I have to admit that - it took me a little while to figure that out myself… For a while I couldn’t figure out why I’d get the full ensemble when “playing” the recorded MIDI tracks - but would be missing everything external when “exporting”. Have to “record” the output of everything external before export. Will have to see if there is an existing feature request for a “bounce to audio” upon export checkbox. Would be nice and clean and avoid the temporary audio tracks.
You don’t have to bounce MIDI before exporting. Simply make sure the outputs of your synths are routed to the master bus input (for example via buses), and then proceed with a realtime export (by checking the RT box in the Time span tab). This step is necessary because hardware synths can’t do freewheeling (just like external effects).
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After revisiting this after your post. The two key parts to get it to work for me just now was checking the “RT” box and making sure the “Time span” entry was highlighted (even if there was only one). I’d had the “RT” box checked before… but still didn’t get any events to the external synths. Had wasted hours. The missing action was selecting and highlighting the “Time span” entry.
Live & learn.
Thx.
Hmm, that’s a bit strange. I was pretty sure Ardour wouldn’t allow exporting without a time span selected. I just checked, and indeed, exporting isn’t possible unless you select a timespan and at least one channel:
Though it has happened to me several times that I forgot to check the RT box for the whole session range, leaving it checked only for the individual ranges — and then wondering why my external effect disappeared in the final export. 
Since for some reason I can not start a new topic, let’s continue here. So I can continue learning Ardour.
Okay, So I’ve added all my synth and now have 16 MIDI tracks.
Every synth has a different channel selector setting for
In the preferences I have enabled the “MIDI input follows MIDI track selection” option.
Some questions:
- The Mixer shortkeys is Alt+M, the editor is also set to Alt+M by default? A bit weird?
- When going to patch selector I have to select the midi channel there as well? I do not understand why, but okay.
- The patch selector always says “Bank 16384”. Why?
- When I ‘open’ the track so it goes to full hight I do not see patch selection options that I was expecting based on The Ardour Manual - MIDI Track Controls.
- In the track MIDI channel control window I have set the channel for that synth. So by Inbound I have ‘Force all channels to 1 channel’ and I selected the channel for that synth. At outbound I set it to "Use a single fixed channel for all playback’ to that same channel for that particular synth. Still, when I select a single track and hit a note they all play at the same time. That is a bit weird.
I hope somebody can help me out here.
Regards,
Jeroen
p.s. I already checked out the source and I will be sending some MIDNAM files when I’m done.
Just to save you the hours I spent running around in circles. After writing a MIDNAM file that validates OK - don’t be surprised if Ardour doesn’t populate the MSB/LSB correctly.
Currently for Ardour best if the MIDNAM file is flat with everything within one NameSet scope if you can get away with it.
Forget how other DAWs do things. In Ardour - all channels from the source are routed to the destination via the MIDI connection matrix. You have to use a plugin MIDI channel map or channel filter to reduce down to only one channel through that track. There are other caveats that I’ve tripped over but in your case you might not encounter them.
There are quite a few historic threads discussing this. Short answer - Ardour tries to be clever and group what it thinks are patch banks. But many external sound modules haven’t worked that way for decades. Some other DAWs have additional files in adjunct to MIDNAM to provide the patch bank grouping info. At the moment Ardour tries to guess.
An example of one of my external sound modules.
I think Ardour 9 has changed that to a pop-out dialog box instead.
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Alt-M is not “the editor shortcut” or “the mixer shortcut”. It’s a shortcut to toggle between them.
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The channel selector in the dialog controls which channel is used when pulling note names from the MIDNAM for MIDI editing.
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The Patch Selector was removed from the track headers because far too many users are totally confused about what it does and what it is for.
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Sorry, I do not understand this description.
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I’ve also seen that it also selects which PatchBank(s) are shown in the drop-down when different PatchBanks are defined within different ChannelNameSets in the MIDNAM file.
Example for @kwoot
In my case - I have Organ Patches and Organ Controls on Channel 14 and Memory Recall Controls defined as PatchChanges on Channel 15. But all Orchestral Patches are Channels 1-13, & 16. So when I select Channel 14 - only Organ patches are shown; whereas, if I select Channel 1 then only Orchestral patches are shown; and if I select Channel 15 only User Memory patches are shown.
Hi Paul,
Thank you so much for these clear answers. Much appreciated.
Ah, so your answer 3 is to my question 4, so your 4 is most likely to my question 5. Okay, I’ll try to be a bit more elaborate.
