Hi Dave,
I've just got back from Christmas and new year break with my parents, so now
I can reply to you.
There's been quite a lot of traffic, so I hope I don't repeat what you
already know and what has already been written.
The Creative synth that you have been referring to is the older Creative
synth and
does indeed have latency - but not as much as the Microsoft one.
As far as I know, there is nothing you can do to eliminate the delay. You
will probably find that the Creative soft synth is also only GM.
What kind of Creative card do you have? From the SB Live 5.1 onwards, the
Creative range of sound cards have included a newer kind of synth called the
soundfont synth which is far superior. Some Creative cards support both
kinds of synth. But, I'll leave the whole topic of soundfonts for now ...
However, before you get into perhaps installing yet more drivers for
soundfont support, I would recommend that you try and work out why at the
moment there is no sound coming from your keyboard when you use the USB MIDI
device.
Most likely causes include:
1. MIDI drivers not installed.
2. cable not plugged into the right socket on the keyboard,
3. Keyboard not responding to the right MIDI channel(s).
4. Computer not sending to the right device.
1. Drivers.
Much has already been said on this list about installation of drivers and so
on, so I'll try not to repeat all that.
I don't know if you actually got the ports available yet, I recall you wrote
that the only ports listed in QWS Options -> ports were the Creative and the
Microsoft GS under MIDI OUT. If you still only have these two, then your
USB MIDI interface drivers are not installed correctly. I should imagine
you should have something like the following list in Options -> Ports:
Under MIDI IN:
USB MIDI IN 1x1
Then under MIDI Out:
Creative synth
USB MIDI OUT 1x1
Microsoft GS
If you have nothing under MIDI IN, this is a good indication that the
drivers are not installed.
On the point about installing drivers for a particular keyboard: as has been
said, you only need specific drivers for a particular keyboard if the
keyboard itself has a USB port. If you want to use a standard MIDI
connector, then standard MIDI drivers are what you need. These should have
come with the USB to MIDI interface cable.
2. Right socket.
&
4. QWS transmitting on the right port.
Assuming that your MIDI devices are all listed, a good way to check MIDI is
working is simply to load a song into QWS (an example is supplied if you
haven't any) and just play it. You can change the Port in the Track
Properties dialog to select the particular MIDI part you want to use. If
you can get MIDI OUT working as desired, that's half the battle won. The
other half (hopefully a lesser half) is MIDI IN. As has been said, QWS
listens on all available MIDI IN ports, so it should pick up what you play.
3. Keyboard not listening
As far as the keyboard itself is concerned, it is likely to either listen on
a particular MIDI channel or on all available channels. For general
sequencing, you will probably need the all channels mode. Unfortunately, I
can't tell you how to do this, because different keyboards have different
ways to get this - or may not need any configuration at all, so I can only
advise to consult a manual.
Well, I hope some of this has been helpful and look forward to hearing from
you again soon.
With best regards,
James.
PS I like your signature. Try also knocking out the "2" in 23.
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