[dscoyne]

I am a new user of Sonar 4, going through the tutorials, but can't hear any music from the files being played. My soundcard, a C-Media AC97, is okay, as it plays other music from the computer. The MIDi device that Sonar recognizes is Microsoft MPU-401 (I am using XP), but that does not represent my sound card. It does recognize my sound card as the Audio device, and the soundcard's MIDI driver is working as far as my computer is concerned.

The confusing part here is that Sonar says that I must have MIDI activated to hear any sound, but the MIDI device that is recognizes is not my soundcard. Should I be able to hear MIDI files being played back as audio? I didn't think I needed a MIDI interface instead of my soundcard for playback of these files; do I? (My soundcard has line in, line out, microphone, and no game port.)

Does anyone have any idea what the problem is?

Thanks,
Don

[Brien]

No game port means no MIDI.

The AC97 card is bottom of the barrel for software such as Sonar 4. If you have invested this much cash into that software, do yourself a favor and get a soundcard designed for an audio recording environment.

After much tweaking you may be able to get the windows mapper to play one of these midi files. What you are going to hear is not much. Even if it was recorded on a Yamaha Grand all you have in a midi file are the numbers the playing produced, like its a C2 note, then a Bb3 note, etc.

The playback will only be as good as the hardware you have "configured" to play this midi file.

I'm not saying it cannot be done, but you will have to tell the software where to go, what channel to listen/play on, what kind of instrument it is, et. al.

I run Sonar 5, so if you have a specific midi file you are trying to run, I could be persuaded to have a listen and see if it will work on my system.

That's the best I can do for ya,