Reference Guide

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Changing track settings
Controlling Playback
Setting up output devices
The output setting for a track determines which piece of hardware or software synthesizer will be
used to produce the sound stored in your project. In a very simple equipment setup, you might have
only a computer equipped with a basic sound card. In this case, you want to play all MIDI and audio
output through the sound card on your computer.
If your equipment setup also includes a MIDI keyboard attached to the MIDI port on your sound card,
you can choose to route MIDI data directly to the sound card or through the sound card MIDI port to
the keyboard. If you choose the former, the music will play from your computer speakers. If you
choose the latter, the sound will play from the speaker attached to your keyboard. You can even
choose to send some MIDI information to each of these devices so that they both play at once.
You can purchase MIDI interfaces that plug into your parallel, serial, or USB port to add MIDI ports to
your computer. For more information about complex system configurations, see the online help
topic: Hardware Setup.
If your computer has several MIDI outs, choose the ones you want to use and put them in a
particular order using the Options > MIDI Devices command. The order in which your MIDI devices
appear in the Output menus in the Track and Console views is based solely on the order in which
the selected outs appear in the MIDI Devices dialog box. As a result, the order in which your
devices appear in a track’s output control may not match the port numbers that appear on your
external multiport MIDI device.