Hi Danny,
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Originally Posted by dbjorck
OK, so you can't do it from Composer. I suspected as much.
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Right. Aria is set up so that you load the instruments in the Aria Player itself, rather than "call them" from Notation Composer. All you need to set correctly in Composer is the channel number, so that each staff corresponds to the correct channel/instrument in the Aria player as I showed in the picture.
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BTW, I see you're using LoopBe. What exactly is that supposed to do?? I followed the instructions you gave in another post, but it broke everything (and crashed my PC). Before that, Composer was already using Aria voices, as far as I can tell.
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Unless your computer has a setup that I'm not aware of which allows for automatic virtual MIDI routing, then the sounds you were hearing were most likely not from GPO, but perhaps your sound card's internal synth. What sound card does your computer have?
LoopBe is a "virtual cable" for MIDI. The Aria Player is a stand-alone player which can receive MIDI input if you have a way to get the MIDI signal to it. For instance, if you have a MIDI keyboard that you plug into your computer, the drivers for that keyboard will create a virtual cable that can go to the Aria player, allowing you to "connect" to the Aria Player, and thus use the sounds of GPO when you play your keyboard.
In order for Notation Composer and the Aria Player to "connect", you need to use a virtual MIDI cable, and that's what LoopBe (or others, as
listed here ) does. It simply provides the "cable" to get signals from Composer over to the instruments loaded in the Aria player so they'll play. It's important to turn off the "In" in Composer, and only have the "Out" on, so as to avoid a feedback loop. A feedback loop (in the case of LoopBe) will shut things down, or (in the case of some others) will cause a major slowdown of your entire computer because the feedback is eating up cpu resources.
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After setting LoopBe up, I could get no sounds whatsoever. I disabled it, and wanted to do a second try to see what the point of it is, and verify that I really am using GPO (I disabled GS Wavetable too, so there's only the ASIO sound card under ports and devices), but now I can't see how to re-enable it, and as I say, I don't fully understand what the point is and if I really need it.
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I suspect that there was a feedback loop due to having both In and Out in Notation Composer, and LoopBe's automatic muting shut down the sound.
Routing signals can sometimes be a bit tricky, just because there are more steps involved to get the sound, and therefore more locations for things to get plugged-up, as it were. Also, there are a number of issues that start coming into play.
1. If you have an ASIO option with your sound card and MIDI Device, then it's a good idea to turn off the GS Wavetable as it can interfere with ASIO and cause either no sound (in some cases) or you lose the practically-zero-latency benefit of ASIO.
2. If you use virtual MIDI cables (eg. LoopBe), you have to make sure that for each application you have open (eg. Notation Composer, Aria player) that the cable is set either for "In" only or "Out" only. If you have the setting for LoopBe (or any other virtual MIDI cable) set for both In and Out in the same application, you'll set off a feedback loop. Fortunately in LoopBe it has feedback detection enabled, and it will automatically mute the cable. This is most likely what happened when you tried it out, as Notation Composer will detect all In's and Out's (to give you more flexibility if you're into using multiple devices). You'll need to turn off the "In" functionality of LoopBe (or any other virtual MIDI cable) to avoid the feedback loop if you're using that cable to get a signal from Composer to a playback device.
The Device settings should be (1) in Composer, the LoopBe should be set for "Out" only - turn off the "In" component in Composer by going to Setup/MIDI Device configuration/Ports, and unchecking the "In" side for LoopBe. (2) The Aria player only detects "In" connections, and so is not a problem. You'll want to check in Tools/Preferences in the Aria Player to make sure that the "cables" you want are detected (show up in the list) and connected (have a check in the box).
Getting the LoopBe back as a device in Composer will depend on how you disabled it. If you disabled it in Windows Device Manager, then you'll need to re-enable it there in order for Composer to detect it and thus show it in the MIDI Device Configuration as an option. You'll also want to be sure that it's not "muted" (using the LoopBe Monitor).
You'll also want to read up on how GPO uses various controllers to regulate volume, attack, and other nuanced aspects of the instrument performance. It can give some stunningly realistic sounds, but there is a definite learning curve for taking advantage of all the various parameters
Notation Composer does have an excellent way to graph MIDI controllers right on top of the score, so it makes it quite easy to get a really good performance out of such libraries.
If enough folks are interested in routing MIDI cables for using playback libraries or devices (eg. GPO's Aria player or others), then maybe I'll put together a little tutorial video on how to do it. Any takers?
ttfn,
Sherry