Recording Midi (Volume?)

Hi LB,



Dell Inspiron N5040, Windows 7 Home Premium, 2.13gHz, 8GB RAM, 64-bit, Intel Pentium, Service Pack 1.

Dell Inspiron 3737, Windows 8.1 Professional, 1.70gHz, 4GB RAM, 64-bit, Intel Core i3.

Thanks LB, as I say, I have booked my Win7 in for RAM upgrade. I will have a chat to the comp shop guy and see what he thinks about the options I have for my Win8. As you say, there may only be 2 x slots available so I need to decide what’s best.


Ok man, no worries. I have posted a question about possibly upgrading my Steinberg Interface so I guess someone will answer this shortly. It seems to be the trend that once you start adding more VST’s and gadgets to your arsenal that you need to keep improving the spec of your PC (for it to be able to handle these softwares). When I first bought my Win7 PC 3 x years ago I thought it was the most powerful device imaginable. But since purchasing my Win8 I instantly noticed the vast differences between these two machines.

Best,

Paul

Hi Neil B,

800 x posts yes, but 799 of those were me asking dumb questions ! lol :laughing:

The EASIER you can explain things the better to be honest. I am a total novice still with Cubase and I am also trying to learn lots of other things as well. I am not very confident with computers.

I will try out your suggestions in the next couple of days mate. Thanks for you continued kind help. I do appreciate it.

I see you are only a few junctions down the M6 from me. Are you ever up in the Wirral area at all ? Or we could meet at Knutsford Services for a mega expensive coffee !

I listened to your SoundCloud page earlier tonight ! Nice stuff (just not many songs ! lol).

(btw - I also have a shelf full of manuals I need to read !).

Best,

Paul

I would agree with LB on this. The cost difference between 4 more vs. 8 more Gigs is not enough to deliberate on.

Plus you may have to pay almost twice if you do it in 2 stages.

For example:
Currently you have 8 gigs. If you pay for 4 sticks of 1 Gig each, it might cost you $60-80.00.

That’ll give you 12 Gigs.

Then if you later decide you can & will go with 4 sticks of 2 Gigs each to bump up to a total of 16 Gigs for say $100-120, that first $60-80 will now be wasted.
And although you could sell those first 4 - 1 Gig sticks, RAM is so affordable these days, you’ll get very little for them.

I’m sure if you ask 100 people about this, the 85 that are worth listening to will tell you that the 70 who actually know something about this will say just go for the 8 more Gigs [16 Gigs total] in one go, giving you more RAM and more savings in your pocket, not to mention the small hassle of doing it just once vs. twice!

Yes, the C12+ looks like an entry level device whereas the UR22 & UR44 are more of a professional grade. The MIDI in & out ports are intended be used like your MidiSport 2x2, but there’ll be no A/B switching options, although you probably won’t need that.
[You could always use both, if you ever find yourself switching MIDI cables a little too often, which can lead to troubles with them.]

As for ‘Cubase Artist 6’, virtually all DAW makers give their ‘LE’ [lite edition] versions with their interfaces now, in the hopes that you’ll buy up, which almost all of us end up doing.

HTH

Another thing on the Ram installation. Paul is paying to have this done, so the more prudent upgrade would be to go with the greater amount of RAM as the labor may be more than the sticks of the good stuff! I have no idea what his shop is charging to do the deed but I would rather my money be in hardware as opposed to labor.

Another thing is his shop should advise what the most prudent upgrade path(s) there are. In other words if there is a limited number slots to populate with RAM, then one should consider they might be tossing RAM away if they want to further upgrade down the road. I always put in the biggest stick sizes I can to try and leave room for further upgrades and not have to toss the prior RAM out. Thus I agree with JAmusic on this point big time.

LB

I took a quick peek just for grins and if Paul has a Dell Inspiron 15 (N5040) Notebook then indeed, his RAM upgrade options are limited. There are only 2 slots for RAM and it maxes out at 8 GB. My guess is the 4 GB he has presently consists of 2 x 2 GB sticks. Maybe not, but likely. Thus he may have to toss all the original RAM and put in 2x4 GB sticks to max it out at 8 GB.

