How to get Atomic to play synths in Cubase

[Gribs]

Hi guys, I just bought Atomic today to serve various purposes, and my first experiment with it was to try to get it to play a soft synth in Cubase 4.5. It took me a while, but I have the solution. Y'all probably figured this out but it took me a couple of hours of fiddling around to get it right (sorta silly, huh?) and the answer was so obviously stupid that I want to smack my head.

The procedure works pretty much as detailed in previous a thread by Tim for Sonar.

1) Under Devices->VST Instruments make an instance of Atomic and tell Cubase to create a MIDI track associated with it when it asks.

2) Do the same for your software synthesizer (in my case I started experimenting using Rob Papen Blue because it has lots of cool bases and other stuff like that).

3) Turn on the MIDI out on Atomic

4) Make sure that under the MIDI track settings for Atomic, the input routing is set to "All MIDI Inputs" or whatever input source you are using for your controller. Make sure the output routing is set to Atomic.

5) In the MIDI track settings for the software synthesizer, you should see Atomic as an available input routing. Choose that instead of "All MIDI Inputs" (that is what my basic projects default to in Cubase 4.5). Make sure the output routing is set to the software synthesizer.

5) Arm BOTH MIDI tracks for Atomic and the soft synth for recording. This was the part that I was missing (smacks head). If both tracks are armed, Atomic will play from you controller and the soft synth will play from the MIDI signals coming from Atomic. You will get sound from both so...

6) Turn the level knob on Atomic down to zero and/or mute the audio channel in the mixer for Atomic if you don't want to hear the Atomic synth.

My next experiment is connecting the output of Atomic to a MIDI track connected to a little MIDI Uno I happen to have lying around connected to my Moog Voyager...

After I get that to work and play with it for hours, my third experiment happens tomorrow when a Behringer BCR2000 arrives via UPS and I map the knobs to the CC's that control the dials in Atomic which is connected to the Moog Voyager.

[Musical Gym]

Thanks. I just bought it, too.
Hope I can make it work in FL.

[Gribs]

Well experiment 2 took about 20 seconds to get working. Sweet! Now I have a cool step sequencer for my Voyager. I can't wait to get the BCR2000 controller so I can fart with it using knobs.

[tconrardy]

Thanks. I just bought it, too.
Hope I can make it work in FL.

FL Studio:
Set ATOMIC's wrapper to "Show MIDI output port" and chose a free port number and set the plugin. ATOMIC should play to the same MIDI-in port.


Thanks Gribs for outlining this procedure for Cubase!

Tim

[Gribs]

Hi Tim,

You are welcome!

I received my Behringer BCR2000 pretty late last night (poor UPS guy was still making deliveries around 8 PM). I have a preset programmed for it now to control all the semitones, velocities, and gates for Atomic. I also have one more set of knob banks in the preset for stuff like rate and mode. I have to say that this really is a very fun tool.

To get the BCR2000 to work in Cubase (4.5.2), I first made sure I had the latest driver for the BCR2000 installed on my DAW PC. The unit is class-compliant to the point where you just plug and play to get the driver going and then update after that. Once I had the driver installed and the unit powered up, I started Cubase and checked the device set-up panel to make sure it was recognizing the BCR2000. Next I loaded a project I had saved previously with Atomic connected up to a softsynth. To get the BCR2000 to talk to Atomic, all you have to do is make another MIDI track and assign BCR2000(1) to the input and Atomic to the output for the track and make sure that the track is set to be talking to the same MIDI channel as you are using on the BCR2000. As before all the MIDI tracks have to be armed for record in order for them to all go at the same time. Each knob on the BCR2000 can be set to send on a different channel, but I just used channel 1 for all of them since I don't have all that much stuff set up. You could copy the preset to another location (32 available), reprogram all the knobs to transmit on a different channel, and control multiple Atomics in Cubase by switching presets on the BCR2000. I think I will stick with one for now though Finally, I went through the Atomic manual and followed the instructions for programming the knobs on the BCR2000 to send the right CC's for each knob on the Atomic GUI. Presto! Instant knobby sequencer!

So now I am wondering if perhaps it might be possible to send NRPN's to the switches on Atomic someday. There are 16 toggle buttons on the BCR2000 and also the top row of eight encoders has pushable knobs that act as toggles. Since the top row of encoders has 4 groups that is 48 possible toggle buttons. There is also a small group of 4 utility toggle buttons on the bottom-right corner of the unit, so in in total one preset on the BCR2000 can have 52 different toggle switches. To start I think I might try setting the 16 main toggles to send zero values to the gates when on and a value of 64 when off to mute/unmute. I want to play with making some noises for a while though. It would be nice to just be able to send a NRPN to the callback that controls the little toggle LEDs on the GUI instead.

Oh, yeah, the default preset on the BCR2000 had some of the toggle buttons set to send messages on the same CC's as some of the knobs in Atomic so I programmed all the buttons to be off (non-responsive) for now.

Cheers!

[Musical Gym]

FL Studio: Set ATOMIC's wrapper to "Show MIDI output port" and chose a free port number and set the plugin. ATOMIC should play to the same MIDI-in port.Tim

Thanks, Tim. Happy New Year