Christian Jones

Quick update and thanks to everyone who indulged in my nightmare. So today I installed midiox per abacab and confirmed that the Z1 is in fact functioning properly in sending MIDI data as I got good on/off response from the keys, pitch/mod wheels and X/Y pad responses. I also confirmed in midiox that occasionally the pitch wheel was a tad slow at returning to zero when pitching down (though not audible) and nudging the pitch wheel lightly "snapped" it to zero, so that would explain the trailing midi data that the CbB midi indicator was sometimes seeing when moving the pitch wheel down and after I had let go of it. So as all that looked good I went ahead and uninstalled/reinstalled both my RME audio driver which also carries the MIDI interface, and CbB, rebooted etc. Went into CbB and selected all the proper settings and verified that the CbB midi indicator was in fact receiving proper signal from the Z1 aaaaand.... it's still not working. So I cackled madly and threw a metal spoon at the window Lol I know you were hoping for a happy ending after that buildup but I'm telling you, the Z1, under no circumstance, is willing to be a MIDI controller inside of CbB. It's just stone cold not gonna happen. Not through the RME interface, not through the MIDI Sport. Probaly no other interface on the planet either for that matter. It's cool though, I got something proper coming soon. And if nothing else I got a clean reinstall of CbB on my new Windows 10. It's not a settings issue--can't be--not in CbB or the Z1. This is not a sad ending of a movie; it's one of those where you're like, "WHAAAT...?"

No problem, been seeking (and finding) a lot of help here lately so trying to give back where/when I can. I should say for anyone who does get this problem and if for some reason you can't get Kontakt to unfreeze after trying to uncheck those selections, you can open Kontakt in standalone and uncheck them there, as for me Kontakt works fine in standalone and you can probably just get this fix done quicker that way anyway.

Thought I'd post the fix here real quick in case that link ever dies: "Try this: - Open Kontakt inside [your daw] - Make the 'Browse' sidebar visible - Click the 'Files' tab in the browser sidebar - Click the 'View' dropdown menu in the Files tab - Uncheck (turn off) "show network drives" - Uncheck (turn off) "show removable drives" - Uncheck (turn off) "show foreign formats" - Close Kontakt, restart [your daw] + Kontakt"

Ok cool thanks. So templates are also in their folder etc, so if none of that gets bothered is there anything I *should* be worrying about backing up before uninstalling/reinstalling CbB?

Was just wondering if anyone knew of a way to backup these particular settings in plugin manager where you've categorized your plugins, renamed them etc, so that you can restore those settings after a CbB reinstall? After much troubleshooting I'm doing a reinstall of CbB in a while to see if I can solve some issues so was really hoping these plugin manager settings can be backed up so I don't have to rebuild that categorization and renaming scheme. Thank you

So I found a fix for this online by someone who had this same problem in FL Studio and this fixed worked for me in Cakewalk, so here's the link in case anyone ever experiences this problem in Cakewalk - read the post by MogwaiBoy: https://www.reddit.com/r/WeAreTheMusicMakers/comments/3xp04l/fl_studio_12_keeps_crashing_whenever_i_deal_with/ When I unchecked "Show network drives" Kontakt froze and turned my cursor to the hourglass for I don't know how long - I waited a couple of minutes and then went and took a shower and came back about 45 minutes later. So if anyone has this problem, where you uncheck that box and get the hourglass that seems to go on forever just leave it until it finally clears. I was then able to uncheck the rest (though one was already unchecked) and now Kontakt is able to open/close w/o freezing Cakewalk.

Thanks man, yeah I did have to go on to adjust those settings but still it wouldn't work. Thanks everyone for the help. I think this Z1 is behaving badly as a controller, but I'll try once more after reinstalling CbB. Lol I still have a Kontakt issue to troubleshoot as well so I guess I've got my Sunday planned

Hey Robert, yeah believe it or not the RME 9632 is not only still supported, but it's still sold. Pretty expensive too for an old pci card @ $550 new at Sweetwater. Yeah I've got the latest driver installed which was released on 06/25/19 w/ support for Windows 10. I just upgraded to Windows 10, and since then I've been seeing this problem. I also reinstalled the RME driver after the Windows 10 upgrade. You can see the correct RME 9632 driver link below: https://www.rme-audio.de/en/downloads/driver/hdspe.php And just click on the first drop-down link there that says, "Windows WDM streaming driver (32/64 Bit)" So now I've unhooked from the RME MIDI interface and now I'm hooked up to an old MIDI Sport interface and I've adjusted all the appropriate settings for it in CbB Preferences etc. I enabled that little midi activity keyboard icon so now it's in the system tray - but it's already blinking on its own w/ no activity from me anyway, I'm not touching anything. When I turn the Z1 off it stops blinking. However, that midi indicator light in the system tray does randomly stops blinking on its own for a while and when it does I notice that it *is* responding when I press/release a key on the Z1 (though still no response from the track meters) and also responded to the mod and pitch wheels, though moving pitch wheel made the light constantly/randomly flash again even after I let go of it, and now its back to flashing randomly on it's own and I'm not touching anything lol. When I turn off the Z1 all the CbB midi indicator stops flashing. I should say that I've never used the RME 9632's midi interface feature, or the Midi Sport for that matter, to try to control anything through them - I can and have triggered the internal sounds of the Z1 through these interfaces, but never tried to use the Z1 as a midi controller through them. The M-Audio Oxygen I just sold connected via usb, so hooking up to the RME's midi was just temporary. It kinda looks like the Z1 is the culprit, at least when trying to use it as a midi controller. But I think reinstalling CbB is not a bad idea and I think I'll do that anyway since this CbB installation carried over from Windows 7 to this Windows 10 upgrade and maybe a fresh install of CbB would be good anyway. After the reinstall I'll try this Z1 one more time but after that I'll just wait on the new controller, which will hook up through USB and I believe is plug and play like that Oxygen was.

