Import Midi tempo and track names

I am transfering projects from Cakewalk to Ardour. I first save them as General midi files in Cakewalk and then save audio as stems. The GM midi file is important as it will be the tempo map for the project.

These midi files play correctly in any stand alone GM midi player like Midi sound synth64 or even Windows Media player.

In the Ardour import dialogue there are boxes you can check to what would seems to be the tempo map as well as use original track titles. Checking these does not seem to work and song stays at 120 BPM as well as all tracks are named as the files title.
All else works fine and correct patches play.
I get same results if I drag and drop the midi file into a blank project.
Is there a setting I am missing? Or it the Import dialogue check boxes not working correctly?
Thank you John.

  1. mention the version of Ardour you’re using and the platform you’re on

  2. make the MIDI file available for testing

Thank you for your reply

Windows 11 Pro 23H2 Ardour 8.6.7 Motu 4 ASIO

Midi file

I tested importing this file n Ardour 8.7.0 (Linux).

  • Track name import kind of works. For “MIDI Track Names” I selected “by track name” and Ardour named tracks like this:

    • Aint Got No 82 BPM GM.Rapture Session 1.ch1-1-1"
    • Aint Got No 82 BPM GM.midi snare.ch10-1-2 "
    • Aint Got No 82 BPM GM.hats.ch10-1-3
    • etc.

    which does include the track name but is also not very helpful if you’re just importing one MIDI file :wink:

  • The session tempo remained at 120 BPM, even though the MIDI file specifies 82 BPM in the tempo event in the zero-th track as it should (and as the Ardour import dialog also shows).

Thanks for testing @SpotlightKid
Yes the tracks are sort of named but you can only see that at the beginning of a track. The main track name dialogue box is very small text so doesn’t include the important part.
The Original tracks Are just named Dim Pro, Addictive drums, etc. That so I can replace the GM instruments with the real VST instruments that were used. I don’t use GM sound as a rule, but to test all these Daw’s ( I’m reviewing about 10 ) I created a GM file to observe how each Daw handles this.

Example down the road a certain VST instrument might no longer be available to me so using GM is sort of future proof for back up files. It’s all good Ardour is better than most for sure.
As you see I include the original tempo in the midi file name so that I can easily re set that. It needs to be correct before you import the audio stems.

Ardour is very capable of re creating the Cakewalk project and can use the same instruments etc. If the tempo glitch gets fixed someday all the better.

So this is sort of weird. Today I tried again and everything worked. It was the same song but I made 2 small changes to the test file. I added a tempo map which started at 130BPM on zero and dropped to 82 BPM on measure 1. Ardour followed this perfectly. And it also played the correct instruments.

I know the tempo is the main issue here, but it would be great if Ardour could import track names with just the names instead of all the information that comes with them. It is annoying having to remove that each time, especially if you have a lot of tracks.

Yes out of the 12 daw’s I’m testing Ardour is the only one that seemed to do this.
It adds useless information to the Midi header info. We already know the title of the song.
All I need is the name of the instrument so I can replace it with the same one.

  1. it’s not the title of the song, its the filename from which the MIDI tracks came. So if you import more than one MIDI file with the same track names (e.g. “hats”) you can know which is which.

  2. that said …
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