BIAB & Roland XV-2020

[geekdout]

Hi All!

I've been playing an electronic wind controller with a couple of soundbanks for a couple of years, and now I'm trying to compose and record using them with Band In A Box 2009 (BIAB), which includes PowerTracks.

I'm trying to use a Roland XV-2020 for BIAB MIDI playback to reduce latency (versus the included soft synths) AND to input leads I play on my connected wind controller (EWI) back into BIAB for recording. Maybe I have the wrong expectation, but I thought that I should be able to monitor using either the XV OR BIAB PC headphone output and hear both the XV being used for song playback AND the EWI live performance. Is this not correct?

I have the XV drivers loaded on my PC, BIAB MIDI IN and OUT are set to XV, Send GS Mode to Roland is ON, XV is USB connected at the front panel, EWI connected to XV MIDI IN, but something still isn't right. I can't tell for certain if the BIAB song playback is really using the XV, because I don't hear the XV playing back BIAB songs over the XV headphone. I get EWI generated sound from the XV headphone, but I don't hear EWI in BIAB output from the PC headphone, and recording doesn't seem to be working. I hit record and play (monitoring using XV), the dialog comes up, but after I hit stop what I just played doesn't seem to show up anywhere or allow me to play it back.

So, with this setup nothing is connected to MIDI THRU off of the XV, and I'm not using any other MIDI device - just the XV front panel USB straight to PC w/EWI plugged into XV MIDI IN. I have the XV front panel selector set to PATCH. What am I doing wrong? Any help is greatly appreciated!

[tacman7]

Your hooking up two sound modules to the computer using midi.

But midi is not sound so all that's being passed is information.

To hear the modules inside the computer and record the audio with the computer you need an audio interface, so plug the audio output into the computer interface and record the audio.

Or you could work outside the computer with a mixer and monitor. Just record midi and playback live type of deal.

You would setup BIAB sound system as the 2020 then the thru channel to your wind module.

Nice setup.

[geekdout]

What I want to record and capture using BIAB in the PC is the MIDI output from my XV-2020, with my wind controller (EWI) connected to the XV and producing the input. I'm trying to add MIDI melody and solo tracks to a BIAB song, where I've already input all of the chords.

The first time I tried to record like this, the live playback/monitor out from BIAB for my EWI on the PC headphone was very delayed and sounded awful while I played, because BIAB was using it's own soft synths to represent the MIDI that I played. I was told that I should use the XV-2020 instead of BIAB to render playback/monitoring for the MIDI that I was inputting to it to avoid heavy system utilization on my PC and eliminate the BIAB softsynth latency.

[geekdout]

Hey - I got the XV and EWI both in the XV headphones with BIAB playback using the XV's GM. I had to set Windows to use XV for MIDI, and tweek the two MIDI config sections from Preferences to make sure that XV was being used. Even though the driver was properly selected, I didn't get BIAB playback from the XV until I set these correctly.

Now I just need to fix the recording. I'm connected from the EWI to the XV's MIDI IN - should I be connecting to MIDI THRU instead? BIAB has melody on ch4, solo on ch8, and thru on ch5. I select the Melody button, hit record, and play the song and my EWI. I stop recording, and at the top of the dialog box it says I've recorded 0 (zero) notes. It still asks if I want to save, but I guess that's why nothing ever is and I can't find it.