Managing MIDI Devices

<< Click to Display Table of Contents >>

Navigation:  Configuring Your Sound Card and MIDI Equipment > Using the MIDI Device Configuration Window >

Managing MIDI Devices

Previous pageReturn to chapter overviewNext page

Before reading this topic, you should review Understanding Ports and Devices in the MIDI Device Configuration Window.

MIDI devices play a central role in the assignment of sounds to staves in a song. Specifically, for any particular staff, you can specify which MIDI device the staff will be played back on. For the same song, you can assign some staves to one device, and other staves to another device. If you hear a discrepancy between when notes are sounding for such differently assigned staves, be sure that each device has been calibrated for latency. This will allow Composer to sound all the notes for each instrument at the proper times.

Each MIDI device has a unique set of properties that you can specify in Composer . Some of the properties of a device answer the following questions:

B854Is the device an output device and/or an input device?
B854Is the output device the default device to which staves for a newly opened MIDI file are assigned?
B854Does the device have multiple banks of sounds available; and how are these defined?
B854What are the MIDI patch (instrument) names for the device?
B854If the device has drum kits, what are the names of the drum notes?

The following topics describe procedures for adding, removing, and renaming devices, and editing the properties of devices:

B854Importing from a MIDI Device Description (.mdd) File
B854Importing from a Cakewalk Instrument Description (.ins) File
B854Adding an External Device
B854Removing a Device
B854Renaming a Device
B854Specifying Properties of a Device
B854Specifying the Default MIDI Output Device
B854Specifying a General MIDI (GM) Device
B854Exporting to a MIDI Device Description (MDD) File

 

Please note that the internal Notation Software Synth will correctly read the banks and instrument patch names for extended banks in the soundfont that you select. Therefore you don't have to bother with importing or editing the information for any soundfonts that you may use.