MIDI Interfaces I Have Known and Lost...

MIDI Interfaces have been a big part of my life for more years that I care to think about. Nowadays people buy audio interfaces for computers, and these often come with MIDI In and Out ports, almost as an after-thought. But it hasn't always been like this. When microprocessors were less powerful, processing audio 'live' in the way that we expect nowadays was at the limit of possibility, and so simpler and less processing power hungry alternatives were used: Rectangular waveform 'bleeps' and tracker software were the order of the day, plus MIDI of course.

So I have used quite a few MIDI interfaces over the years, and quite a few computers as well. One thing has become very apparent to me over this time:

MIDI Interfaces have a limited lifetime...

This is for various reasons, and almost never anything to do with the MIDI interface itself: sometimes the interface technology becomes superseded (parallel ports on computers like the BBC B, for instance), or sometimes the computer itself becomes obsolescent or obscure and non-mainstream (the Atari ST, for example). Sometimes manufacturers just stop supporting devices, of which more later. So I have, or had, quite a lot of MIDI Interfaces that still work, but that can't actually be used because they aren't supported, there's no interface to a computer, etc. Today's hi-tech is tomorrow's land-fill, although I'm a bit of a hoarder for some things, but not everything!

History

Before MIDI, my first 'home' computer was a Sinclair Spectrum, which was right at the start of an explosion of home computers (and the CD came in at about the same time), and I also got a Mattel Aquarius, the less said about the better (although it was a bargain at the end of the boom!). 8-bit micros used for playing games aren't noted for their audio fidelity, and modern 'chip tunes' sound much better than I remember...

I then got a BBC B Micro, and built a DIY BeebMIDI interface, which was designed by Jay Chapman. You can read about it in the amazing mu:zines archive, and it accompanied an in-depth series on building a MIDI interface that was featured in Electronics & Music Maker, a precursor to Sound On Sound magazine. Later, I reviewed the UM-4M add-on for the 'BBC B', which was, at the time, at the 'Pro' end of the market, and it prodded me to get more serious about music and MIDI...

On the BBC B, I wrote various MIDI programs, an FM emulator, and more... I also got a phone call from Acorn computers, the manufacturers of the BBC B, who told me that my assembler code for the 6502 in one of my DX7 MIDI programs was faulty. It turns out that I had got a pointer wrong, and so was dumping the entire memory contents (32 Megabytes!) through the MIDI Out port, instead of just the Sysex memory block that I meant to transmit... Oops!

I then got a Toshiba MSX computer, but I always wanted a Yamaha CX5M... I eventually sold it to a guy who wanted it just like I had, because it was going to be the next big thing... It wasn't and didn't.

My next computer was the Atari ST, which had MIDI sockets built in! (More than 30 years later, this probably sounds unbelievable... but it is true!) Curiously, it wasn't easy to find a photo of the back of an ST, but I found one from a retro computer museum that has a pretty amazing collection. Visit and have a look, and if you have any old computers...

For anyone who thinks that the 5-pin DIN socket used for MIDI is strange, then look at that power socket: a 7-pin DIN male connector to a large 'brick' power supply! The 1980s were also the days when computers had 'Reset' buttons...

I did a dual boot-ROM mod to my Atari 520, and expanded the RAM to the full 1 Meg (as in the 1040 model) and did various other tweaks. Eventually it died, and I was given a replacement by the London Synthesizer Service Centre, but that died as well, and the days looked numbered for the Atari as a music platform. So I parted company with one Silicon Valley startup, and jumped over to another.

My first Apple Mac was a Macintosh Plus - you can see it in this photo... But whilst I lived through the astonishing 'HyperCard' launch (I stayed up all night, programming, and all the following day...), eventually I knew I needed more screen real estate. My first 'big screen' Apple Macintosh was a Mac IIsi, and it was a combination of many compromises to get the price down, but it served me well, and set me on the path to bigger and better things.

The MIDI Interface I used for quite a while was the original Opcode MIDI Translator - a small (beige) cream-coloured box with three MIDI Outs on one side, and, on the other side, a MIDI In socket plus a small circular connector that connected to the Mac's serial port - which had two icons revealing what serial ports were used for when the Mac was first designed: a Printer and a Modem. I had a home-brew MIDI switch unit that I used to enable the use of a master keyboard or sequencer and so solve the 'Local Control On/Off' problem, plus I used a Philip Rees V10 ten output Thru box (Philip Rees stopped selling MIDI accessories in 2005). But as my MIDI gear grew in numbers, and particularly with lots of Sysex patch dumping and patch editing, I realised that I needed something where I had better control over the interconnections, and a MIDI interface with more ports was required - a MIDI 'patchbay'.

