Produce sound from keyboard to PC speaker

[William Chan]

I hope you can kindly help me in relation to connecting my Yamaha e323 keyboard to my PC using a MIDI cable and Cakewalk as the DAW and Neo Piano as the plugin. 

I have been able to hear the sound outputs from my PC's speaker when I played on a few keys on my Yamaha keyboard and in particular I found out I could hear all the sound outputs from my  PC's speaker if I pressed the pedal with my foot at the same time as I pressed the key on the Yamaha keyboard. This happened not just for a few keys , but almost all the keys. All I needed to do is to press the pedal and lift up the foot as soon as I wanted to press another key and at that time the foot needed to be pressed on the peal at the same in order to hear sound of the key that was pressed from my PC's speaker.

I noted when pressed on the pedal, the AI tool of the Neo Piano could detect the foot action on the pedal and produced a strong signal. I also noted on Cakewalk, as displayed on the left side of the screen, the MIDI monitor, the IN/OUT ports, the bar which shows the strength of the volume of the sound input when pressed on the key, a colour bar was displayed. All these suggested to me the Yamaha keyboard and Cakewalk and Neo Piano are connected.

This is why I now write to you with a hope that you can help me one way or another to make some adjustments in the system inside Cakewalk and/or Neo piano so that I can hear the sound outputs from my PC's speaker when I play on the keys of my Yamaha keyboard without the need to press the pedal one at a time.

P.S. I can now hear the sound output in my Yamaha keyboard when I play the keys on Virtual Controller's keyboard using MIDI IN = All Inputs, MIDI OUT =  Master , Speaker, Neo Piano 1 which means my Yamaha keyboard is connected properly to Cakewalk as the DAW and Neo Piano as the plugin. But, I can hear the sound out of my PC's speaker when I play the keys on my Yamaha keyboard except a vey few keys and unless as described above I press the pedal one at a time as when I play a key.

[Mr No Name]

Is it possible your pedal may be a momentary pedal instead of a latched pedal ? or vice versa ?

[William Chan]

The pedal is a Yamaha pedal as shown in the attached photo.

[Mr No Name]

ok, but is it a sustain pedal or a latching on/off pedal?  I'd recommend finding the model number to check.

[John Vere]

I posted the video that helps you set up midi controller and use soft synths but you didn’t seem to watch it. 

Edited April 14 by John Vere

[William Chan]

The pedal is a Yamaha sustained pedal as shown in the attached photo. The issue is NOT caused by the pedal. Whilst Cakewalk's Virtual Controller's keyboard can play sound on my Yamaha 323 's speakers, my Yamaha keyboard can't play sound on my PC's speaker without pressing the pedal one key at a time although I can hear sound when play  a few keys on the Yamaha keyboard without pressing the pedal. The pedal when pressed is detected by Neo Piano's AI tools with a strong response. The MIDI monitor on the left side of the screen of Cakewalk also displays strong signal in its Output. But, no sound at all coming out from my PC's speaker when most (almost all) of the keys are played on my Yamaha keyboard without the pedal.

Sound should come out from my PC's speaker when I play the keys on my Yamaha keyboard without pressing the pedal in the same way Cakewalk's Virtual Controller's keyboard can play sound on my Yamaha's speakers with no issue at all.

[William Chan]

The footswitch is inserted into the SUSTAIN jack and use it to switch sustain on and off.

[Mr No Name]

Is there an audio interface involved in this set up? or is the midi out of the yamaha 323 sent straight to your pc/ laptop?

also it is not normal to be able to have dual monitoring outputs i.e pc and keyboard speakers simultaneously, unless using an interface or a small mixer, you can't do it from cakewalk directly.

there maybe some issue with your settings in the softsynth that is not letting the signal pass through without first pressing the pedal ?

 

I'm sure you problem will be solved, there are some quite clever people on here.

 

Regards.

[William Chan]

Thanks for replying.

What is "settings in the softsynth"? Where is it in Cakewalk?

"Is there an audio interface involved in this set up? or is the midi out of the Yamaha 323 sent straight to your pc/ laptop?"

Well, when I play the keys on my Yamaha keyboard with or without the pedal, I observed the followings:

1> Sound comes out from my PC's speaker. So, the MIDI out which is "Neo piano" (see attached photo) is the MIDI OUT  of the Yamaha 323 sent straight to pc.