8 GB should really help out with Cubase and with memory hungry Windows in general.

LB

Ok, message received and understood! Cheers mate. :mrgreen:

I think that is a good way of putting it. Max velocity is 127 so if you want to do the bit where you divide by 100 and multiply by whatever, feel free :slight_smile: Just kidding.
Yeah, you’ll see the midi channel strip light up half way with a velocity of 64.
It was my pleasure to post it, just to get Paul (and seemingly others) onto a journey where you can rationalise about some things. There was so much I didn’t go into due to the question being a velocity or volume thing.
For instance look at the top of a midi channel strip in the mixer and you get a whole different bunch of things to a VST or audio track.

Paul - who knows - coffee might be a good idea. Normally only allowed to leave Stoke when we go on holiday (even though I’m a top member of the escape committee :slight_smile: ). So we do go north a few times per year. Perhaps make a special meet-up later in the year.

Thanks for your soundcloud comments too - appreciate it. Most of my older tracks used to be on my own, now defunct, website or on Planet Z and at the moment I’m not completing many tracks. Been spending time learning Cubase 7 & 7.5 after moving up from 4.5. Don’t get me wrong - I’ve got lots on the go, but the weather has been far too good to be indoors. It’s this boring retirement thing you know - lot’s of free time on your hands - NOT.
More uploads later in the year. I’ll get a chance to nip over and return the compliments on your soundcloud page too, as soon as I’ve got my old pedals off my mountain bike!! The beggars are seized on.
Anyway, enough waffle.
Good luck with the rest of your topic re memory etc - seems like you’re in expert hands with other respondees.

Neil B

Hi Jamusic,

Cheers, that’s REALLY helpful man! Excellent.

Ok, so I should think should about upgrading then. The videos on the UR’s are very helpful. The two lower models are £120 and £284. The former does not require mains power but the latter does. Not sure why that is?

They are certainly more sophisticated than the C12+ and Steinberg emphasise its excellence in combatting Latency.

Extra Inputs and 2 x independent Headphone Outs sounds quite attractive. But I am not sure if I can justify spending that amount of money on the latter model.

So I could ignore the Midi terminals on the UR’s and continue to use my MidiSport 2x2?

The CI2+ was great for getting me up and running as a newbie. As was Artist 6.

Ta,

Paul

My comp shop said today that indeed I have 2 x 2GB RAMS. And therefore I need 2 x 4GB RAMS to do the job.

Hi Neil B,

It would be great to meet up if you are ever in this neck of the woods. You could give me some advice on my wannabe mini studio in the making! Or I could maybe get the train down sometime (and bring my laptops! lol).

I used to have a website and all that a when it was highly vogue, but it never really lead to anything and so I just shut it down. Though I still keep the domain-names for £15 a year or whatever it is, just in case. Seems easier to just whack stuff up on SoundCloud and You Tube and email anyone who might be interested a ‘link’.

(btw - I only ever put my ‘signature’ in the first post because I get sick of seeing it clog up real estate in my threads. Feel free to keep your included though obviously).

Not long now to 22nd May Election !! :astonished:

Cheers,

Paul

Paul,
I eluded to the fact you need to put RAM in as 2 identical sticks before. Most important is the fact they need to be the same size, though you could mix and match brands but most favor a matched set. The reason is that this is probably a dual channel memory setup. That being the case it balances out and is utilized in such a way as to be faster. In other words both sticks of RAM work together in unison to improve the speed of loading and reading the memory. If one were to put in 2 GB and 4 GB sticks it might flat out not work or more likely it would slow the operation of t he RAM down. So do not even consider going to 6 GB total RAM as that would be bad news. Your shop sounds like a good one and is saying the right things!

Sounds like you are on your way on your upgrades. I would also seriously consider upgrading your interface. I went from a Roland FA 66 to an RME HDSP 9652. Man, what a difference! You will be very happy with an upgrade to the Cubase units you are looking at. Money well spent, that is for sure.

Take care,
LB

Ta LB,

Yes, they are a trustworthy shop and next week I will probably whack my Dell Win8 in and get it maxed to 16GB. Its a private shop so you get a personal service. I can’t stand all the capitalist chain stores! They will sell you anything just to take your money.

I will have a serious think about the UR interface range. I will definitely stick with Yamaha-Steinberg though.

Paul

You may be fine with the UR22 Paul, if it’s just yourself recording at home and you don’t see yourself ever recording more than 2 tracks at a time, whether those be one Stereo pair or 2 separate Mono tracks, such as guitar & vocal.

But having a quick look at the C12+ & the UR22, it might not be worth switching from one to the other. It seems that they’re very similar.