Eventually I went for one of the 'high end' solutions: Studio Vision Pro and a Studio 5LX 15 In, 15 Out MIDI Interface which allowed all sorts of amazing functionality including the creation of virtual MIDI instruments... Unfortunately, after only a few years, the demise of Opcode meant that I had to retire this MIDI interface, and move on...

Once again, I did the research into the available devices, did SWOT analysis on the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities (Upgrades, Support) and Threats (Longevity of the company...), and made a difficult decision...

I chose the M-Audio MIDIsport 8x8/s, a pair of which provided similar functionality to the basics of the Studio 5LX. However, M-Audio stopped supporting this MIDi interface many years ago, and the driver and control software no longer runs on current Macs. I also had been using an M-Audio FireWire 410 audio interface, and again, support for this was dropped by M-Audio some years ago. So if anyone wants a fully working pair of MIDIsport 8x8/s MIDI Interfaces and a FireWire 410 Audio Interface, then just make me an offer!

I have another piece of M-Audio gear, as well, which also had support removed, so that's three out of three for me.

And Now...

For my most recent move, I selected iConnectivity, and bought an iConnectMIDI4+, which has a lot of features and which has worked well for me, albeit with some minor problems (today's complexity seems to bring equally complex niggles with it), but it is very rugged! But whilst the new 'MioX' devices are definitely the focus of iConnectivity's marketing now, the iConnectMIDI4+ did get a firmware update on the 4th of April 2020, and the iConnectMIDI4+ is listed as being supported by the new 64-bit Auracle-X control software (with some caveats...).

So things are looking good at the moment, although the mioXL's 8 In 12 Out does look very nice, but I might go for a 4 In 5 Out mioXM so that I have a current product in my portfolio without breaking the bank.

And as 'backup', I have the MIDI Interface in my Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 (2nd Gen) if there are any problems, and based on the amazing upgrade and support that Novation have provided for the Circuit (8 firmware releases with some major additions over the past 5 years since it was launched) then I'm pretty confident I will be okay for most unexpected eventualities. Plus, Focusrite do make some very nice audio and MIDI interfaces with lots more I/O ports if I need them...

If I was to sum up my current attitude, based on my experiences, then it would be something like:

Avoid being totally dependent on a solution, because it will eventually 'evaporate' for one reason or another, often quite quickly, and be prepared to keep moving to current, supported equipment. 

Which actually applies to all hi-tech music equipment, and computers! 

Conclusions

In 37 years, I have had six different MIDI Interfaces, so six years per interface isn't bad (and to be fair, way more computers have come and gone in my studio!). I dislike throwing perfectly functional equipment away because it is no longer supported by communications interfaces, drivers, software or operating systems, but that's the nature of rapid technological development. However, I am very aware that, over time, audio has changed from something which was stretching the processing power of even top-end machines, to something where real-time processing of multiple tracks with multiple plug-ins is widely available on even modest computers.

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Notes on troubleshooting video graphics cards on a Mac Pro 5,1

So there I was, working on something other than this blog, using an old Operating System (macOS Mavericks, because I needed to use an old utility), when suddenly my monitor went blank. Now this normally happens when I've not been active enough and the screen-saver (my own, written in Quartz Composer) kicks in. So, as usual, I just pressed the space bar and waited for the screen to re-appear. But it still looked like this:

The screen didn't re-appear.

So I pressed the space bar again. Nothing. The screen looked like this:

And then my monitor started reporting that my Mac Pro wasn't outputting video... I got a sinking feeling in my stomach...

After swapping the miniDisplayPort to HDMI cable, and outputting my laptop screen to the monitor, I had established that it wasn't the cable, or the monitor. Which reminds me:

The Synthesizerwriter Trouble-shooting Guide

1. Sometimes things just fail. It isn't malice, and it isn't deliberate, and anthropomorphising computers and musical devices is almost always a bad idea.

2. Check the power before anything else - this should be your zeroth task - before doing anything else. I always remember the ARP Odyssey Service Manual, where the section (9?) called 'Power Supply Considerations' had a line drawing of a bewildered technician with an opened-up (and very quiet) synthesiser on a bench, and way off to one side was a mains connector not plugged into a mains power socket. Trying to get a sound out of a synthesiser that isn't connected to power can be very difficult...

