KVR Audio

Skyblues · Post by **Skyblues** » Fri Mar 07, 2014 7:38 pm

Greetings,

Thank you for providing such a helpful and informative forum. I used Samplitude 24/96 many years ago (back in the SEK'D days). I tried most of the available DAWs back then and Samplitude blew me away and bacame my go-to DAW. My only complaint was, back then, it didn't have much MIDI functionality. I used Cubase and Cakewalk for those needs and recorded those MIDI tracks to Samplitude as audio tracks and proceeded from there.

I recently decided to get back into HD recording. I only do it as a hobby. For me, it's pure joy. I went on the search again for the best DAW to upgrade and Samplitude Pro X wins hands down.

So, I'm back to it. I absolutely love the new version of Samp. I have only one concern and I am hoping someone here can help me resolve my issue.

As I understand it, Samplitude Pro X doesn't provide "Instrument Definition" functionality for external MIDI hardware instruments like I had in Cubase and Sonar. I have a brand new Ketron SD1000 ($600) that I absolutely love and need to find a way to tell Samplitude which of the banks and patches I want it to play for each track. Since Samplitude doesn't provide a way for me to create and import a hardware MIDI map of sorts, is there a way through the backdoor (so to
speak) to give Samplitude the information needed to use a specific patch in my SD1000? What would that information be and where can I access it?

For example, there is a stunning choir patch called Classic Choir. The Ketron info is:

Ketron SD1000 Bank B,1,0
1,51,0,0,Classic Choir

Please help as this is all I lack in my new Samplitude P

I looked in the the hardware controller section of the setup section and can't find anywhere to accomplish this.

Thank you,
Jim

siriusbliss · Post by **siriusbliss** » Sat Mar 08, 2014 3:57 am

Unfortunately there are too many instruments out there for Magix to add this feature into Samplitude.
It's been requested before, but is way down on the developers priority list.
Magix is not that big a company to have the resources to build instrument lists.

You CAN build lists manually, but there is no 'back door that I know of (like importing a text file or something).

Have fun.

G

p.s. I go back to the Sek'D days also - way back to Samplitude rev. 4 timeframe (on floppies!)

Skyblues · Post by **Skyblues** » Sat Mar 08, 2014 4:30 am

Thanks for the info, I appreciate it.

> You CAN build lists manually, but there is no 'back door that I know of (like importing a text file or something).

I can work with that. How/Where do I build them manually so Samplitude can read them? Where can I save them? I know the LSB and MSB and patch numbers but for the life of me, I can't find anywhere in Samplitude to build and save that information. It would be worth it to me even if it took a couple of weeks. I just don't know where to start.

I've spent hours looking through Samp and can't find anywhere that looks like I could build an instrument list.

Thanks,
Jim

Kraznet · Post by **Kraznet** » Mon Mar 10, 2014 8:03 am

Hi Jim,

The reality of the situation is that there is no way you can import scripts into Samplitude containing patches. You're stuck with the basic GM template which in the midi section of the track editor but this is uneditable. You can expand functionality by adding LSB and MSB amounts in the boxes below. But I'm afraid that's it. It is frustrating because I only last year re-bought a load of midi sound modules to try and recreate some projects I made in this 90s (although I was aware of the limitations of Samplitude in this area)

I ended up getting Soundquests Midiquest 10 XL which is actually quite expensive.Although having checked it looks like your sound module isn't supported anyway by MidiQuest.

The thing is Samplitude began its life as an audio only application and never had the heritage of heavy MIDI implementation unlike Cubase or Logic or Cakewalk. (Although I actually prefer the midi editing in Samplitude compared to these other 3 hosts). It's just that it lacks the instrument definitions for external midi modules.

Regards
Kraznet

lfm · Post by **lfm** » Mon Mar 10, 2014 8:50 am

In daws that have midi event view editor I usually record a patch change from synth, and keep that as a scelleton to put in any place in a track. You soon learn which number are what to edit manually.

So it's easy to edit this patch change, unless you want to record it in a spot where it is to change.

Placing this bank/patch change on first measure, and the rest of project start on measure 3, or something - it only send to synth when playing back from first measure.

