How do I listen to MIDI output?

[cattivikkio]

Hello,
I'm new to the forum and a complete noob when it comes to Cubase LE 4, which I got when I bought a Lexicon Alpha Studio audio interface. The idea is that I wanted to record my electric guitar, which I have managed to do after hours of fidgeting with the various device setup etc.
Now the problem I am having is that when I load a MIDI track (the base upon which I would like to play my electric guitar) I cannot hear anything. I understand I have to route the MIDI output to some kind of device, but I don't have any actual MIDI instrument attached, so what I would like to do is to route the MIDI to the system MIDI device (I'm on a Macintosh Power G5) and hear it through the system speakers (I'm sorry if this doesn't make much sense, I find all these concepts quite confusing). From the MIDI track left pane I can see that the input is set to "All midi inputs" but when I try to set the output the only option I get is "Not connected".
How do I tell Cubase that I want to listen to a midi track through my internal speakers?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks a lot in advance
/Andy

[scribe]

Hey there,
Set up an Instrument track. Copy the midi files to that track. You should get sound once you choose an instrument (an instrument being a vst instrument within cubase). The manual or help files will tell you more.

Cheers

[cattivikkio]

Hi Scribe,
thanks for your answer. I followed your suggestion and set up an instrument track, copied the midi track there and it actually looked a little better, in that now at least when I click on outputs on the left of the track I don't just see "Not connected" but can actually select something called "HaLionOne". The input is still set to "All MIDI inputs" and the other options I can choose are "Not connected" and "IAC Driver Bus 1". This last one must be (I guess) the synth that comes by default with the Mac, as I can see it if I run "Audio MIDI setup" on the Mac.
Still, I don't get any sound out either on the headphones or the internal speakers. What am I missing? I read the operational manual when it says how to set up an instrument track and as far as I can see I am doing everything correctly but I am sure I am missing something, I'm totally confused.

If it can help debugging, when I open Device Setup and click on Midi ports setup, I can see that both the In and Out ports are set to "IAC Driver Bus 1". Should the output be set to "HALionOne"? And if so, how do I do that?

Thanks for your help
/Andy

[cattivikkio]

OK, I'm replying to myslef now but just wanted to let you know that I have partially solved the problem. It turns out that the presets under HalionOne sound banks directory were all missing, the directory was empty. I'm not sure why this happened I reinserted the install disc (on Mac) and couldn't see the Additional Contents directory. So I mounted the disc on windows and copied the directory onto my Mac. Now I can get some basic sounds like flute, drumkit, etc. but not very many. Maybe this is because I have a light version of Cubase LE as it came with the Lexicon Alpha audio interface?

Does anyone know where exactly these presets should be installed on a Mac? Right now I have copied the folder "HALionOne Soundbanks" both under ~<user>/Library/Audio/Presets/Steinberg Media Technologies/
and under /Library/Application Support/Steinberg Meda Technologies/Content
The folder only contians two files: Essential_Content.hsb and Essential_Set_1.hsb

Then I also have copied the folder HALionONe/Essential Set, which contains a bunch of files with extensions .VST and .vstpreset.
Does anyone know what these files are?

Sorry for being such a noob, but I'm trying to learn as fast as I can.

/Andy

[scribe]

hi there,
I have read of people having probs with halion in cubase. Something to do with 'trashing the preferences'

I suggest you go to cubase.net forum and have a look around in there.

Cheers

[uab9253]

Boy, oh boy was this a timely topic. I have spent the better part of this evening fighting with a new install of Cubase 4 Studio and trying to get it to see Halion one, and then once it did, finding all the presets. I had to go to the additional content folder and run every damn one of the install exe's for Halion one. then I had to go to load presets on Halion one within the VST plug in. I don't know how Steinberg could have possibly made this process less intuitive. Unreal. When I got the search box for load presets I had to click show location, which took me to the halion one folder and then deselect and reselect every folder in order to see all of the instruments.

[brandondrury]

I've heard from many that Halion STILL isn't there. I'm glad I use Kontakt2.

Does anyone know where exactly these presets should be installed on a Mac?

Unfortunately, I know zero about Mac and can't help.

Did you get the MIDI end figured out. You mentioned that you wanted to trigger the "system MIDI synthesizer" but it seemed strange to me that you would just want to randomly trigger MIDI without a specific instrument in mind.

Brandon

[cattivikkio]

Hi Brandon,
yes I guess I got the MIDI end more or less sorted out. Al I wanted was to listen to a MIDI file and when I dragged it into the Cubase window it automatically created one MIDI track for each instrument. For reasons that are still not clear to me, I couldn\t listen to these midi tracks via my headphone or internal speakers and I read somewhere that instead I had to create an Instrument track and copy the MIDI there. I did that, then I had to struggle until I found out that I had to use HALionOne as output and finally after I discovered that the HALionOne Banks where empty and fixed that I can now hear the MIDI sound via my headphone.
The next step would be if I could find out how to add more sounds to the presets, as I said I only have a few and they don't sound very good.

/Andy

[cattivikkio]

Sorry, when I mention that "I read somewhere" about creating the Instrument track it was actually Scribe's comment above, thanks again Scribe for that.

@uab9253: I have copied the vspreset files and also the hsb files where I think they're supposed to be on the Mac. However, in the presets browser I see the folder and the instruments but when I try to load any of them, except those few that I mentioned, they don't load. I had a look inside the hsb file which is a binary but at the end it does mention the name of the instruments and in many case those don't match. I suspect that the HSB gets created after you have all your presets (sort of compiled for a given set of presets) and it only works with those.
Any explanation of how the *.vspreset and *.hsb files work would greatly help

This Cubase is really frustrating, I get the impression that I could do so many wonderful things with it and I don't know how. I feel like I'm sitting at the controls of the Enterprise and drive it like a bycicle

Thanks
/Andy

[brandondrury]

For reasons that are still not clear to me, I couldn\t listen to these midi tracks via my headphone or internal speakers

That is because MIDI has no sound unless it is triggering a synth or sampler.

This Cubase is really frustrating, I get the impression that I could do so many wonderful things with it and I don't know how. I feel like I'm sitting at the controls of the Enterprise and drive it like a bycicle

This is correct! You can do anything! Some people give up and stick with the bicycle. Keep at it. Technical problems sometimes take 25 hours to find the answer, but once you do you'll know how to solve that one problem forever. Keep at it.

Brandon