Roland Fantom XR and Cakewalk

[Louis]

16 hours ago, User 905133 said:

I just looked at what I think is the manual for your synth. If its the right one, it sounds something is going on with it.

https://static.roland.com/assets/media/pdf/FANTOM-XR_OM.pdf , page 179:

Those pages seem to say you can set up the Fantom to ignore certain data if I am reading the manual correctly. For example:

If you downloaded a freely available MIDI file done by someone else and as a result you are either (a) hearing only track 1 coming from CbB or (b) hearing all CbB tracks being played on the Fantom's Channel, perhaps there is a command there that is resetting the Fantom to cause it cause either (a) or (b).

This tells me that the Fantom has some sort of default so that the "reception channel" in "Patch mode" is set to 1.  If its a multi-timbral synth in multi-timbral mode that's being sent midi data on multiple channels from CbB and all you are getting is midi notes being played on channel 1, to that suggests maybe some sort or reset was done.

Sorry; I have never even see one of these synths.  All I can do is ready the manual and try to guess what might be happening.

Maybe there's another user that has more experience with this gear.   

Have you tried either Roland support or a Roland Forum?  Any multi-channel MIDI files I ever downloaded, played my multi-timbral synths with different sounds on different channels.  

Maybe someone knows if there's something in CbB that might cause the results you are getting? 

Eureka, heavens to Murgatroyd and Land a Goshen, its fixed.  Notice I didn't say solved.

Thanks to all who help.

I got it to work though I still don't know exactly what was wrong with it.  I set all the controllers to OMNI, turned Cakewalk off.  Turned cakewalk back on and set everything to none, turned cakewalk off and back on.  Then set everything to  Fantom  XR, then turned cakewalk off and back on.  And it started working!!!

I suspected something was stuck in Omni mode even though it didn't show it. So I  thing turning it off off and on caused it to re-write the setup when everything was set to OMNI or none might have caused it.  Possible a bug, likely operator error, but anyway its working now.

Thanks for everyone's help.

[abacab]

47 minutes ago, Louis said:

I suspected something was stuck in Omni mode even though it didn't show it. So I  thing turning it off off and on caused it to re-write the setup when everything was set to OMNI or none might have caused it.  Possible a bug, likely operator error, but anyway its working now.

Just a thought, and it may not apply here...

But I believe that Cakewalk defaults to Omni internally for any MIDI track with its channel set to "None". That can be misleading and result in unexpected MIDI data reception when MIDI echo is enabled on a track. Always set an explicit MIDI channel number for each track when you are working multi-timbrally.

[user 905133]

It sounds like you did solve the problem. Congrats!!

[Peter C]

Well done. If you wanted to pursue this further to find out what was going on you could try another daw and see if the problem is replicated there. It took me years to summon the courage to sell the Fantom but I have to say soft synths are generally so much easier to manage. Especially as all the Fantom sounds can be got at via Roland Cloud, and thousands more. 

[abacab]

I've got a Roland JV-1080 rack and a Roland XP-30 keyboard, but it's been years since I hooked them up to Cakewalk.

The same Roland architecture still seems to apply with the Fantom XR, single patch mode or multi-timbral performance mode with 16 parts.

I usually didn't need elaborate arrangements with bank/preset changes, so I typically used a preset performance multi in the Roland that lined up with my Cakewalk multitrack MIDI template, with an instrument per part. Managing presets from my DAW with instrument definitions always seemed a bit tedious, so it was simpler for me to just select the multi that I wanted from the synth. It was just in the studio, so no pressure of live performance. Having each sound used already loaded and ready on it's own track is the way I work today.

Now I just work in the box with virtual synths, without external hardware other than controllers. Soft synths are so much easier to manage, with all plugin states saved in the DAW project. I have forgotten all about the SysEx loads and saves that I used to know. ?

[Louis]

6 hours ago, User 905133 said:

It sounds like you did solve the problem. Congrats!!

Thanks