
Its driving me nuts!!!!

Ok..firstly I'm a newbie.
So the terms may be martian to me...but
from what I readI'm not using any "synth"
software...(BTW...does this include the XG drivers
of my sound card...if any?)

So I'm just plugging the PC-200 directly to the joystick
port on the sound card outlet.

Please elaborate a bit more on this "synth" stuff...
Would this synth be found in off the shelf sound card
software installed together with the sound card...or
is it those commercial software that one has to purchase
directly...(like Roland,Korg..etc?)

Would buying a commercial synth software to be
use together with Cakewalk solve this problem.
(Its very difficult to record songs as the timings are
just off by about 0.5 s..or a bit less)?

So all synth software has latency?
Its just that some have less?
If the XG drivers of my sound card is causing this problem,
can I just not use the software...or change soundcards...
will this work?

Thats ok...for now..as I do not need
to run background apps when I do the recording

Yup...its nuisance...so how do professional
MIDI artiste overcome this problem...would plugging
the PC-200 to some commercial hardware like
the Roland (sampler?...I don;t know what those gadgets
are..) before going to the serial port of the PC solve this
problem?

Are you using a software synth running on the PC to generate the
sounds?

If so, the only solution is either using a different synth, or
adjusting the one you are using to be more responsive. Software
synths inherently have some latency (delay between commands and
output); lower latency tends to mean higher CPU usage which, for a
playback-oriented software synth for game/background music, is
undesirable.

--
Jeffery Jones| *Starfire* |
** Muskego WI Access Channel 14/25 <# *Starfire Design Studio* <# *Graphic Reflections and Websites* <#>