Note that the 'Check the power' also applies in reverse - if you are working on anywhere near mains voltages (like in the power supply), then you should not have the device plugged in. In fact some people go so far as to put electrical tape over the socket. One other thing related to safety when working with mains voltages is often forgotten -

'Always make sure that you can see the plug that isn't in the socket'. 

If you can't see the socket, then you don't know if the plug is in the socket, and you might be about to electrocute yourself. If you can see the socket, but you can't see the plug, then someone else may have plugged the device into another socket, and again, you are about to electrocute yourself. Only if you can see the device, the cable, the plug and the socket are you probably safe - although experienced engineers will also keep checking the the plug is actually connected to the device they are working on!

In the case of a monitor, check that it is powered up, particularly if it has very light-touch switches. In the past, I had a monitor that suffered from the Samsung Capacitor problem (more analysis), and so was prone to suddenly losing power (and here the display!), so this was my automatic first assumption - but see 4 below...

3. Check the cables first. There are many failure modes for cables these days. The casters on many 'home office' chairs can do nasty things to the insides of cables and not leave very obvious signs of the damage until you look really closely. Pulling on cables in various ways can stress the wires inside, and it doesn't matter how accidental the trip was, or how much you enjoyed it. Pulled cables can also affect sockets, and there's the famous 'wiggle' test for those.

4. Check with a known good source. So if a mains power socket isn't working, then check it with a mobile phone charger and see if your mobile phone charges. (A table lamp, a hairdryer, and many other pieces of electrical equipment can also be mis-used as a piece of test equipment...) If there's nothing appearing on a screen, then find another source - hence using the miniDisplayPort on my MacBook Pro laptop and seeing if the monitor displayed the mouse pointer as I moved it around. For amplifiers then a microphone can be a good source of sound, but remember the golden rule of amplifiers: 'Always start with the volume turned all the way down, and turn it up slowly, ready to quickly turn it back to off if necessary'. On a monitor, then pressing one of the 'setup' buttons will display the RDTN UI (Ridiculously Difficult To Navigate') and so confirm that the monitor is at least capable of displaying something. There again, on many monitors the 'Power' LED is so bright that many people cover it with Blu-Tak (or similar slightly sticky stuff) and then press their nail into it to create a tiny hole that lets only some light out - which creates an interesting problem when it gets pushed down and the hole goes away, leaving no visible LED.

5. Try turning it off and back on again. This works rather more often than you might imagine!

In my case, the monitor was connected to mains power, the LED mostly covered with Blu-Tack was just about visible, the cable was good, and the laptop and RDTN UI both showed things on the screen. But from the Mac Pro 5,1, all I got was the well-known piece of art often titled: 'Black Cat In A Coal Cellar'.

6. Google: 'Sudden <symptom> from <device>' and see what it says. In my case, 'Sudden loss of video from Mac Pro 5,1' quickly got me to a Mac Graphics Card Specialist retailer, where a few minutes of pop-up chat (usually in the lower left or lower right corner of the web-page) quickly confirmed my worst fears. 'Yep, sounds like video card failure. We've had quite a few of those recently.' Using web-site chat is a good approach to this type of diagnosis, because they don't hear you gasp when you realise that things are about to get deadly serious and potentially expensive, and secondly, you can't hear if they make whoops of delight and wild celebration when they realise that you are about to spend lots of money with them (or another retailer - I am not going to mention the really cynical method of mis-using a helpful chat person on an expensive site when you are planning to eventually buy it from a cheaper source that has naff customer service.

7. Write down what you do and what you find out as you go. Putting it off until later is never a good idea because human beings (and any other sentient organisms reading this blog) often have amazingly  unreliable memories. Of course, you could always write a blog post about what happened...

Back to the main story...

So the monitor was powered up, the cable was ok, the monitor displayed the screen from my laptop, turning it off and on again made no difference, and an external expert had confirmed the diagnosis. When I used to be a service engineer, this would be referred to with words like 'The Monitor Display appears to be Sub-Optimal'.

Now the Mac in question is a Mac Pro, of 2012 vintage, a '5,1' 'Twelve Core', and one of the last first generation towers before the second generation 'Cylindrical' Mac Pros appeared. Just recently, the topology has returned to the tower format with the third generation, which has been, imho, unkindly labelled as 'The Cheesegrater' by some commentators. All of the first generation Mac Pros came with a Radeon 5770 video graphics card as the default output option, although there were various other more-powerful cards available. In my case, it was a 5770 card whose GPU was now pushing up daisies somewhere on a different plane.

