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connecting the midi on my px800


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Well, I have successfully installed the drives for the midisport, I have the in from the casio going to the out on the midisport, and visa virsa, but I still can't seem to get any midi sound in sonar. The casio works just fine when I record it through the outputs into my Mackie mixer, but I can't get the midi working. Any other thoughts? I appreciate the advice, as I've never used midi. I've had this casio for years, but only used it as an instrument. Someone told me that I'm really missing out not using the midi, so I've been trying to get it working, but it's been a real nightmare.

 

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Okay, I think I'm beginning to understand. Please forgive my ignorance, but I'm really kind of old school if you know what I mean. This is all new to me, and I appreciate the help. I'm going through the tutorrials in sonar to learn what I can. When I open sonar and look at a soft synth track, sonar tells me what bank, patch and synth I'm using, so I know the computer recognizes that I have the midisport. I can even see that the midisport is the input and output, but when I hit record and play on the casio, I don't hear it on the headphones, and it says that the track is not recorded when I stop. I am in the process of trying to get the commission for the blind to pay for a trainer to come to my home and help me to better understand everything that I have here in my studio. The bummer is that this will take a while due to red tape and all. In the meantime, I'm trying to learn all that I can. Thanks so much for your helpful tips. Now I'm gonna go play around in sonar and see what I can discover.

 

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No problem, my headphones are connected to a headphone amp, which is connected to my Mackie board, which in turn is connected to my computer. I am using sonar 8.5 producer, a Mackie 1220I interface, and an 8 channel art headphone amp. Also, I'm running windows 7 64 bit home premium edition. I have plugged the line outs left and right in to my Mackie board, and am able to get audio that way, but not from the midi.

 

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Yes, I can record normal audio in sonar, I get sound in both recording and playback, but I can't seem to get sound in midi. I can import midi files in and they will play, but I can't seem to play my casio and get the midi going. I don't know if it makes any diference, but my midi interface goes directly in to the computer, but everything else is going from the Mackie to the computer. This is becoming quite a mistery.

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Hang in there, these types of computer/keyboard problems can happen to even the most experienced musicians/computer gurus! I have the PX350 and had to struggle through some similar troubles which I solved with the help of this group. I give you much credit for staying the course even this far.

 

After studying the PX800 manual, I see a few possibilities. One may be that you cannot connect both the USB midi port and the standard "DIN" ports at the same time. Some keyboards can use both, some can't. The manual isn't clear on this for the PX880 but I would connect either the USB port or the midi DIN ports but not both. I don't think you are using both like this based on what I'm reading here but just worth mentioning. And some midi information-check the "channel" the Casio is set to send on-I'm pretty sure when you turn it on it will be set to midi channel 1 and there are 16 midi channels you can select by using the PX keyboard keys-this is for recording separate insrument sounds/midi tracks. Your recording software should automatically detect the channel the Casio is set to, and record on that track and since it isn't detecting anything i suspect a driver conflict in windows 7 (I use the same OS). You also could have your software set to record on a track/channel other than the Casio's send channel and this will not work  make sure the Casio send midi channel is the same as your software recieve channel for whatevert track you select to record to. I'm not familiar with Sonar, but also check if there is a software mid "thru" setting in sonar-this can be turned on or off with some software recording programs, this could also be causing problems. Try turning it altenately on and off  in your software settings for Sonar.and see if that makes any difference

 

Try uninstalling both the Casio driver and the Midisport driver software from Windows, restart the computer and re-install the Midisport driver first without installing the Casio driver as Brad said, this may be all you need to install. you only need the Casio driver (I think) if you are only using the USB connection. if that doesn't work, try the opposite-remove (uninstall) the Midisport driver and Casio driver and re-install just the Casio driver and try that alone, using the USB cable only. There is also the possibility that the Midisport interface if it is an older one, may not be "class-complaint" and if the PX is "class compliant" that could be a problem. I don't see anything in the manual about this, so I'm just guessing. I can keep the Casio USB midi driver installed on my Windows 7 machine and use either the DIN ports or USB ports on my PX350, it doesn't seem to cause a problem but that's my computer not yours.

 

Page 27 in the Casio manual shows a display to indicate whether the Casio is recognized when you connect it to the computer with a USB cable, and it states that when using the midi din ports, this display is not shown. Check to see if this display shows this when you connect and disconnect the USB cable to the computer and Casio.

 

One other detail you may not need to know but could cause you some confusion-understand the setting called "Local on/off" in the Casio setting menu. In order to hear your Casio from its speakers or headphones while you are recording into midi software, the "local" setting must be on. However, if your driver or drivers are installed and you can actually get a response from your software-you can record-then you can set local to "off" and still hear the Casio keyboard. MIDI data from the Casio to the computer is supposed to "loop" or echo back to the Casio so that you are essentially playing the Casio, the computer is recognizing it and sending the data back to the Casio-the computer is playing the Casio. I mention  all this because turning local "off' may also fix your problem, assuming everything else works correctly. sometimes due to the nature of Windows 7 "native" midi drivers-the ones built into the operating system-don't always play nice with midi musical instruments!

 

A final detail-sorry for such a long post but I've been there-

 

Midi data, once recorded into your computer from your Casio, or from pre-recorded midi files can only create sound one of 2 basic ways. 1) data sent to the Casio (or any midi keyboard or tone module) will play the Casio sound or sounds which you of course can hear through it's speakers or headphone jacks.  OR.....

 

2) Windows has a built-in "virtual" sound synthesizer-you will see references to "virtual" midi instruments onr this forum and elsewhere online-Windows creates the sounds you hear when playing a midi file, or the midi data you recorded with the Casio. In other words, your computer is synthesizing any and all instrument sounds through it's software routines and there is the difficulty and confusion. If your drivers are not working correctly-the computer can get confused and will not be ble to determine whether to play your midi dtata through its own "synthesizer" or your Casio keyboard sounds! And any sounds created like this can only be heard directly through your computer's headphone or "line-out" jack. This is audio, not midi data. and once you have recorded midi data, it can play through one or the other or both! i use a software program I installed called "Coolsoft synth" which replaces the Windows sound/synth "engine" with it's own and sounds much better but that's a different topic altogether and is more complex so I'll let that go for now!

 

i know this is pretty complicated, and i assumed a midi tutorial might not hurt 9sorry if i made things worse) but don't give up. it has taken yours truly many years to understand much of this since the advent of computer music. it is a very 'evolved' science now and in some respects this has made all this somewhat more difficult to understand, playing the harmonica is much easier than this for sure.:banghead:

 

i hope all this helps answer some of your concerns.

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Oh man, this is great, even better info here than on the tutorrials. Thank you so much for being so explicit. I will check these things out in sonar, to see where information is being sent and received.

 

You are correct, I'm not trying to use both the USB and midi outs on the casio, I have tried both separately though with no luck. The problem is that I don't have the drivers for the casio. They were supposed to be installed when they created my computer, but the company that makes this stuff accessable for the blind forgot to ask them to install the drivers, and they were not given to me when they brought my work station. I have looked for my owner's manual, but because I purchased this piano about 8 years ago, I can't seem to find it or the cd rom that came with it. I couldn't find the drivers on the casio web page. I found some, but I'm not sure which one I need. Their web cite isn't really screen reader friendly. I even called the tec people at casio, and the woman I spoke to wasn't even sure where to find the drivers.

 

I can't thank you enough for all of this information. I am determined to unlock all of the possibilities of this midi thing. I am curious to see what sounds are there, just waiting to come out.

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