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Recording MIDI on 16 channels at once in AUM
I've been trying to find a MIDI app that will record 16 channels of output in AUM simultaneously, and been getting mixed results. Right now I'm using output from a BeatHawk pattern and sending it to a MIDI module and recording it live. Using Atom 2, it seemed to record successfully at least for a couple bars, but when I try to play it back from Atom 2 into BeatHawk the CPU pegs and Atom hangs and won't reload again until AUM is restarted. Using Helium, it appears to only record on a single MIDI channel at once (is it possible to do more?) - it also maxed out the CPU on playback, but didn't crash or hang.
This is mainly just an exercise that I'm doing to see what apps can support multi-channel MIDI recording and successfully play back, so it's not real important. I like MIDI Tape Recorder quite a bit, but it appears to only record 4 independent tracks.
What prompted this in the first place was this: What if I had a bunch of instruments playing in AUM that had MIDI output (some on multiple channels), and I wanted to capture the whole thing into a single MIDI file as a performance? Even if the individual apps have the ability to export to a MIDI file (including multiple channels), I would have to stitch together multiple MIDI files into a single one if I wanted a complete performance. I'm wondering if it might be best to use the AUM virtual output to record to an external app such as Xequence 2, or Cubasis, or something like that, and if that would work.
I'd be very interested in thoughts on this, and anything suggestions on what to try.
Comments
Xequence can definitely handle this without issues in Multitrack mode. There's a section in the manual that describes this setup:
https://www.seven.systems/xequence2/en/manual/#sub-section-22-5
Is it possible that with Atom, you had some sort of feedback loop and that you had beathawk correctly set up to receive multi-channel midi?
Send the midi from Atom to a midi monitor or export a midi file to check it. It has worked correctly in the past when I have tried something similar. Beathawk’s midi setup isn’t always obvious.
Edited: Original reply removed due to error
@espiegel123 - You are 100% on the money.
I actually thought that I isolated the problem to Atom 2, by just playing the recorded MIDI back in Atom, and I did try sending the output to MIDI Monitor, which then pegged the CPU and hung MIDI Monitor too. Then I realized that I had probably had a loop during the recording process into Atom, and sure enough, after I re-recorded the same pattern in BeatHawk and making sure there was no loop, it plays back in BeatHawk. It's not perfect - some of the pitch bends are slightly distorted, but it's pretty good. Note I disabled the quantization in Atom.
MIDI Tape Recorder records all 16 MIDI channels on each track.
Good info. I tried it out and it works perfectly. The pitch bends and all of the detail sounds very accurate. Thanks!
This works great too. I really like the look and feel of Xequence 2, but I've only used it to a limited degree. Testing out this MIDI recording from AUM is a great way to learn it. I noticed that it will automatically add instruments and control channels, as suggested in the manual, even when there's 16 active. I noticed that if I just created a new project and let it add the track lanes, it would do that nicely, but that it doesn't seem to map the MIDI out channels on the tracks automatically (unless I'm doing something wrong), but if I used the template "8M 4A 2FX 1Master" it would automatically do so, and I could just change the MIDI output to "Xequence Virtual" in one place and hit play, and it would play back, and sounds great.
Here's a pic of the way the 4 bar recording looks from a BeatHawk pattern from AUM (really pretty):
Just background info: recording 16 MIDI tracks is like one coach addressing sixteen individual players, whereas recording 16 audio tracks is like sixteen coaches addressing as many players. - The MIDI channel is part of the commands ("MIDI messages"), occupying 4 bits of the eight in a message (hence the 16-channel limit).
Xequence 2 and Atom 2 can do this.
Read up-thread. Atom 2 was misbehaving.
Oh, right on. I record 4-8 tracks all the time. Not 16 though. You do have to switch the midi record mode, hit the Ch 1 button in upper left then switch from MPE mode to Filter Multichannel mode.
Indeed - those are the settings I used. Just to make it clear due to the length of this thread and my errors, Atom 2 worked pretty well once I had it setup properly in AUM, but it did trail a tad in accuracy in recording some of the pitch bend nuances on one of the tracks, which Xequence 2 and MIDI Tape Recorder handled better.