Yeah the RME MIDI has only one port and there's also a selection in there called "All Inputs" as well as "Virtual Controller" and I've literally tried them *all* as well as "None", "Omni", everything. And I'm doing this on a fresh new project. No other programs running, and have restarted. But stuff is really weird now which I'll post in the next post.

Hi Robert, well in my very first post you can see exactly how I have everything set up, starting from the third paragraph. Pretty sure I have everything set up right; it's set up the same way it was for my M-Audio Oxygen except the input on the Midi track is now set to the midi interface input the Z1 is hooked up to for channel 1. The Z1 can trigger Kontakt in standalone mode through this midi interface so I know the midi interface works.

Yeah I tried that, and the "Notes" box was already checked along w/ that list of other boxes. In fact, I checked/unchecked all those other boxes listed w/ the "Notes" box and tested just to see what would happen to no avail. Lol actually I just sold my M-Audio Oxygen 61 keyboard in anticipation of getting the Novation and was just gonna use this Z1 as a controller in the meantime, so no other controller to test w/ at the moment or would've. I'm gonna laugh if the Novation doesn't work when it gets here lol. No data from the Z1 is being recognized by CbB, not when arming the midi track for recording or otherwise; no keystrokes nor modwheel is recognized.

Just to quickly note, no problems at all w/ Kontakt 5.8.1 in standalone mode.

I just tried to trigger Massive and FM8 w/ the Z1 as midi controller, just to see if maybe something was wrong w/ Kontakt, and I couldn't trigger those either, though they all played fine via their own GUI keyboard and via CbB's piano roll; just not the Z1 lol. So yeah it's not gonna work. I'll have a proper Novation controller in a few weeks so not the end of the world or anything but man this kind of thing drives me nuts, just not working for no reason lol but yeah it's not happening. Still learned a bunch of good tips here though for next time.. there's always a next time is there not 😢

So I'm having this issue on my new Windows 10 system (didn't happen on Windows 7) where CbB becomes unresponsive freezes/hangs/fades to white as soon as I open and then close Kontakt's GUI. Merely adding Kontakt (5.8.1) to the synth rack and then opening it's GUI doesn't cause the freeze and I can even click Kontakt's keyboard and play sounds and can even trigger those sounds from CbB's piano roll so long as the GUI is open (or even minimized or put in the Multi Dock) -- but as soon as I click to close Kontakt's GUI it will close, but then CbB becomes unresponsive to my clicking and soon fades to that see-through white and says "Not Responding" up there. If I have Kontakt up in the Multi Dock everything seems fine until I try to close it from the Multi Dock by clicking it's X and then it doesn't respond and won't close out of the Multi Dock and then CbB soon says "Not Responding." I'm then able to close CbB via the "Not Responding" popup w/o killing it in Task Manager, and thereafter a brief popup says, "Hang on while Windows reports the problem to Microsoft." I can then reopen CbB and recreate this problem every time, either w/ a brand new clean project or an existing one. And it doesn't matter if the Kontakt instance has nothing loaded in it when I open it, or if I open an instance w/ preloaded instruments; just merely closing the Kontakt GUI once it's been opened causes the freeze in CbB. And it seems to only be Kontakt doing this, as I loaded Massive, FM8, Reaktor and Dimension Pro as well as Kontakt into the synth rack just to test and all opened/closed fine w/ no problems, but as soon as I opened, and then closed Kontakt's GUI the unresponsiveness in CbB occurs. This didn't just start today, but has been the case ever since upgrading to Windows 10; I just now narrowed it down because Kontakt behaves normally until I go to close the GUI and since I don't always close it it just took a while to suss out. Anyone know what that's all about?

Thanks guys. Yeah I've tried everything here and the Z1 just won't work as a MIDI controller in CbB. But now I'm wondering if it's not a setting issue, but some kind of error in CbB. I've had these weird errors before that don't announce themselves in a popup or crash, but random stuff just stops working for no reason when I *know* I have things setup/routed properly. I say this because now I'm having another problem w/ CbB freezing when creating a new project and in existing projects, where as soon as I add Kontakt 5.8.1 and open it's GUI, CbB freezes and I can recreate this every time. So I guess I'll create a new thread on that problem. But really there's no reason this Z1 shouldn't be working as controller so I think something is broken in CbB maybe, idk. I know this freezing thing when opening Kontakt's GUI is a new issue and one I haven't had until upgrading to Windows 10 recently.