Advantage of this is that it does not sent to synth evey start of playback. With this general patch change in track editor in Samp I guess it sends every time playback/record is started - which will be 100s of times.

Some synths take longer to make a patch change - so it may cause interruption of audio for a sec doing a patch change. So better to be in control - I feel.

Kraznet · Post by **Kraznet** » Mon Mar 10, 2014 10:41 am

lfm wrote:In daws that have midi event view editor I usually record a patch change from synth, and keep that as a scelleton to put in any place in a track. You soon learn which number are what to edit manually.

So it's easy to edit this patch change, unless you want to record it in a spot where it is to change.

Placing this bank/patch change on first measure, and the rest of project start on measure 3, or something - it only send to synth when playing back from first measure.

Advantage of this is that it does not sent to synth evey start of playback. With this general patch change in track editor in Samp I guess it sends every time playback/record is started - which will be 100s of times.

Some synths take longer to make a patch change - so it may cause interruption of audio for a sec doing a patch change. So better to be in control - I feel.

You have a very valid point there and it is something I used to do in Logic sometimes before I started using Samplitude. In fact I did a test and managed to record a patch change from my Korg Wavestation SR and it did indeed show up in the event editor. Although I tried the same with my Proteus modules and they don't seem to transmit program change data. I also wanted to test it with my Roland D110 but I haven't worked out how to do that yet. But it's definitely a useful tip.

Skyblues · Post by **Skyblues** » Wed Mar 19, 2014 7:21 pm

Thanks for the information, I do appreciate it.

I guess I'm a bit surprised that as much work as the developers at MAGIX put into the MIDI implementation in Samplitude (I agree, it's excellent!), that you can't direct the MIDI output to external midi modules. Maybe it's more complicated that I would expect.

One of my main problems with having to use Virtual Instruments it that all the ones I've heard are more suited to an Electronic, Industrial or Indie type sound which is great if that's what you're looking for. The reason I bought the Ketron SD1000 is that most of the sound samples sound very "real" to my ears.

Can anyone recommend a Virtual Instrument that I could buy that has instruments that sound more like what would be found in a real Jazz, Rock or Blues band and/or Orchestra? I'm not interested in synth sounds. I use a lot of acoustic basses, keyboards, drums, some strings, flutes, etc. I need sounds as real as I can get.

> In daws that have midi event view editor I usually record a patch change from synth, and keep that as a scelleton to put in any place in a track. You soon learn which number are what to edit manually.

That's an excellent idea but unfortunately for me, the Ketron SD1000 is a receive only device. It doesn't have a keyboard with it. Maybe I could connect my old Korg X5DR and use that to control the SD1000 and run the output of the SD1000 into Samplitude. It's worth it to see what happens.

I'm just getting back into audio/midi recording after years of being away so I'm still in catch-up mode.

Thanks much for all your help,
Jim

Kraznet · Post by **Kraznet** » Wed Mar 19, 2014 7:48 pm

I guess I'm a bit surprised that as much work as the developers at MAGIX put into the MIDI implementation in Samplitude (I agree, it's excellent!), that you can't direct the MIDI output to external midi modules. Maybe it's more complicated that I would expect.

You can direct midi out to external midi modules of course . It just that Samp doesn't support custom patch names. It only has a generic GM patch list.

Regards
Kraznet

Hink · Post by **Hink** » Wed Mar 19, 2014 8:55 pm

Kraznet wrote:
I guess I'm a bit surprised that as much work as the developers at MAGIX put into the MIDI implementation in Samplitude (I agree, it's excellent!), that you can't direct the MIDI output to external midi modules. Maybe it's more complicated that I would expect.
You can direct midi out to external midi modules of course . It just that Samp doesn't support custom patch names. It only has a generic GM patch list.

