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Tiger Blue

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I am currently a proud owner of a Casio MZ-X500.

I also own a Yamaha MX61 Synth, Cakewalk Sonar X3 Studio & Cubase AI 9 that came with the Yamaha.

Here is where my problems begin.

 

1. In Cubase the Yamaha has a working patch list file which works but I cannot find one anywhere for the MZ-X500 and when I tried to start creating it myself from within Cubase it doesn't work. If anyone knows the location of one that would be great.

 

2. In Sonar I have the .ins file for the MZ-X500 installed and working fine but cannot find one for the Yamaha. Looking at the tool inside of Sonar to create it looks more complicated than Cubase so as I can't get to grips with what looks the easier option I haven't even contemplated having a go, that and the only tutorial for it looks way above my head. So again, if anyone knows the location of the .ins file for a Yamaha MX61 that would be most helpful.

 

3. In Cubase I can record two midi tracks on midi channel 1 and assign one of them to the yamaha and the other to the casio which gives me 32 tracks to play with. In Sonar X3 Studio I can only select to play back on 16 channels. I have both the casio and yamaha setup to both input and output midi in settings and recording and playback work on both it's just that I seem to be limited to just 16 tracks. Have I missed something in the settings?

 

I get that as Yamaha own Steinberg so providing the files to get their instruments working or their software makes good business sense, but if someone owned several keyboards and they had them all working perfectly in another brand of software but couldn't get them working in Cubase then they aren't exactly likely to switch are they. Add the fact that if I had done my research on whether the yamaha and casio keyboards were going to both be working completely on at least one of the pieces of software I possibly wouldn't of bought the yamaha (I had the Casio first) & I am pretty sure many others would feel the same.

 

So to sum up, I have 2 pieces of software and 2 keyboards but I cannot get both keyboards working to what I would call an acceptable level in either piece of software. I know there are people out here that could make working instrument files for either piece of software from just the keyboards manuals without even owning the keyboard and still be confident that it would work so why keyboard manufacturers do not employ someone to make sure their keyboards work on as many pieces of software is beyond me. I didn't want this to sound like a rant as I am enjoying playing around with both keyboards.

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I created the X500 INS file. It took about a week. ;-) I think that is why you do not see a lot of instrument definition files about.

 

re: #3  I have Sonar artist and can have as many MIDI tracks as I want. (I just created a new work with 36 tracks)  I believe you can only assign a maximum of 16 tracks to a single MIDI device, but you can have multiple devices defined in Sonar.

 

This outfit seems to have some tools that would help you create an INS file for your MX61 

 

http://www.jmelas.gr/motif/bundle.php

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Thanks for the reply, I will have a look at the link you provided and hopefully that will get me started on creating a file for my MX61.

 

re: #3.  I understand that you can only have 16 tracks per midi device and that makes perfect sense. Either something in my settings is wrong somewhere or I am doing something wrong as even though both the MX61 and the MZ-X500 are working as input and output devices I can only assign outputs for 16 channels and each of them to either MZ-X500, MZ-X500 Drumsets or MX61 (as a GM Device.)

 

Thanks again for the link and I will let you know how I get on.

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Tiger,

 

Go to MIDI DEVICES and be sure to check and enable all the OUTPUT devices you want to use. Note: These midi devices must have been previously recognized by your computer system. Then in the Sonar console, for each track select a device, channel, and instrument.

 

I just tested this on my system using channel 1 for my Microsoft Wavetable Synth and channel 1 for my MX-500 ... Worked fine.

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Tiger,

 

Go to MIDI DEVICES and be sure to check and enable all the OUTPUT devices you want to use. Note: These midi devices must have been previously recognized by your computer system. Then in the Sonar console, for each track select a device, channel, and instrument.

 

I just tested this on my system using channel 1 for my Microsoft Wavetable Synth and channel 1 for my MX-500 ... Worked fine.

Rick,

 

I have it sorted now thanks. I had already done all of the above but was trying to change the device in the console view which you can't do it in. Had the main preview slider hidden. Now I have seen what I was doing wrong feel a little bit silly. I have also managed to start work on creating the .ins file for the MX61 myself now too so pretty soon I will be up and running. (In Sonar at least) I have the first page of patches done only 7 pages to go then there the drum kits to do.

 

Thanks for your help.

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