For a MIDI track, there’s a ‘MIDI channel control’ window that I can open. In there I have set the channel for every separate synth. So synth one is set to MIDI channel 1. And in the ‘Inbound’ part of the ‘MIDI channel control’ window I have set ‘Force all channels to 1 channel’ and I selected channel 1 for my first synth. At the ‘outbound’ section of the ‘MIDI channel control’ window I have set it to "Use a single fixed channel for all playback’ to channel 1 for the first synth. I have done this for all available synth. So every synth has his/hers own channel. Still, when I select a single track in the edit window and hit a note on the keyboard then all synths play at the same time. That is a bit weird. Especially since I have checked in Preferences the “MIDI input follows MIDI track selection” option. So basically I do not understand why they all play at the same time now. Running 9.0.0.
Any and all answers are highly appreciated.
I am at the beginning of setting up my studio. At some point I will try to add audio channels that get the audio over USB from the X32, but first let’s see if I can get MIDI to play nice.
Regards,
Jeroen Baten
Until today… I had never really touched the Time Span dialog; just selected the channels before exporting. I had never highlighted the Time Span. Yet I have quite a few exports.
Live and learn.
Can can use the MIDI Tracer (Menu: Window->MIDI Tracer) to see what events are actually being received and sent from MIDI tracks. This will show you what channels the events are on.
Hi.
So I just used the midi tracer. As y8ou can see, I selected one track.
The midi tracer shows note on/off going out for every track I have defined:
Midi out is usb to a Behringer UMC204HD. The Midi out led blinks when I play a note. I can
select this Behringer UMC204HD in the midi tracer, but no output is shown when I play a note.
When I select any of the individual channels in the midi tracer, I see output like this:
All tracks have different channel settings according to the attached MIDI synth channel.
It’s like Ardour9 makes every note an OMNI ON or something. It’s weird.
All running on Ubuntu 24.04 realtime kernel using Pipewire.
AllI want is to have one track one midi channel out info. I have one keyboard so that is always the incoming info.
No doubt I am doing something wrong. I just don’t understand what it is.
Here the in and out channels for two tracks. play one note on the keyboard, both channels respond.
Okay, so changing the channel out on the keyboard makes the sound go out the correct synth. And since Ardour can have every combination of MIDI channels on a single track, that sort of makes sense.
But it would be soooo nice, if the outgoing channel on the keyboard doesn’t matter for the recording, because the outgoing MIDI channel would depend on the active track.
Or am I just getting to old, remembering with some fondness the days of Steinberg Pro24…
Can you show the MIDI Channel Control dialog for that Micromonsta 2 B track you have selected? Have you confirmed that the track actually has the correct settings?
I believe you would need to also solo the active track. At least given the context of your comments I believe you are using the term “active track” for what should be called the “selected track.”
Selecting a track has implications for what items are available in the context menu, and what editing operations are available, but it does not limit playback to that track, playback will still play data from all tracks. The mute and solo controls determine which tracks produce audio or MIDI data during playback.
Hi Chris. Thank you so much for looking at this.
Yes, I am familiar with solo and mute functions.
And yes, active track should be called selected track. Sorry.
I am currently in the process of setting up my studio with Ardour. Trying to hook up some hardware synth.
And all I want is that, when I play on the keyboard, the synth for the selected track is the one responding to my play.
When this all works for the attached synth separately I can start working on recording stuff.
But for now I can’t seem to get my setup work in a way that I think should be basic functionality.
The MIDI tracer is totally unconnected with the track selection in the edit window. It will show all MIDI events for the selected port.
I tried this out:
(Ardour 9.0 running on Kubuntu 24.04 with ALSA connected to my Behringer UMC204HD):
I created a new project and a new MIDI track with no plugin instrument. I connected my Clavinova CLP170 to the 5-pin MIDI ports on the UMC204HD, and selected the UMC204HD as the input and output for that track.
I also configured the MIDI Channels for this track similar to what you show, with channel 4 forced on both input and output.
The CLP-170 is configured on channel 1.
I played some notes on the CLP-170 whilst recording on that track, and had the MIDI Tracer up at the same time connected to the UMC204HD input. As expected, the MIDI tracer shows the notes coming in on channel 1.
When I went to edit the recorded notes in the pianoroll, as expected, it showed them recorded on channel 4:
this shows that Ardour, correctly, received the notes on channel 1 and transformed them to channel 4 on recording.
I then played these back to the CLP-170 over MIDI with the MIDI tracer connnected to the output of the MIDI track. As expected, the notes were output to the MIDI interface, and to the CP-170, over channel 4.
