Re: Powertracks Pro Audio Equivalent For Mac
Avery Blaschko
A common cause of this problem is in conjunction with a Virtual Synth such as the Roland VSC. Since all software synthesizers rely on the digital audio portion of the sound card, playing MIDI and digital audio together can sometimes be a problem.
Go to the Control Panel Multimedia -or- Sounds and Audio Devices Audio. Select the same audio playback device as is showing in the recording preferences. Click the MIDI tab (Windows XP: Look in the MIDI Playback area) and select your sound card's synth, rather than the VSC88/3 (or other software synth). This will give a lesser quality for Windows playback but the VSC can be selected internally by the software rather than allowing Windows to be the default.
A "Wave device in use" error can also occur if the Sound Mapper is selected in addition to the sound card audio drivers in the Options Preferences Audio Drivers dialog. Make certain the driver is selected only one time. For example, if you select the SB Live! for recording in the Windows Control Panel, select only it or the SB Live! in the Options Preferences Audio Drivers menu. Do not select both the Sound Mapper and the SB Live! driver.
The mic and/or line inputs on many sound cards are miniature stereo 1/8" jacks. Both left and right channels appear in this configuration, sharing ground (3 connections). To use these inputs, you will likely need a stereo 1/8" male-to-two mono (whatever matches your input source) adapter. On most mixers, this will mean two 1/4" male plugs, on some mixers and most home tape decks, this would mean an "RCA" audio connector. Your local electronics store is a good source for any of these adapters.
Note: If you won't be recording MIDI from an external MIDI synth it is usually ok if you don't have a MIDI Input driver, as long as you do have a MIDI Output driver. To avoid getting a warning that there are no MIDI Input drivers installed in PowerTracks when you are trying to record audio, press the microphone (record audio) button to start recording, rather than the other record button.
To open the Record Control window, click on Options Properties to open the Properties window, select the 'Recording' radio button, and press OK. The Record Control window is for INPUT; it allows you to choose what you record. For example, if you were recording audio using the line-in on your sound card, you would select 'line-in' as your recording input.
In the Properties window, you can choose which audio device you wish to control (the "Mixer device"). Normally you don't need to change this. You can also select which volume controls you want displayed in the Record/Play Control panels.
Another way that you control audio recording and playback is by choosing your audio input and output drivers. If you only have one sound card you don't normally need to worry about this. There are two places you can choose your audio drivers:
In PowerTracks, if you have "Microsoft Sound Mapper" selected as your audio driver, PowerTracks will use whatever is selected in the Windows Control Panel. If you have a driver *other* than the Microsoft Sound Mapper selected, PowerTracks will use that driver.
If you get an error message when you try to open the sound card mixer or nothing happens when you try to open it, this means that the selected audio driver doesn't have an associated Record or Play Control window. In this case, the audio device will usually have a separate control/mixer console that you can access from the Control Panel. You will need to check with your sound card documentation if you are not sure where to find it.
Pick the tab at the top that brings up a page that has the various sound sources listed that environmental audio can affect. The object here is to pick each one other than MIDI, and tell the software to NOT apply the chosen environment to that one. This would include your CD audio, wave files, everything on the list but MIDI. Don't worry if MIDI does not appear on this list, it depends on which version of the Live drivers you have. Turn everything else to OFF, one at a time.
Close the environmental audio window, saving the settings, and start upPowerTracks Pro Audio or Band-in-a-Box. The reverb and chorus controls from within PowerTracks Pro Audio or Band-in-a-Box will now work.
The Roland VSC is a software synthesizer based on the sounds from the Roland Sound Canvas hardware sound modules. The VSC's latency, or "Response Time", is adjustable. By default, the Roland VSC has a response time of about 430 to 450 ms (a little less than half a second). This is a safe setting, and will avoid audio drop-outs and glitches even on older and slow computers. If you select the Roland VSC as your MIDI Output Driver and press OK in the MIDI Driver Setup dialog, PowerTracks will automatically offer to set the latency to 430 ms.