At moment like this, there perhaps ought to be a step number 8...

8. 'Optimise your options'. By which I mean that instead of just replacing the faulty part, you look to see if there are any alternatives and maybe engage in some future proofing rather than just maintenance. Your insurance may affect hat you do, of course. In the case of video graphics card, then a card from 2012 is very likely to have been superseded, and that means that the sources are going to be second hand, used cards, not new ones. There's a word that almost always describes what happens when you start to look at alternatives in these circumstances, and that word is often 'complicated'.

This is where an 'escalation sequence' comes in. You start at the simplest solution, and work up to more complex solutions, noting down the advantages, disadvantages, consequences and cost of each. In most cases, it goes something like:

a. Repair the broken part,
b. Replace with a used part,
c. Replace with a new part,
d. Replace with a better alternative part
e. Forget the part and replace the whole system with a new, better alternative

Sometimes the order isn't quite like this when you consider all the pros, cons, consequences and costs - and weighting them can be very awkward to decide (Applying weights to pros and cons, etc., sounds like Risk Analysis, and that is definitely a topic for a different blog!). Solution C is often the easiest logistically, and solution A can often be slow and expensive. Don't forget that replacing with an alternative can also require additional setup, changes and other side effects, so the 'Consequences' column can be very important.

In my case, repair didn't seem to be worthwhile, given the cost of second hand 5770 video graphics cards. New 5770 cards don't exist, so that removed solution C, and solution D would be good for when I need to upgrade to the Mohave version of macOS, but I'm still waiting for Ableton Live to be 'officially compatible'... This left solution B, and it looked like my best option was to gradually move forwards and wait until things forced me to Mohave. So I found a specialist 'Mac video graphics card supplier' that sold 5770s and did the usual on-line checking: they had more than 10 in stock, and there were plenty of FAQs and Installation information on their web-site. It also turned out that this supplier was a good potential source for solution D in the future, because I am sure that I will eventually need to go to Mohave (and beyond), and the Radeon RX 580 looks like a good contender, if a little pricey - and there were quite a lot of 'consequences' to consider s well.

I'm not going to distract you with some of the interesting 'consequences' aspects of changing video graphics cards, because they are so dependent on your hardware and operating system, but I would stress that filling in a escalation table in detail can be very useful when making a decision and planning your route forwards. In my case, the video card failing left me stuck in a very old OS, and without a video card, then your computer is quite tricky to use. Installing drivers, for example, for a replacement card is not easy when you don't have a display!

2020 Follow-Up

So, in early 2020, I got the black screen again. This time, changing the video card didn't fix it. The Mac Pro 5,1 seems to be officially dead. Anyone want it or the 5770 cards? Try making me an offer!

Links

For new purchases, then I always go for AppleCare. It has dug me out of bad places so many times now that it is an essential purchase component for me.

For generic Mac stuff, then I have been using Mac Upgrades for many years. They are knowledgable and helpful. (The URL comes up as '2nd Chance PC Ltd ' in some browsers, so don't panic!)

For specialist (and used) video graphics cards, then Mac Store UK have access to customised cards from experts like MacVidCards.com, but remember that I'm not a video professional and have only bought one card from them.

As always, suss out your sources carefully before parting with money!

Here's a link to a simple 'Escalation Table' spreadsheet...

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Using the Apple General MIDI DLS Sound Bank Synthesizer in Ableton Live 9

This is an update and extension to my March 2010 blog entry...

The Apple General MIDI Down-Loadable Sound (DLS) Sound Bank Synthesiser is an Audio Unit plug-in that is provided in Mac OSX/macOS. The plug-in is referred to as the Apple DLS Music Device in Ableton Live. (Audio Units work in the 32 or 64 bit versions of Ableton Live.)

Here are some notes on using it:

Making Audio Units visible

My install of Live 9 did not show Audio Units by default, and so I needed to enable them. You may need to set the 'Use Audio Units' toggle to 'On' in the 'File Folder' Preferences pane.


(This is not where I'd immediately expect 'Plug-ins' to be managed, but this is where Ableton put these settings. Note that there are some other useful settings in this pane: the 'Save Current Set as default' can be a very productive time-saver if you have a complex standard setup...) 