The CLP-170 was set to listen on all MIDI channels, so the notes played back as expected.
This all seems to be working as it should.
I added another channel and set the MIDI channels to "Force all to " channel 5 inbound and to channel 6 outbound.
As expected, the MIDI tracer showed notes coming in from the UMC204HD on channel 1, the editor showed they were recorded on channel 5, and when I played back, the notes went out to the CLP-170 on channel 6. All at the same time as the original track was playing back on channel 4.
All this seems to work as advertised and as expected. I can’t see what it is you are doing which is causing things to not work for you.
Cheers,
Keith
Thank you soooo much for this elaborate explanation and the time taken. Very much appreciated.
Okay, so maybe I have been going about this way to complicated and should start from the beginning.
One question though. Selecting the pulldown list for the (In) in probably by clicking on the button to the left of the green midi symbol. But where did you find the (Out) pull-down list?
I think the key here is “selected track”… What do you think that means?
You mentioned the D-110 and the UMC204HD and I notice you also have a USB connected Vivo SX8 sound module. I don’t know if you have other synths or sound modules.
When you say “play on the keyboard”, I’m going to assume you mean the D-110 keyboard.
By default, each track will receive all channels from the specific interface its input is connected to, and play back all channels to the specific interface its output is connected to.
So, as an example, if you had the D-110 sending notes via the UMC204HD, you could create a track which had the UMC204HD connected as input, the SX8 connected as output, and anything you play on the D-110 will be sent to the SX8 regardless of which MIDI channel you set the D-110 to output on.
Of course, whether the SX8 responds to all channels or not is a different matter.
If this is the only track you have, then (assuming local control is off on the D-110) these notes will not trigger the D-110, because the D-110 is not connected as a track output.
But if you had a second track with the D-110 as input and output, then any notes you send from the D-110 would be sent to both the SX8 and the D-110.
Now take the situation where the SX8 is set up to play a piano sound on channel 1, and a synth pad on channel 2. In this case, you have choices: you can change the channel the D-110 keyboard sends on to select whether the piano or synth is being played. Nothing on Ardour changes here: all channels are being received and played back still. If you recorded it, it would record all channels and, when played back notes on channel 1 would trigger the SX8 Piano, and notes on channel 2 would trigger the SX8 synth.
Another approach (and this may be more practical) is to set up a second track which also has the D-110 as input and SX8 as output. In this case you record just channel 1 notes on one track, and just channel 2 on the other. You can use the same technique of configuring the keyboard to output either channel 1 or channel 2 when you select the track.
If you do this, you can set each track to only allow that specific channel on input. You probably don’t need to set the output channels as, if you know the track only contains notes for one channel then that’s all that should be sent to the SX8.
Alternatively, (and I think this might be what you are trying to do) is you can leave the D-110 sending on channel 1, and force the notes to be received on a different channel. This is what the “force all channels to one channel” does.
You can apply this on either the input, in which case all notes will be recorded on that specific channel within the Ardour track (e.g. notes coming in on any channel will be recorded on channel 4), or you can do it on the output (e.g. notes coming in are recorded on the channel they were originally sent on, but set to channel 4 on output). Both these options will achieve the same result, but in different ways.
You can of course “belt and braces” and do both, but it’s not really necessary, and I would advise picking one approach to avoid confusing yourself.
Now, here’s where I suspect you are going wrong: If you have multiple tracks set up with the D-110 as input and the SX8 as output, then when you play the D-110 keyboard, it will be sent to ALL of the track outputs.
As an example, if you are sending on channel 1 on the D-110 and you have two tracks connected to the SX8 with track one set to “force all channels…” to channel 1, and track 2 to “force all channels…” to channel 2, then when you play the D-110, you will get both channel 1 and channel 2 on the SX8 playing (so it will sound the piano and the synth on every note).
This is entirely expected in this configuration. But it’s probably not what you want.
Note that selecting a channel in Ardour does nothing to change this. When you are highlighting a channel, you are just telling Ardour what you are editing.
If you want to prevent the keyboard from controlling both channels at the same time you will have to take specific action. One thing you could do is to mute the channels you don’t want to play (you can use the solo button to mute other channels too). If recording, you should also not record-arm the other tracks, of course.
I’m not sure if this helps or not.
Cheers,
Keith
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In the situation you describe would the “input follows selection” disconnect the non-selected tracks so that only the selected track would receive the notes played on the D-110?
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