Attention Cubase Users!
21 Sep 2008, 20:32Those of you who have recently upgraded to a Fantom G after having used Cubase with your previous MIDI interface are probably wondering – how can I take advantage of all the wonderful things the G can do both as a controller and as an instrument itself?
You plug in your G via USB, load up Cubase, a couple of soft synths, and start to play. But disaster! It’s playing everything, regardless of channel options or MIDI TX switching! What’s going on?!
The first thing you need to realise is that the G DOES NOT automatically transfer MIDI on all channels at all times (although it can if you want!). The way Cubase handles MIDI is that it takes ANY MIDI input and regardless of the channel you have assigned to the MIDI track you have created, it attempts to shoehorn everything into it. That’s madness, I hear you cry. Well, not necessarily. Cubase is quite flexible in the respect that it allows you to have MIDI information from more than one MIDI channel recorded in one MIDI channel – the problem being, this is enabled by default, and you have to tell Cubase to filter out the data from the channels you don’t want. This solves the problem of being unable to specify a channel in your favourite soft synth and therefore hearing it played on every track, regardless of selection. This site explains it very well:
http://www.steinbergusers.com/cubase/btm/input_transformer.php
Just remember to set the channel (which should be the number of the channel you want to capture MIDI on) to unequal and filter. You can have more than one channel and this is useful things like B4 where the default channels are upper 1, lower 2, pedals 3. So you can have channels 1, 2 and 3 added where anything unequal to them is filtered out, and MIDI information is captured for all three at the same time – or you could split them into separate tracks. The choice is there.
Let’s say you’ve set up a VST analog synth on a MIDI channel and want to manipulate its sounds in real time with a variety of MIDI control changes. This is where things get a bit peculiar. As far as I can tell, if you want the little bars that correspond to what you’re changing on screen, you have to be in single mode, set to external. Only then does the GUI correspond to what you have set the controls to via F4 (or holding shift and touching a knob). The problem being with this is that you cannot select more than one MIDI channel to transmit CCs upon – it automatically only transmits them on the currently selected part. You can play notes on as many channels as you want at the same time, but CC messages will not be transmitted to the others. Whether you’d want this or not is another matter, but the possibility is not there in single mode. It IS possible via the studio and live mode BUT (and this is a big but) you don’t get access to the GUI because the sliders correspond ONLY to levels unless you access the external mixer – not an ideal solution by any means – but at least you can play more than one VST at once, on different areas of the keyboard. You’ll just have to memorize what the knobs/sliders do. The G also shows a readout on the unit itself to the left of the screen of the value of what you are changing, in glorious red LED.
What about recording and running sound through the G? I’m lucky in the respect that the G has provided me with everything I need to compose, sample and record via one interface – USB. The way I work is thus (on Windows XP)…
Plug USB into computer.
Turn computer on.
Turn Fantom G on.
Go into Control Panel>Sounds and Audio Devices>Audio Tab
Set all three options to ‘Fantom G’ (playback, recording, MIDI)
Plug my phones/speaker set up into the relevant outputs
Hold SHIFT (near the dial) and press ‘MIX IN’ (red button on far left)
A menu appears – I change the source to ‘USB-AUDIO’ and adjust the level so it is in line with the G’s volume. I also sometimes activate the compressor for certain things. Finally, press ‘MIX IN’ to activate.
Now all sounds that play on my computer can be heard through the headphones attached to the G, because the audio arrives via the USB cable.
Next step is to go into Cubase and the device setup menu and then the VST audiobay setup. I change my master ASIO driver to the Fantom G (dig that 19/20ms latency!), and set up MIDI tracks for each channel on the G, with the G as both in and out, plus any soft synths I may want to use. I turn each MIDI track’s monitor function on, and if I wish to record on them, select more than one with a ctrl+left mouse click.
Finally, I go into the system menu, and turn off the local sound generated by the Fantom.
MIDI recorded on a certain part in the Fantom gets recorded in its relevant MIDI track, soft synths respond to only the channel they are selected to have, and playing back a MIDI track for the Fantom activates the tone generator and makes it behave like a high-end VST without any performance hit – and all over one USB cable.
Particular control setups for certain instruments/soft synths on the knobs/sliders can be saved as user studio/live/single sets, recalled almost instantaneously with the patch select function (like using the increment/decrement keys) or from inside Cubase by using the Fantom VST editor – although I rarely do this. Setting the pad mode up to run as either part select / midi TX switch makes changing between different internal settings, or external MIDI channels, a doddle.