The UR44 looks like it has some extra ins & outs and the extra headphone port, but if you’re getting on with the C12+, you may not even need that either, especially if you might still use your MidiSport 2x2 as well.

You can definitely use your MidiSport 2 x 2 instead, although consider using them both if you do get a UR 22 or 44.

I use the MIDI In & Out ports on my TC SK48 main interface for my V-Drums, but I also have a Roland UM-550 MIDI only interface [no audio], offering 5 MIDI Ins & Outs, as the name implies for my 88 key Midi piano, sequencer and sound modules all to hook up to.

Like most DAWs, Cubase will recognize more than one MIDI device, if added/setup in the Devices>Setup section .

So the upgrade to the UR line [22/44] may not make all that much sense when looking at the over-all setup of Ins/Outs & MIDI ports of all 3 devices.
You may be just duplicating what you have already if you get a UR22 & still plan on using your MidiSport 2x2. Unless there’s a major difference in sound, you might stick with what you’ve got [at least for now] and save some cash for other things - like some really neat VSTs :smiley: .

Now you’re talking!

That’s what I have - 4 slots with 4 Gigs of identical RAM [same brand, same specs] in each slot = 16 Gigs, which I installed right from the start when I built my rig.

If you start adding on to your VST collection, [caution - very addictive, btw], you’ll thank yourself down the road for going straight up to 16 Gigs right away.

Once that’s done, you’ll never to have to think about it again.

You’ll also be able to pretty much rule that out of any troubleshooting that you may have to do some day. :wink:

Ok, cheers mate.

Hi,

Thanks for those suggestions.

Yes, I don’t think there is much point in raising from the CI2+ to the UR22. But maybe to the UR44 as I might one day record multiple Inputs simultaneously. However, I don’t think I am really at that stage yet (intellectually) with Cubase. Though this is something I would eventually like to learn.

I have a Nord Stage 88 Midi-ied to a Roland XV5050 module (which is what I use on commercial gigs) and still play a lot of my tracks into Cubase this way (so I often don’t even any of the onboard VSTi’s). And recently, I have been recording the Yamaha DX21 and DX7 so same comments apply. Therefore I NEED the MidiSport 2x2 and if anything, I would actually consider buying a larger MidiThru box (MidiSport 4x4) ! I was actually looking at this model on eBay (because MidiSport only has drivers up to Win7 and the Edirol caters for Win8.1) :-

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Roland-Edirol-UM-3EX-3-In-3-Out-USB-MIDI-Interface-Bus-Powered-/121334706842?pt=UK_Musical_AudioMIDI_Interfaces&hash=item1c401cb29a&autorefresh=true

The UR range has 1 x Midi In and Out and so I think that is why you are suggesting that I would still need to use the MidiSport even if I upgraded my soundcard.

Regarding the Latency/Audio Stream issues I discussed earlier, I will see how I get on with my Windows 7 and its recent double capacity of RAM.

Cheers.

Hey Paul, yeah that Edirol unit looks good. It’s always nice to be able to switch the MIDI paths from Out & Thru for some different routing purposes.

Ta man. Do you think the Edirol its better than the MidiSport 2x2? It has the appropriate drivers for (64bit) Win7 and Win8.1. MidiSport has gone totally down the pan in this respect (and I even spoke to the manufactures recently who said that it is doubtful that they will update their softwares in this respect).

Is Edirol ROLAND :question:

Paul

Yes the ‘rol’ stands for Roland. Roland has been around for a long long time, and aren’t going away anytime soon.
Another thing I like about them is that they will keep obsolete drivers available on their site, whereas not all companies do. Some try to get you to scrap your old stuff and buy their new releases.

I had heard something about MidiSport and their driver situation.

I’ve bought a few Roland items over the years and all of them are still being used & working fine.
For instance, my first one was a P-330 Piano Module and it’s still going strong.
Never had a problem with it since 1990 - 24 years ago.

If you go with the bigger MIDISport, make sure you can get drivers for it first.

Also, whenever I can’t decide between 2 or even 3 items, I just do a google search for users reviews.

For example: ‘MidiSport 4 x 4 vs. Edirol UM 3x’.

Or in my case I did: Roland UM-550 vs. UM-880.

The user reviews will often reveal things that you won’t find out anywhere else - like on the manufacture’s site or promo brochures.

I’ve saved many a $ when just about to buy something, only to find out some small detail or two that turn out to be deal-breakers.

If it were me, I’d go the Roland way - based on previous purchases & personal experiences.