Regards
Kraznet

is there a way an enterprising individual might be able to make templates for different hardware instruments? Just curious

Kraznet · Post by **Kraznet** » Wed Mar 19, 2014 10:14 pm

is there a way an enterprising individual might be able to make templates for different hardware instruments? Just curious

As I mentioned earlier in the thread there is no way to create custom instrument templates. Well this is what the MAGIX midi developer has stated. Although whether and enterprising individual could do this I have no idea.But I would imagine you would need access to the source code to do this. Although I'd be certainly interested if someone could. My solution is to use MidiQuest 11 Pro which although is a rather expensive solution does have a wide range (600+) of editors which can be used as VST plug-ins.

https://squest.com/Products/MidiQuest11

Regards
Kraznet

tomotello · Post by **tomotello** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 8:26 pm

yes, crazy in fact, they have hard coded the simple GM patch names into the binary Sam.exe (see extract of binary string search with powergrep below). Never seen something like that in my IT career before - very unusual, I strongly hope they will change this... and coming back to the statement siriusbliss' earlier statement on Mar 08 above:

..."Unfortunately there are too many instruments out there for Magix to add this feature into Samplitude.
It's been requested before, but is way down on the developers priority list.
Magix is not that big a company to have the resources to build instrument lists."

There is no request to Magix to provide the instrument lists. There are lot's of instrument lists for other sequencers provided by users on the internet (Cubase - search for patch scripts, Cakewalk Sonar search for .ins files - also Reaper can read ins files or their own reabank format, FL Studio dashboard .fst and .ini files,etc. etc. ). I've created a number of these type of configuration files in a semi-automated way by using a text recognition program like Finereader to convert the vendor PDF's - such as the data list files from Yamaha devices - into Excel and then use Excel's text concatenating, formatting functions to generate the format required by a sequencers patch list configuration format and in a few minutes you have created a patch list config file with thousands of patches for any sequencer in this world with a state-of-the-art way to deal with configuration data.

Therefore, there is no excuse for implementing a patch list in such a way - complied into a binary. I also cannot imagine that the developer behind is doing this by it's own voluntary. I guess more it's a quite strange product strategy with Samplitude (.. and Independence ) which I cannot follow so far. Myself and others have addressed this to Magix already - but now answer back other than "we have forwarded your suggestions to the product management..." They have such powerful products and somehow they won't see their market opportunities in this area.

However, my frustration on this led me to work on a NI Kontakt GM/GM2/GS/XG opensource framework, I just made config files for the sequencers above these days... you might hear soon about - whenever the product manager at Magix allows his developpers to go ahead and get more open.. I'll provide a Samplitude config file immediately.

Cheers, Thomas

TOTAL: 2 matches in 2 files (1787 other files without matches are not listed)
1 match in D:\opt\MAGIX\Samplitude_Pro_X_Suite\Sam.exe
278291 11 E3 00 08 11 E3 00 04 11 E3 00 00 11 E3 00 FC ·ã···ã···ã···ã·ü
10 E3 00 F8 10 E3 00 44 D1 F2 00 90 FD 52 00 4D ·ã·ø·ã·DÑò··ýR·M
49 44 49 20 51 75 61 6E 74 69 7A 65 20 53 65 74 IDI Quantize Set
74 69 6E 67 73 00 00 4D 69 64 69 44 65 6D 69 78 tings··MidiDemix
2E 66 63 74 00 00 00 4E 65 77 00 6D 69 64 00 4D .fct···New·mid·M
69 64 69 00 00 00 00 54 65 6D 70 6C 61 74 65 73 idi····Templates
00 00 00 4D 49 44 49 20 54 65 6D 70 6C 61 74 65 ···MIDI Template
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 49 6E 20 6F 72 64 65 72 20 ·······In order
74 6F 20 65 64 69 74 20 4D 49 44 49 20 64 61 74 to edit MIDI dat
61 2C 20 70 6C 65 61 73 65 20 69 6D 70 6F 72 74 a, please import
20 74 68 65 20 4D 49 44 49 20 66 69 6C 65 20 69 the MIDI file i
6E 74 6F 20 61 20 56 49 50 20 70 72 6F 6A 65 63 nto a VIP projec
74 2E 00 43 53 61 6D 34 56 69 65 77 00 00 00 31 t.·CSam4View···1
32 38 20 47 75 6E 73 68 6F 74 00 31 32 37 20 41 28 Gunshot·127 A
70 70 6C 61 75 73 65 00 00 00 00 31 32 36 20 48 pplause····126 H
65 6C 69 63 6F 70 74 65 72 00 00 31 32 35 20 54 elicopter··125 T
65 6C 65 70 68 6F 6E 65 20 52 69 6E 67 00 00 31 elephone Ring··1
32 34 20 42 69 72 64 20 54 77 65 65 74 00 00 31 24 Bird Tweet··1
32 33 20 53 65 61 73 68 6F 72 65 00 00 00 00 31 23 Seashore····1
32 32 20 42 72 65 61 74 68 20 4E 6F 69 73 65 00 22 Breath Noise·
00 00 00 31 32 31 20 47 75 69 74 61 72 20 46 72 ···121 Guitar Fr
65 74 20 4E 6F 69 73 65 00 00 00 31 32 30 20 52 et Noise···120 R
65 76 65 72 73 65 20 43 79 6D 62 61 6C 00 00 31 everse Cymbal··1
31 39 20 53 79 6E 74 68 20 44 72 75 6D 00 00 31 19 Synth Drum··1
31 38 20 4D 65 6C 6F 64 69 63 20 54 6F 6D 00 31 18 Melodic Tom·1
31 37 20 54 61 69 6B 6F 20 44 72 75 6D 00 00 31 17 Taiko Drum··1
31 36 20 57 6F 6F 64 62 6C 6F 63 6B 00 00 00 31 16 Woodblock···1
31 35 20 53 74 65 65 6C 20 44 72 75 6D 73 00 31 15 Steel Drums·1
31 34 20 41 67 6F 67 6F 00 00 00 31 31 33 20 54 14 Agogo···113 T