I tried this and still it didn't work, the Z1 can control midi vst in Standalone mode but will not do it through CbB even after renaming the TTSSEQ.ini file and re-selecting the proper midi parameters. Weird.

All inclusive baby

That's hot.

Thanks Craig. The Z1, it's the only hardware synth I own, bought it in '97 around when it came out for $1700 new! I basically grew up w/ it and I'll never part w/ it. It's got a sound that's for sure, I'd say the sound is spacey and resonant. It does this thing called "Zoop" which is basically an old school-ish keyboard beat thing where it's not drums, but a beat it makes through sound design, you know what I'm talking about, holding down one key and it plays, and it's dope, and I've sampled it out to play w/ Kontakt. When I got it I could have got any synth and workstations were all the rage, the XP-50 and Triton on the top at the time , but I wanted something that didn't have all those band sounds or sequencer, but was like an old school keyboard, and the whole digital modeling of analog synths was the rage. I had the Nord Lead II for a second and sent it back to get the Z1. OK so maybe it hasn't exactly appreciated, as you can get one used for a few hundred, but I don't give a f man. Has a cool X/Y pad too. Why, do you have one? Here goes an old beat I made w/ it, all Z1 sounds, and it's not mixed or anything, just played live, and it's somewhat repetitive because it's meant to be rapped over. Well, you asked man.. 😎 And when I can I'll try Steve's suggestion.

Thanks man I'll give that a try when I get home. Sorry I know we went over this recently, but in renaming "TTSSEQ.INI" do I just rename it to anything - like, "somethingelse.ini" - would that do?

So I'm getting a Novation SL61 MKIII controller in a few weeks, until then I just have this Korg Z1 synth that I've been trying to use as a midi controller. It is connected through the midi interface portion of the RME 9632 audio interface. It triggers Kontakt et al w/ zero problems in standalone mode, but no matter what I can not get it to do the same in CbB. I have everything in CbB set up right--the same relative setup as for my previous M-Audio Oxygen 61 which worked fine: In "Preferences" Hdsp9632 (the RME midi interface) is checked as the midi input/output device. The midi track in question is set to the same channel 1 (I've tried other channels too) has the Korg, and the output is set to Kontakt, and the midi channel on that midi track is set to "1: Kontakt 5", and "Input Echo" is engaged on that track. I'm able to trigger Kontakt via this midi track's piano roll. The corresponding audio track is routed correctly w/ "Kontakt" as the input and "Master" as the output and when triggering via the piano roll on the midi track it outputs on the audio track as expected. But no matter what the Korg will not send data to the midi track - no action from the meters when pressing keys. I noticed in Preferences->MIDI->Playback and Recording, the "MME" driver mode shows "MME" but is grayed out and I don't recall if that's always the case or not, but it shows as follows: Driver Mode: MME (Close all projects to edit) But somehow I don't think that's the problem and anyway the midi routing in the Korg is pretty simple; you just select the midi channel pretty much, and again, it triggers standalone vsts fine. Granted, this is Korg Z1 is from '97, but I don't think that matters, I mean if it wasn't going to work as a midi controller why does it work in Standalone mode? I have one other midi interface, an old MIDI Sport, and it won't work through that either. However, I'm able to trigger the internal sounds of the Korg in CbB via either of those midi interfaces; I just can't get the Korg to work as a controller. Any ideas why? It's just a temp solution anyway, but it'd be cool if it could work. I'm maybe more baffled as to why it doesn't work than I am pissed that I can't use it this way in the meantime lol.

Ok I smiled at this one.

Would this be good to test your mix on?

Right on. The way I get *my* vibe is I work in red light. I've done this forever. I have a lamp in my music room w/ the regular light and the only time that ever really gets turned on is when I'm troubleshooting, and the ceiling light gets the red "party" bulb. Red light is how I imagine my music and it creates the vibe I wanna be in and I can see just fine. Back when I was a kid and getting stoned before doing music it was a green light, because heh. I've done red light for at least 15 years. Actually, a lava lamp could be a nice addition to that. Maybe a green one.

I want to know your chain. For guitar, bass, synth... all of it. I'm primarily a songwriter and have given myself over to this daw thing for real this time - not like last time - and I want your chain info! I mean, please.. What do you typically have on every track? Me, I've been using SSL E-Channel on every track cuz its easy and sounds cool, but I've got Soundtoys 5, Waves Gold, some Fielding DSP and a few other cool sh!t and planning to buy the three Valhalla reverbs and yeah, I'd like to get out of the all-in one plug sometimes- although I still love the SSL E-Channel and will keep using it sometimes if even just for the eq, but what else can I be doing? I almost bought Kazrog's Synth Warmer recently and I may still, except I've got Decapitator and I'm *not* into collecting vsts like this one dude here, Bapu, who everyone here is always hittin' his case lol.