Opening the 'Audio Units' folder shows a lot of sub folders (I'm running the 32-bit version of Live here, but this could be the 64-bit version with 32 Lives or JBridge/JBridgeM). You need to open the 'Apple' folder by clicking on the triangle...

The 'DLSMusicDevice' is right at the bottom of the list. All the other Apple Audio Units start with 'AU', and so the DLS Synth gets pushed to the bottom of the list. Depending on your screen-size, you may need to scroll down to find it.

Unlike all of the other Audio Units (which are audio effects), the DLSMusicDevice is an Instrument. It can produce multiple channels of polyphonic audio simultaneously, and can be a useful extra source of sounds, particularly when you start to re-assign the tracks in a MIDI file inside Live.

Mono-timbral use

Here is a MIDI Track with the DLSMusicDevice plug-in dropped into it. You can create a MIDI Clip containing a few note events to test out the DLSMusicDevice, or you could use a keyboard (or the virtual keyboard on a laptop) - the highlighted red 'Record' button at the bottom of the track-strip enables this. 

Ableton always uses MIDI channel 1 by default inside a track, so this will use the first one of the 16 available MIDI channels in the DLSMusicDevice plug-in, and so you can only use it for instrumental voices - there is no way to change the MIDI channel that is used when you use this way of accessing the DLSMusicDevice. So if you only need a single channel of basic General MIDI instrument sounds, then this may be all that you need. Note that if you create a MIDI Clip then you can use the 'Program Change' control to select the sound that the DLSMusicDevice produces.

To get the control window to appear, you just click on the 'Spanner' icon in the generic X-Y controller box that appears in the track detail view at the bottom of the screen.

Notice here that I've made the Inputs and Outputs visible by clicking on the I-O circle on the far right of the mixer, just to the right of the master volume sliders. What is interesting is that this MIDI Track is behaving exactly as it should - receiving MIDI inputs and converting them into audio outputs. Unfortunately, Live seems to always send MIDI information to the DLS plug-in on MIDI channel 1, and there is no control to change this in the I-O panel. In fact, for this simple example, you do not need to see the inputs and outputs at all.

The 'Reverb Volume' is highlighted because the default is to smother the audio in lots of reverb. You are advised to lower this setting! If you add any in-line effects in the track then having reverb in the source audio sounds strange anyway - so use a reverb plug-in at the end of the processing chain. My personal favourite effects plug-in for the DLSMusicDevice is the 'Auto-Filter', where subtle use can remove some of the 'General MIDI' giveaway sound footprint! [ And for non-subtle: SoundCloud example using just DLSMusicDevice as the sound source... ]

Sound Banks

Notice that the dialogue box for the DLSMusicDevice calls it an 'Apple Sound Bank Synthesiser'...  This instrument can be used to play more than just the default Apple General MIDI-compliant sound bank (this bank is confusingly called the 'QuickTime Music Synthesiser') - it can play any Soundfont sound file with a .sf2 suffix.

The 'Properties' section can be left alone. The 'Restrict CPU Load' control is a remnant from many years ago, when playing back audio was a considerable strain on a Mac's CPU. On a modern machine, leaving the render quality at maximum is fine.

To enable playback of additional sound banks on a Mac, you need to put some .sf2 files into your /Library/Audio/Sounds/Banks/ folder. (You may need to use the option key inside Finder to make the Library folder visible.) Note that the default Apple 'QuickTime Music Synthesiser' bank is not stored here, and so this folder will probably be empty the first time you open it.

Some .sf2 files contain complete banks of sounds, whilst others contain just one sound. By creating an 'Instruments' folder, you can keep these 'single sound' files separate. You may also find that some .sf2 files do not work, and the 'Don't Work' folder is there to hold these as a reminder to keep a lookout on the Interweb for an updated version. Sometimes when a sound bank file does not work, it can cause other banks or sounds to stop working as well, so you may need to delete the DLSMusicDevice from the track, and re-insert it to force it to restart.

Notice that the 'Sound Bank' selector now says '32MbGM stereo sound bank' instead of 'QuickTime Music Synthesiser'. (Remember, despite the name, this is just a sound bank!)  When you add .sf2 files to the audio folder they appear in this pop-up selector in alphabetical name order... so 'QuickTime Music Synthesiser' is often near the bottom of the list.