It took me a while to work all this out as the manuals are not very forthcoming with this data – and if anyone has worked out a way to turn off the GUI that only shows levels in live mode (as opposed to your own CC settings), I’d love to hear about it.
You plug in your G via USB, load up Cubase, a couple of soft synths, and start to play. But disaster! It’s playing everything, regardless of channel options or MIDI TX switching! What’s going on?!
The first thing you need to realise is that the G DOES NOT automatically transfer MIDI on all channels at all times (although it can if you want!). The way Cubase handles MIDI is that it takes ANY MIDI input and regardless of the channel you have assigned to the MIDI track you have created, it attempts to shoehorn everything into it. That’s madness, I hear you cry. Well, not necessarily. Cubase is quite flexible in the respect that it allows you to have MIDI information from more than one MIDI channel recorded in one MIDI channel – the problem being, this is enabled by default, and you have to tell Cubase to filter out the data from the channels you don’t want. This solves the problem of being unable to specify a channel in your favourite soft synth and therefore hearing it played on every track, regardless of selection. This site explains it very well:
http://www.steinbergusers.com/cubase/btm/input_transformer.php
Just remember to set the channel (which should be the number of the channel you want to capture MIDI on) to unequal and filter. You can have more than one channel and this is useful things like B4 where the default channels are upper 1, lower 2, pedals 3. So you can have channels 1, 2 and 3 added where anything unequal to them is filtered out, and MIDI information is captured for all three at the same time – or you could split them into separate tracks. The choice is there.
Let’s say you’ve set up a VST analog synth on a MIDI channel and want to manipulate its sounds in real time with a variety of MIDI control changes. This is where things get a bit peculiar. As far as I can tell, if you want the little bars that correspond to what you’re changing on screen, you have to be in single mode, set to external. Only then does the GUI correspond to what you have set the controls to via F4 (or holding shift and touching a knob). The problem being with this is that you cannot select more than one MIDI channel to transmit CCs upon – it automatically only transmits them on the currently selected part. You can play notes on as many channels as you want at the same time, but CC messages will not be transmitted to the others. Whether you’d want this or not is another matter, but the possibility is not there in single mode. It IS possible via the studio and live mode BUT (and this is a big but) you don’t get access to the GUI because the sliders correspond ONLY to levels unless you access the external mixer – not an ideal solution by any means – but at least you can play more than one VST at once, on different areas of the keyboard. You’ll just have to memorize what the knobs/sliders do. The G also shows a readout on the unit itself to the left of the screen of the value of what you are changing, in glorious red LED.
What about recording and running sound through the G? I’m lucky in the respect that the G has provided me with everything I need to compose, sample and record via one interface – USB. The way I work is thus (on Windows XP)…
Plug USB into computer.
Turn computer on.
Turn Fantom G on.
Go into Control Panel>Sounds and Audio Devices>Audio Tab
Set all three options to ‘Fantom G’ (playback, recording, MIDI)
Plug my phones/speaker set up into the relevant outputs
Hold SHIFT (near the dial) and press ‘MIX IN’ (red button on far left)
A menu appears – I change the source to ‘USB-AUDIO’ and adjust the level so it is in line with the G’s volume. I also sometimes activate the compressor for certain things. Finally, press ‘MIX IN’ to activate.
Now all sounds that play on my computer can be heard through the headphones attached to the G, because the audio arrives via the USB cable.
Next step is to go into Cubase and the device setup menu and then the VST audiobay setup. I change my master ASIO driver to the Fantom G (dig that 19/20ms latency!), and set up MIDI tracks for each channel on the G, with the G as both in and out, plus any soft synths I may want to use. I turn each MIDI track’s monitor function on, and if I wish to record on them, select more than one with a ctrl+left mouse click.
Finally, I go into the system menu, and turn off the local sound generated by the Fantom.
MIDI recorded on a certain part in the Fantom gets recorded in its relevant MIDI track, soft synths respond to only the channel they are selected to have, and playing back a MIDI track for the Fantom activates the tone generator and makes it behave like a high-end VST without any performance hit – and all over one USB cable.
Particular control setups for certain instruments/soft synths on the knobs/sliders can be saved as user studio/live/single sets, recalled almost instantaneously with the patch select function (like using the increment/decrement keys) or from inside Cubase by using the Fantom VST editor – although I rarely do this. Setting the pad mode up to run as either part select / midi TX switch makes changing between different internal settings, or external MIDI channels, a doddle.
It took me a while to work all this out as the manuals are not very forthcoming with this data – and if anyone has worked out a way to turn off the GUI that only shows levels in live mode (as opposed to your own CC settings), I’d love to hear about it.