Instruction Manual

MIDI Files
The Standard MIDI file format is a file interchange format defined by the MIDI
Manufacturers Association (MMA). The purpose of the format is to allow for the exchange
of MIDI data between different programs. Any program that can read and write MIDI files
has a common language with which to talk to other MIDI software. The compact size of
MIDI music files makes them particularly useful for delivering music online.
SONAR™ can open standard MIDI files, and can save your projects in standard MIDI file
formats. Note that only the MIDI portion of your projects is saved in a standard MIDI file. If
your projects contain digital audio, the audio portion of the project will be lost when you
save it to a standard MIDI file.
Note: If you load a standard MIDI file into SONAR, SONAR strips out any initial volume
and pan settings and sets the volume and pan controls for any affected tracks to those
values. Initial volume and pan settings in a standard MIDI file are those that occur within
the first measure. Any affected volume and pan controls will show the initial values that
SONAR loaded from the standard MIDI file. Any volume and pan controls that are not
affected, in other words that don’t have initial values stored in the file, will show their
current values in parentheses. These controls are disabled until you move one of them
and therefore give it a value, at which point the control becomes enabled and the
parentheses disappear. If you save a file as a standard MIDI file, SONAR saves the
values of all enabled controls as initial values. However, as a project plays, SONAR’s
controls do not display MIDI controller values that change throughout the track—SONAR’s
controls only display automation values, i.e. shapes. If you want SONAR’s controls to
display MIDI controller values throughout the project, use the Edit-Convert MIDI to
Shapes command.
SONAR supports two different MIDI file formats, MIDI Format 0 and MIDI Format 1.
Format 0 MIDI files contain a single track, with all events stored in that track. Format 1
MIDI files can store up to 7256 tracks, just like SONAR project files. When you load a MIDI
Format 0 file, SONAR splits it into 16 separate tracks, based on the MIDI channels
assigned to each event. When you save a project to a MIDI Format 0 file, SONAR
collapses MIDI information from all of its tracks into one single track.