Folders placed inside the 'Audio' folder appear with a triangle indicator. inside the pop-up selector.  In this example, the Apple 'QuickTime Music Synthesizer' sound bank is just one of six available banks of sounds.

General MIDI sound banks have their sounds arranged in a specific order, where program change numbers map to particular types of sounds (0/1 is a  'Grand Piano' sound, for example, whilst 48/49 is a 'Strings Ensemble' sound. General MIDI sounds can vary considerably between sound banks. Some sounds banks do not follow the General MIDI mapping of sounds to program change numbers.

Some .sf2 files contain just a single instrument sound.

Many .sf2 files come with documentation. Putting these extra files in the 'Documents' folder keep everything neat and tidy.

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Auditioning .sf2 SoundFont files

A search for .sf2 using a search engine on the Interweb is going to produce lots of results, which then leads to the question of 'auditioning'. In this case, there's no need to commission a TV programme to find some suitable candidates...

What IS needed, to save lots of time and finger-wear, is a way of running through the sounds in a .sf2 file quickly, so that you can triage them into a few categories (and thus into named folders inside the '/Banks' folder...):

• GM soundbanks
• Non-GM sound banks
• Individual Instrument sounds
• Drum sounds

Inside Live, using the program change control in a clip isn't very convenient, so I have written two M4L utilities that make auditioning .sf2 files quicker and easier. You can get them from MaxForLive.com

DLS_Helper_N is designed to help listen to Note-based .sf2 SoundFont files to quickly learn about their audio contents. You just drop it into the track that has the Apple DLS Synth in it. There are two main modes of operation: manual and automatic.

In Manual mode, you can use the vertical slider control to select a specific sound by sending MIDI program change messages shown with the matching General MIDI Instrument name, and then playing on the [A - L] virtual MIDI keyboard inside Live, or on your external MIDI keyboard (or other instrument). There are two keyboard shortcuts: the Down cursor button is assigned to a 'Next' button, which changes the program, and the Up cursor button controls an Up/Down counter. The counter normally starts up in 'Up' mode, and so every time you press the Next button, the program change counter goes up by one. You can then play some notes to audition the sound. Remember that to keep the keyboard focus inside the DLS_Helper, you need to click inside it, and I've included some words that say this in the UI. If the focus strays outside the plug-in, then you will activate the Live keyboard shortcuts. (The workflow of 'Next' then play a few notes' is okay for the first few sounds, but I rapidly got bored, and so I added more automation...)

In Automatic mode, incrementing of the program change number happens automatically, at a rate controlled by the Rate rotary control, and each change of program is indicated by a flash of a red indicator (and by the changing of the GM name in the text window). Some sounds has slow attacks, and so setting the Rat control too fast may mean that you don't hear the start of some sounds. But for most sounds, automatic advancement through the sounds in the middle range of the Rate control should work fine. There are shortcut keys: the Cursor Right button is assigned to starting and stopping the counter, whilst the Cursor Left button resets the program counter (for the Automatic AND the Manual modes!). Once a new program change has been selected, four notes are played so that you can hear the sound assigned to that number in the bank. The default here is four notes from a C Major scale, played at a fixed MIDI Velocity. You can alter the Velocity setting with the rotary control. After a few minutes of hearing the same four notes at the same velocity setting robotically played by different sounds, then you may need to activate the two variation buttons: for Notes, then you can activate the 'Random' variation, which plays a variety of different scales, some more exotic than others; whilst for Velocity, then you can activate the 'Random' variation, which adds random variety to the Velocity setting. The variation controls can make an extended audition session much easier to carry out.

For auditioning drums, then you need to use the multi-timbral setup, which is described next.

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Multi-timbral use

There is another way to use the DLSMusicDevice. It is more complex, but it allows you to utilise the full multi-timbral (several different sounds at once) capabilities of the Apple DLS plug-in.

You start in exactly the same way - create a new MIDI Track. (This screen-shot is from Live 8, and so the graphics may be slightly different, but the method is the same...)















This time, you definitely need to make the Inputs and Outputs visible by clicking on the I-O circle on the far right of the mixer, just to the right of the master volume sliders.

This I-O panel is the key to assigning MIDI channels to the DLS Music Device.












You then drop the Apple DLS plug-in into the MIDI Track. This sets up the DLS Music Device so that it receives MIDI Input and outputs audio into the mixer. But this time we are going to re-route where the MIDI Input is coming from...














The Track name will have changed to DLSMusicDevice...
















