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, select Edit > Preferences > MIDI - Devices and put them in the desired order. 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 Edit > Preferences > MIDI - Devices. 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.

Figure 55. The MIDI - Devices section

A. These devices are not selected

When you first run SONAR it asks you to select MIDI devices. You may want to change these selections in the future. You can do so by selecting different devices in Edit > Preferences > MIDI - Devices.

Your computer is usually equipped with at least one audio device—your computer sound card. Your setup may have several different audio output devices, or you may have a multichannel sound card that presents itself to your computer as though it were several different devices, one for each stereo pair. In SONAR, audio tracks are assigned to main outs or buses. Each main out represents a hardware device. You use the Output control to assign a track in a project to the main or bus you want to use. While you need to choose the MIDI output devices you want to use before you assign them to tracks, all of your audio devices can be assigned to tracks freely. You do not need to configure them the way you do MIDI devices. If you have a voice modem or speaker-phone in your computer, however, you might want to set up SONAR so that it won’t use those devices. Also, note that some dedicated audio equipment has specific setup requirements. For more information, see Improving audio performance.

To choose MIDI devices

1.	Go to Edit > Preferences > MIDI - Devices.

2.	Click on any MIDI device in the Outputs list.

3.	To move any device to the top of the list, deselect all other devices and click Move to Top to move the selected device to the top of the list.

4.	When all devices are selected in the order you want, click OK.

 

See:

MIDI - Devices

Creating friendly names for MIDI output and input devices

You may find that a name you make up yourself for a MIDI device is easier to remember or more descriptive than a device’s original name. The friendly name for a MIDI device is the name you will see places such as MIDI track Input and Output menus, and the Controllers/Surfaces dialog box, if you enable the Use Friendly Names To Represent MIDI Devices check box at the bottom of the MIDI Devices dialog box.

To make up a friendly name:

1.	Go to Edit > Preferences > MIDI - Devices.

2.	Double-click the name of a device in the Friendly Name column, type a new name, and press ENTER.

3.	Select the Use Friendly Names To Represent MIDI Devices check box.

4.

Click OK.