MIDI Synths

MIDI Synths are used to convert MIDI messages to audio. Four kinds of synths are available:

  1. MIDI Out port, can be either a synth on your soundcard, or an external hardware synth.
  2. Sampler, generates audio using samples.
  3. VST Instrument, a VST Plugin that can convert MIDI events to audio.
  4. DX Instrument, a DX Plugin that can convert MIDI events to audio.


Synth Slot
Synths are reached via Synth Slots. A Synth Slot appears on any track that has a MIDI file loaded. Synths can be dragged from the Shelf. (Alternatively Synths can be selected by right-clicking the slot). Synths can be copied from one slot to another using drag-and-drop.

Leftclicking the slot's button will show the synth's user interface. When this window appears the Synth will be activated, so you can play your MIDI keyboard using this Synth. The Synth will be activated when the Track's Rec button is activated as well. This behavior can be turned off in the Studio ->Preferences window. All Synths feature a red indicator at the bottom right corner that lights when the Synth is currently responding to messages received on the MIDI In Device (ie. your MIDI keyboard). If a Synth is active and the Transport is not running (ie. its user interface is visible or the Rec button is activated) the synth will be deactivated if a 'buffer error' occurs because of CPU usage being too high. The red indicator will go off. If this happens the Synth can be activated again by either hiding and showing its user interface or by reactivating the Track's Rec button.

Presets
Presets can be created by dragging the Synth Slot to the Shelf's Synth Presets item.

Unified Selector
A unified selector will appear if you drag the Shelf's Synths section indicator to a synth slot. All native MultitrackStudio synths, VSTi and DXi plugins, sampler patches and synth presets appear in this selector. A search text can be entered to filter the list of synths.
When a synth's user interface is visible you can press the F3 key to pop up the unified selector. The selector remembers the search text, so you can try the next synth which matches the search text easily.

Using Softsynths in record mode

Real time audio processing on a computer involves a trade-off between latency and reliability. MultitrackStudio is designed for high reliability in order to minimize the possibility of glitches to occur. The downside of this approach is a fairly high latency (usually slightly higher than 0.5 seconds). This means that it takes about half a second until you hear the effect of moving a Volume Fader or any other control.

Obviously playing a MIDI keyboard would be impossible to do with such a high latency between playing and hearing the actual sound. Therefore MultitrackStudio takes a different approach when recording using a softsynth. The output of Tracks containing softsynths will not be routed through the mixer, but straight to the Audio Out Device instead. The Track's Effect Sends and Output Bus Selector are not available in this situation.

The Softsynth latency can be set in the driverset's Settings window.

Note that, using the WinSound driverset, the Mixer output sounds OK even if the softsynth produces glitches. Using the AsioSound driverset the Mixer output may contain glitches, but the driver will stay in-sync. If you prefer low latency over glitch-free sound there is no problem in doing so.

"Freezing" Softsynths

Softsynth tracks can be saved to an audio file using the track's Save As option. This can be very useful if a softsynth uses a lot of CPU power. The softsynth is effectively replaced by an audio file, but all effects and mixer settings etc. stay the same, so the sound is identical. The File Options Button can be used to load the MIDI file again (it appears in the File History at the bottom of the menu). The softsynth will be reloaded automatically. This feature is usually called 'freeze'.
A softsynth's output level could be too high for an audio file, so the signal gets clipped. If this happens you can use the MIDI track's Controller editor to turn down the Volume or Expression controllers. Pro Plus edition users can use 32 bit float type .wav files. These files do not clip the audio signal so the problem won't occur.