And the Apple Music Synthesizer dialogue box will have appeared... Note that the three 'Parameter' slider controls ( tuning, volume and reverb volume ) are global, and so they affect all the DLS sounds.







You now need to add a second MIDI Track... This is going to be used to hold the clip containing the note events, and to control the MIDI channel of those events...















The I-O panel in this new MIDI Track contains this vital pair of controls, which aren't exactly obvious in what they do...















The upper pop-up list control shows a list of the Tracks that the MIDI output from this MIDI Track can be connected to. In this case, we want the output of this Track to go to the DLSMusicDevice, so we select the first Track that we created...

Any note events that we put into a piano roll Clip on this Track will now be routed as MIDI note events to the DLSMusicDevice, which will turn them into audio.










The lower pop-up list control lets you control the MIDI Channel of the note events that are sent to the DLSMusicDevice Track.














Here's a summary of what the two pop-up controls do...

Notice that the 1-DLSMusicDevice in the top pop-up refers to the plug-in being in Track 1, whilst the 2-DLSMusicDevice in the bottom pop-up refers to the MIDI Channel that the note events will be sent on... If the DLSMusicDevice was dropped into MIDI Track 3, then the top box would say 3-DLSMusicDevice. When you select the target Track with the top pop-up, then the DLSMusicDevice plug-in should be obvious - just make sure that you always look at the lower pop-up to check what MIDI Channel you are using.

You can now create a new Clip in the new MIDI Track...
















Remember that the lower pop-up selects the MIDI Channel that the DLSMusicDevice will use for this Clip, and the Program Number controls on the left of the Clip piano-roll will select the sound for that MIDI Channel...













Here's the MIDI Channel pop-up control...

















And here is the Program Number pop-up for selecting the sound or instrument. Note that you need to move the slider on the right to switch between low and high numbers, just like in any Live selector control with lots of options.

(Remember that for auditioning sounds, there are my M4L helpers...)













Remember that you can create several MIDI Tracks, assign them to different MIDI Channels (like Channel 10 for Drum sounds) and make the most of the multi-timbral capabilities of the Apple DLS Music Device.

In this example, the top pop-ups all route the MIDI events to the DLSMusicDevice plug-in on Track 1 (shown highlighted in Red), whilst the individual MIDI Channels (set by the lower pop-up) are shown highlighted in green.



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Auditioning Drum sounds

To audition the dum sounds on MIDI Channel 10 inside a .sf2 Soundfont file, you need to set up the DLS synth in one MIDI track inside Live, and then set a second MIDI track onto MIDI Channel 10. You then add the DLS_Helper_D M4L plug-in to the second MIDI track, and set this to be the 'Record' track with the little red button, since this is where you will be auditioning drum sounds.

Because there are lots of drum sounds, then manually playing all of them isn't really an option, and so the _D version of the DLS_Helper only has the Automatic mode. The counter this time is for Note Numbers: the default from 35 to 81 to cover the defined General MIDI mapping. The keyboards shortcuts are different from the _N Note version, and are designed for the  MacBook Pro keyboard layout. Backslash Runs or Stops the counter, whilst Forward Slash resets the count and replays that note. 

The Rate rotary control sets the rate at which the drums sounds play, and there is the same Fixed/Random MIDI Velocity control as before. The final two controls allow the start and end note numbers to be set, which means that you can choose a sub-set of the GM mapping range if you wish. A programming error by me caused the Start rotary control to gain an unexpected extra feature - it repeats notes instead of skipping directly to the start, but I have left this in because it allows all sorts of interesting drum patterns to be produced. Consider it a serendipitous accident.

 You might have realised that because the second track is just a reference to the main track that contains the actual DLS Synth, then the pop-up dialogue box is not visible when this track is selected (and this DLS_Helper_D is shown. To change the .sf2 Soundfont file that is playing, you need to go back to the 'DLS' track, change the sound selection, and then go to the second 'Channel 10' track to use the DLS_Helper_D plug-in. Once you get your he'd around the process, this isn't as hard as it seems. I have shown the two tracks as 'D' and 'N' in the accompanying diagrams.

Hopefully, you now have enough information to make the most of the Apple DLS Synth inside Ableton Live 9.

Using the Apple General MIDI DLS Sound Bank Synthesizer in Ableton Live

One of my rules of thumb is that whenever I can't find something on the Internet, then I try to solve it and then write it up. You are reading this because I could not find any good guide to how to use the Apple General MIDI Down-Loadable Sound (DLS) Sound Bank Synthesizer (an Audio Unit plug-in provided in Mac OSX) in Ableton Live. The plug-in is also referred to as the Apple DLS Music Device, and this is how it appears in Ableton Live.