2>Only a few keys can produce sound on my PC's speaker when the keys are played on my Yamaha  without the pedal.

3> All the keys I played on my Yamaha would produce sound on my PC's speaker when I pressed the pedal one at at time as when I pressed the key.

So, sound did come come out from my Yamaha 's keyboard to my PC's speaker except only a few keys can do that without the pedal and ALL keys produced sound from keyboard to speaker when pedal was pressed one at a time. Who can explain the reasoning for this observation?

 

 

 

[Mr No Name]

I'm fresh out of ideas, someone else may be able to help, 👍

[Glenn Stanton]

maybe some divide and conquer steps - in my experience those cable MIDI devices have a lot of variation in their ability to do even simple things all the time...

0. what version of cakewalk are you using? 

1. remove the MIDI cable device from the MIDI out list.  hit apply. (this means you're using the keyboard as a MIDI controller input only. this should also drop the mapping you have set up.

2. uncheck zero controllers. hit apply. while it's likely we'll turn this on, let's check this option.

test.

 

[William Chan]

what version of cakewalk are you using? 

Version:2024.02 (Build 098, 64 bit)

I can now play my Yamaha keyboard and produce more sounds (not a lot) coming out from my Yamaha speakers, the Local of which has been set to off. It means that the inputs from playing some keys on the Yamaha keyboard have been sent to Cakewalk via the MIDI cable and the interface and then sent back to my Yamaha speakers which is recognized as the MIDIOUT2(USB2.0-MIDI). When I played the keys on the keyboard of Cakewalk's virtual controller, all keys could produce sound on my Yamaha's speakers, if the Output port is set to MIDIOUT2(USB2.0-MIDI). The difference is only a few keys of my Yamaha keyboard and not all can produce sounds on my Yamaha's speakers compared with Virtual Controller's keyboard (note Yamaha Local set to off and is in PC mode).

Who can explain the difference?

[Glenn Stanton]

usually you get 2 MIDI devices - the "instrument" MIDI and the "controller" MIDI. for me most times the MIDIIN2 and MIDIOUT2 (not shown in thie example) is my "controller" MIDI which uses certain keys and button as a means to control something in the DAW. my "instrument" MIDI is the main one which is where my note keys, pedal etc are all processed in the DAW for the VI and generally recording the MIDI performance.

[57Gregy]

On 4/14/2024 at 7:24 AM, William Chan said:

What is "settings in the softsynth"?

In this case, the soft synth is your Neo Piano and the settings are in its GUI.

[William Chan]

Dear all,

Many thanks for responding.

I can now hear sound outputs from my Yamaha e323 keyboard when I played each of the keys on the keyboard subject to the following conditions:

1>The Yamaha keyboard 's "Local" is set to off and the keyboard is set to Computer Mode which is PC2. This is what is advised in Yamaha's manual. The settings will stop hearing sounds coming out from the Yamaha's speakers. But, remember I can now hear the sounds from Yamaha speakers even using these settings.

2> The In/OUT settings in IMDI panel in Cakewalk are: IN, All Input, OUT,  MIDIOUT2 (this is the Yamaha speaker)

3>While all keys on Yamaha keyboards can produce sounds from Yamaha's speakers ( Local set to OFF), the sounds do NOT come out instantly and I need to press the key several times to hear the note. This is now the issue to understand and resolve. Why the sounds are not produced instantly unless keep pressing the key while it is good all keys can produce sound on Yamaha's speakers. The inputs of the Yamaha keyboard produce sounds which are routed back to Yamaha's speakers via the MIDI interface which consists of the MIDI cable, USB port, Cakewalk as the DAW and Neo Piano as the plugin.

Where about I need to make changes to get it right? Cakewalk? Neo piano? Yamaha keyboard?

[57Gregy]

On 4/16/2024 at 10:51 AM, William Chan said:

Where about I need to make changes to get it right? Cakewalk? Neo piano? Yamaha keyboard?

You're going to need a better audio interface, one designed for recording and reproducing audio more quickly than a computer sound card.
It takes time for the MIDI data from your Yamaha to go through the processor, then to the soft synth (Neo Piano) and the back to the sound card and out to the speakers. Computer sound cards generally can't do that fast enough and you have that delay, called "Latency" in computer-speak.