The virtual midi router is to allow Vegas to I/O MTC to another tool such as Sonar, ACID, or other tools, so it can act as a controller/slave. It's not officially supported under XP, but it does work. I wish they'd do a better VMR, but if it DOESN'T work for you, download Hubi's, or MidiOx. Both work great.

Thanks for the replies. I have not installed the download yet - would like to know exactly what it does - and, I admit, after reading your posts, I'm still not clear.

Here is what I have/what I want to accomplish.

My sound card has the joystick port to which I connect the midi cord from my keyboard. To date, I've used that connection to input compositions/arrangements into my notation program (Finale). I usually work manually (tell the software what note value I want, and hit the keyboard to tell it which pitch(s)).

Recently, I've been working with a guy who sings and plays guitar, and I've produced a couple of successful CD's for him recording into either V4 or Wavelab, then, using V4 to mix various takes and render to WAV.

Using my keyborad (the piano keyboard), I've added some bass lines and rudimentary percussion tracks to his stuff, but, now, I'd like to take advantage of the keyboard's ability to generate more complex souding percussion.

I've come across the term midi-chase, and assume it's the ability to have a midi instrument (like my piano keyboard) follow or dictate so as to sync between the keyboard and the pc.

As an alternative, I could, for now, live with being able to simply record the keyboard output and then try to sync it up to my WAV's of the guy's performance tracks in V4 (his overall effect is ok, but his tempi are not at all steady).

I've recently upgraded to Finale's most recent version, and that includes the ability to turn Midi's into Wav's, but, being a notation program, it wants to turn what I play into it into notation first, then, that can be saved as midi or wav. Unfortunately, comprehension of live (ok, not live, but keyboard generated real time) performance by Finale is about as accurate as OCR is to printed text - in the ball park, but not really useable without hours of manual correction.

So, aside from simply patching from the headphone out of the keyboard to the analog in of my soundcard, I haven't found a way to get an accurate midi file into my computer, let alone achieve the luxury of auto-syncing to an existing WAV or Midi file already present in the computer.

Sorry for the long post, but I thought you might better be able to assist if I explained more fully what I'm trying to accomplish.

Thanks again for your replies.

Caruso

God, what a long discussion - Not boring, not un-interesting, but long.

Is there an easier way to incorporate knowledge into the human
brain other than by reading? Is there a Flashcard Slot in the side
of my head where I can insert the software to be able to do
this stuff and not just learn how to do it.

It seems like with this, and other softwares, all I do is try to learn it,
and in the course of learning it something gets created, more like
notes scribbled on a page which end up to be projects deemd
done, or at least tried.

Well, all I'm looking to do is use the keyboard piano, and Fruity Loops
FL keyboard, etc. by using my cpu keyboard keys.

Can somebody tell me why
A. SF7 did not include toggle to use internal/external keyboard?
B. Real time recording of same for either sequencing as you call it and not
just analog via stereo mix?

I mean this is where we are right in terms of using
a computer to do this stuff? Now I have to, not optionally, but
have to incorporate an external piano keyboard in order to
be able to accomplish something on this sortware tool.

By the way, Sony Video Vegas Rocks, though there seems to
be some complaints about not being able to handle midi, probably
well founded at that, but as far as video I have not run
into a situation where I had to "work around" a creative
production need by using another software program, etc.

Okay, enough about that, what about the cpu keyboard solution
needed as described above.

Wannabe Great.

Are you saying that:
1. You are unable to play an audio sound file (Guy Singing).
2. Not able to then use a key board to then, in
a. Real Time
Add the new sounds exactly where you want them in your production?

So, lets say you have track 1 (Guy singing).
Add an audio track 2 so you can:
a. add other audio stuff into the timeline.


This is quite possible in Video Vegas, where you would
start the audio track 2 recording while at the same time,
playing the timeline.

Mute out the audio track 1, open the audio file in
windows media player play it by listening to it on headphones,
then, here is the problem, you want to add the sounds in real time
obviously using something responsive like the key board, or
if you've got the external keyboard, playing the piano as you
listen to the guy singing.

Well, I'm sure this all sounds pretty obvious, how am I doing so far,
and what can't you do at this point?

> would like to know exactly what it does - and, I admit, after reading your posts, I'm still not clear.

The Virtual MIDI Router is a software MIDI cable. It allows you to connect the MIDI OUT one MIDI program to the MIDI IN of another. It shows up just like a hardware MIDI device in the configuration panels of both programs so you can select it for output by one and input by the other just as if there were a real MIDI cable between them.

As DSE pointed out, you could use MIDI Time Code (MTC) so sync Finale to Vegas and when you press the Play button in Vegas, Finale would start playing in sync. (assuming Finale can sync to MTC). This doesn’t get your Finale composition into Vegas. It just makes them playback in sync.

All of this is very frustrating to set up and dodgy at best for keeping in sync. (read: its highly overrated, when it works it works great, and when it doesn’t you’ll blow an entire afternoon trying to figure out why) You would be much better off rendering your Finale MIDI file to a wave file and dropping it on the Vegas timeline.

> Actually, what I'm looking for is a way (other than patching the headphone jack to my sound card) to capture my keyboard to vegas via the midi connection. Any suggestions welcome?

There is no other way. If you want to get the SOUND from your Keyboard into your PC you have no alternative than to plug the audio output of your keyboard into the audio input of your PC and recording it as audio. Recording MIDI is fine when working a song out, but at some point, you will have to record the actual keyboard sounds and not just the MIDI data.

~jr