Skorpius · Post by **Skorpius** » Fri Jun 06, 2014 11:02 pm

Skyblues wrote: Can anyone recommend a Virtual Instrument that I could buy that has instruments that sound more like what would be found in a real Jazz, Rock or Blues band and/or Orchestra? I'm not interested in synth sounds. I use a lot of acoustic basses, keyboards, drums, some strings, flutes, etc. I need sounds as real as I can get.

You could try Independence Free by Magix to start off with, it won't cost you a cent. If you're happy with the sounds contained in there, you can switch to one of the two commercial versions of Independence. There are quite a few alternatives to this of course, like NI's Kontakt or Komplete, or UVI's Plug Sound Pro.

siriusbliss · Post by **siriusbliss** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 3:26 pm

I have personally requested this several times to Magix going back to '99 or so.

I will request again and mention and link this thread (and/or reference earlier posts on this topic on the Samplitude forum, if I can find it)

G

LawrenceF · Post by **LawrenceF** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 6:53 pm

Given that Samp is on Win...

If those fields can be directly typed into, Name, MSB, LSB, I could probably whip up a small Win app for that pretty easily. If i get a chance i'll download the demo and have a look. If those Inspector fields are well exposed (no API clicking required like S1) it should be easy enough.

The question is.... how much would you pay?

tomotello · Post by **tomotello** » Tue Jun 10, 2014 4:52 pm

That's a good idea, I've done some GUI automation with Macro Recorder from Jitbit to manage to semi-automate modification of large group sets in NI Kontakt's not very handy Group Editor.
Let's say you could consume a CSV file containing program number, patch name, MSB, LSB - from which you only use MSB, LSB for GUI driven entering into Samplitude. A common number of entries would be around 640. This is the combination of GM/GM2/GS and XGLite instruments like many popular arranger keyboard sound moduls support today.
I've uploaded my actual voice list to dropbox here (containing earlier mentioned Cubase, Sonar, FL Studio formatting in columns as well).
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/i13gq43r9vfm ... EDwWazDHPa
Now let's say you could automate selecting the patch-nr and entering the corresponding MSB, LSB from consuming a csv and save these 638 combinations somehow in Samplitude. Now I just don't see how then to get these combinations selectable back from the GUI. It wouldn't bother me that the patch names would be always the same as they cannot be changed, just the program number, MSB, LSB combinations stored would already be a nice improvement.

Kind regards, Thomas

Samplitude Pro X - MIDI functionality