Instruction Manual

561
Playing a Soft Synth
Software Synthesizers
Playing a Soft Synth
There are several ways to play a soft synth:
• You can record MIDI data and use the soft synth as a playback device.
Note: WDM or ASIO drivers do not improve performance when you
play back recorded MIDI data—the improvement comes only when you
play a soft synth in real time from an external MIDI controller or
keyboard.
• You can play the soft synth in real time from a MIDI controller or
keyboard. To avoid excessive latency, your sound card must be using a
WDM or ASIO driver. Also, you must set mixing latency to the lowest
achievable level (probably less than 10 msec.), which you do by using
the Options-Audio command to open the Audio Options dialog box,
and dragging the Buffer Size slider on the General tab.
• Some soft synths that use the DXi 2 format can send MIDI data,
sometimes including MIDI notes, from their interfaces to SONAR. For
example, some soft synths have MIDI keyboards built into their
interfaces that you can click to send note on/off messages.
See Recording a Soft Synth’s MIDI Output for more information.
To Play a Soft Synth with Recorded MIDI Data
1. Insert a soft synth into the project.
2. In the MIDI track that sends its output to the soft synth, choose a MIDI
channel.
3. Open the soft synth’s interface (if it’s not open already) by clicking the
Properties button in the Synth Rack view, or by double-clicking the
name of the soft synth if it’s patched into the FX bin of an audio track.
To reset a particular synth icon to
its original icon
Right-click the icon in the Synth Rack
that you want to reset, and select
Reset Synth Icon from the popup
menu.
To open a synth’s property page Double-click the synth’s icon in the
Synth Rack.
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