Recent versions of Band-in-a-Box (2006 and higher) and PowerTracks Pro Audio (10 and higher) added support for ASIO drivers. One of the main advantages to using ASIO in PowerTracks is that it allows you to play live from an external MIDI keyboard through a DXi synth with almost no latency. Previous versions of PowerTracks supported DXi synths, but you couldn't play through the DXi synth from your keyboard because there was too much latency. If your sound card supports ASIO and you have ASIO drivers installed on your computer, you can use ASIO by selecting this audio driver type in Opt. Preferences Audio. See the PowerTracks help file and manual for further information on setting up the ASIO audio driver dialog. If the manufacturer of your sound card doesn't have an ASIO driver, OR if you are having trouble using a specific ASIO driver, you may be able to use the ASIO4ALL driver.
If you are recording audio, you can record either mono (left or right) or in stereo. To access these settings, go to Options Preferences Audio. If you are recording both left and right channels, and your audio track is set as a MONO Audio track, the left and right channels will be recorded on to consecutive tracks. If your track is a STEREO Audio track (PowerTracks Pro Audio 8 or higher), then both channels will appear on a single track.
If you have a sound card or audio interface that has more than one input port, you can record from each port on a separate track. You can record as many tracks simultaneously as your hardware supports. To set this up in PowerTracks, go to Options Preferences Audio Drivers. If you are using the ASIO diver type, select each input port that you want to use by control-clicking. If you are using the MME driver type, select each input driver that you want to use, and make sure that Microsoft Sound Mapper is not selected. To record, you simply need to select a single track - PowerTracks will use as many tracks as it needs to. Note that each Input port is a stereo pair, with a left and right channel. If you select 4 Input Ports, then you would be actually getting 8 input channels, since each audio port has both a left and right channel. This would use up 8 mono-audio tracks.
Note: Multi-port audio recording will only work if (1) the current audio track is a Stereo audio track -or- the current audio track is Mono and the input channel is set to L+R (Options Preferences Audio) and (2) there are multiple audio input ports selected in Options Preferences Audio Drivers.
You might be using a software synthesizer such as the Roland VSC or Microsoft GS Wavetable for MIDI playback (check this in Options MIDI Devices). Software Synthesizers usually have noticeable latency because the sound is processed by your computer's CPU before being sent to your sound card. This means that there is a delay between when PowerTracks sends the MIDI data and when you hear it played. There shouldn't be a problem if you are consistently using the same MIDI Output Driver, but if you are having trouble syncing audio and MIDI there are a couple of settings in PowerTracks that you can use to correct the problem:
The Audio I/O Delay setting in Options MIDI Devices. This will delay the start of audio playback and audio recording, which is useful if you want to attempt to keep audio playback/recording in sync with MIDI, especially if you are using a software based synth for MIDI playback. Normally, you will set this to match the Synth Output Latency Delay. If you are finding that the audio comes in before the MIDI (MIDI is slower), increase this setting. The audio will be delayed by the amount in milliseconds that you specify. You may have to experiment a little to find exactly the correct delay. Note that while the Synth Output Latency setting should normally be set to the same value as the Audio I/O delay, the Synth Output Latency setting is quite different; it is only for keeping the visual display, such as displayed times and highlighting of notes, in sync with MIDI playback. It doesn't have any effect on what you actually hear.
The Offset In MS setting in Options Preferences Audio can be used to make an adjustment to the timing for the purpose of keeping the MIDI and audio in sync. You can make an adjustment to this setting if the sound card's audio timing is early or late in comparison to the MIDI. For example, if the sound card's audio is being heard later than the MIDI, you can try increasing this setting, which will delay the MIDI timing to match the Audio timing. The default for this setting is 0.
*If you are using the Roland VSC as your MIDI Output Driver, you can adjust the VSC's response time in the VSC Settings window: Open the VSC panel, click on the Setup button, and click on the Performance tab. You may be able to get it down to slightly below 100 ms without experiencing any audio glitches, depending on the speed of your computer.
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