As with many things in life, there is more than one way to do it.

Here's the simple way:

This is just a MIDI Track with the Apple DLS plug-in dropped into it, and then a MIDI Clip is created, and a few note events added. The result uses the first one of the 16 available MIDI channels in the Apple DLS plug-in, and so you can only use it for instrumental voices - there seems to be no way to change the MIDI channel that is used. So if you only need a single channel of basic General MIDI instrument sounds, then this may be all that you need.

Notice here that I've made the Inputs and Outputs visible by clicking on the I-O circle on the far right of the mixer, just to the right of the master volume sliders. What is interesting is that this MIDI Track is behaving exactly as it should - receiving MIDI inputs and converting them into audio outputs. Unfortunately, Live seems to always send MIDI information to the DLS plug-in on MIDI channel 1, and there is no control to change this in the I-O panel. In fact, for this simple example, you do not need to see the inputs and outputs at all.




When you drop the DLSMusicDevice onto the MIDI Track, then you this dialogue box will appear. You can set the controls if you have a specific set-up you want to use, but in most cases you will just close this dialogue. You can get it back using the 'spanner' in the assignable X_Y control block that appears at the bottom of the screen in the Clip view.

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But there's a better way:

It is more complex, but it allows you to utilise the full capabilities of the Apple DLS plug-in.

You start in exactly the same way - create a new MIDI Track.















This time, you definitely need to make the Inputs and Outputs visible by clicking on the I-O circle on the far right of the mixer, just to the right of the master volume sliders.

This I-O panel is the key to assigning MIDI channels to the DLS Music Device.










You then drop the Apple DLS plug-in into the MIDI Track. This sets up the DLS Music Device so that it receives MIDI Input and outputs audio into the mixer. But this time we are going to re-route where the MIDI Input is coming from...

(The Apple DLS plug-in is in the Plug-In Devices > Audio Units > Apple folder )









The Track name will have changed to DLSMusicDevice...
















And the Apple Music Synthesizer dialogue box will have appeared... Note that the three 'Parameter' slider controls ( tuning, volume and reverb volume ) are global, and so they affect all the DLS sounds.







You now need to add a second MIDI Track... This is going to be used to hold the clip containing the note events, and to control the MIDI channel of those events...













The I-O panel in this new MIDI Track contains this vital pair of controls, which aren't exactly obvious in what they do...














The upper pop-up list control shows a list of the Tracks that the MIDI output from this MIDI Track can be connected to. In this case, we want the output of this Track to go to the DLSMusicDevice, so we select the first Track that we created...

Any note events that we put into a piano roll Clip on this Track will now be routed as MIDI note events to the DLSMusicDevice, which will turn them into audio.







The lower pop-up list control lets you control the MIDI Channel of the note events that are sent to the DLSMusicDevice Track.














Here's a summary of what the two pop-up controls do...

Notice that the 1-DLSMusicDevice in the top pop-up refers to the plug-in being in Track 1, whilst the 2-DLSMusicDevice in the bottom pop-up refers to the MIDI Channel that the note events will be sent on... If the DLSMusicDevice was dropped into MIDI Track 3, then the top box would say 3-DLSMusicDevice. When you select the target Track with the top pop-up, then the DLSMusicDevice plug-in should be obvious - just make sure that you always look at the lower pop-up to check what MIDI Channel you are using.

You can now create a new Clip in the new MIDI Track...















Remember that the lower pop-up selects the MIDI Channel that the DLSMusicDevice will use for this Clip, and the Program Number controls on the left of the Clip piano-roll will select the sound for that MIDI Channel...












Here's the MIDI Channel pop-up control...
















And here is the Program Number pop-up for selecting the sound or instrument. Note that you need to love the slider on the right to switch between low and high numbers, just like in any Live selector control with lots of options.












Remember that you can create several MIDI Tracks, assign them to different MIDI Channels (like Channel 10 for Drum sounds) and make the most of the multi-timbral capabilities of the Apple DLS Music Device.

In this example, the top pop-ups all route the MIDI events to the DLSMusicDevice plug-in on Track 1 (shown highlighted in Red), whilst the individual MIDI Channels (set by the lower pop-up) are shown highlighted in green.