Band in Box midi to wav conversion? Help?

[tocoadog]

Bought the software about 5 months ago, have a pretty good understanding of what it does, have a few songs saved, now I want to save them on disc. The only thing, and this is a major thing, I DON"T KNOW OR UNDERSTAND how and the process of converting the midi's to wav files.

Anyone have any help or guidance? I don't even know what hardware I need and even if I have the hardware. Any help would be killer.

Keepin' it low.
tocoadog

[Alvaro Martín Gómez A.]

The only hardware you need is a CD drive that can burn CDs. Not even a burning software because Band-In-A-Box includes this feature: Go to Audio > Burn an Audio CD (using CD-R, CDRW Drive). BIAB will save MIDI data as a .wav file first and then burn it to CD.

Hope this helps.

[tocoadog]

I did that, the program converted to file from midi to wav, but now, I've burnt the cd, and there is no sound. And before anyone mentions it, the sound is up, I'm using music cd's...not data.

I'm not computer illiterate, but I don't build them, so I may not have the proper hardware or programmed right.

Anyone have any clue? Alvaro? Thanks for the help btw, but man, I really really wanna fix this issue. My whole plan is to mute the bass part, save the tune, burn on disc, then jam over them.

Thanks guys.

[Alvaro Martín Gómez A.]

Did you check that your soundcard's recording input source is the MIDI synth? Assuming you have the standard Windows mixer, double click on the speaker icon in the system tray (lower right corner of your screen) and you'll get the playback mixer. Go to options > properties and select the second radio button "Recording". Click on OK and you'll have the recording mixer. Select "MIDI" (or maybe "Synth") as the recording source and then OK. Try to record the .wav file again using BIAB.

Plese let me know if this works.

[Dugz Ink]

Originally Posted by tocoadog

... I DON"T KNOW OR UNDERSTAND how and the process of converting the midi's to wav files.

Let's start from the begining, for the benefit of ANY member who stumbles across this thread. First, a basic understanding of what MIDI is... and isn't...

MIDI = Signals ... MIDI ≠ Audio

Signals + Instrument(s) = Audio

Therefore, you must trigger some sort of instrument with the MIDI signals... either actual external instrument(s), or virtual internal instrument(s).

Since you can "listen" to your MIDI files, they must be triggering something... hard-synth, soft-synth, samples, etc... and that's what you need to capture.

Typically, it's just a matter of routing that signal back to your sequencer so you can record it, or setting the sequencer to bounce/compile audio using that hardware/software.

If BIAB is not bouncing/compiling WAV files, then it's usually a sign that your MIDI files are triggering something that it outside of BIAB during playback... like a wavetable on the sound card or soft-synths that came with the computer... something that is not available to BIAB during bouncing/compiling.

So...
1) What sound card are you using?
2) What are you triggering with your MIDI?

[tocoadog]

It looks like when I enable the recording option, I don't get a midi (synth) option. My only options are:

Stereo Mix
Mono Mix
Aux
Video
CD Audio
Line In
Microphone
SPDIF

But no midi. What do you guys recommend?

Thanks again for the help.

Dugz: I've googled "midi" for some instruction, but didn't find anything that struck a chord. Could you recommend a book or link or something about midi? I hate feeling like a dumb@ss. Thanks.

tocoadog

[Dugz Ink]

Originally Posted by tocoadog

Dugz: I've googled "midi" for some instruction, but didn't find anything that struck a chord. Could you recommend a book or link or something about midi? I hate feeling like a dumb@ss. Thanks.

Tweakheadz Lab - Guide to Home Recording

On the left side of the screen, you'll see various topics, including MIDI Basics.

I don't know enough about BIAB to give you more advice. If you don't get the specific answers that you need here (on TalkBass), you can also check out Studio-Central.

[Alvaro Martín Gómez A.]

Originally Posted by tocoadog

It looks like when I enable the recording option, I don't get a midi (synth) option. My only options are:

Stereo Mix
Mono Mix
Aux
Video
CD Audio
Line In
Microphone
SPDIF

But no midi. What do you guys recommend?

Notice that before getting into the recording mixer, when you select the "Recording" radio button, there's a field below those radio buttons that reads "Show the following volume controls" and only the ticked ones will appear when you click on "OK". Isn't "MIDI" or "Synth" in that list? You should check it if present, so it will appear in the recording mixer. If it definitely doesn't appear (which is weird to me), the only solution I can think of is using a recording software like Audacity or similar to record the MIDI song played by BIAB. In this case, you don't need the MIDI synth as the source. You can select "Stereo mix", press the "Rec" button in Audacity and play the song in BIAB. It will be recorded into a sound file of the format you select. Notice that, since the recorded sound using this method is "what you hear", any sound will be recorded, so make sure you don't have your microphone on, or applications that can unadvertently produce any kind of sound (an Instant Messenger, for instance).

I mention Audacity because is a great FREEWARE recording studio, so you can download it if you don't have one, but others like Adobe Audition (formerly known as Cool Edit Pro), Wavelab or Cakewalk Sonar will work perfectly for this.

After recording the .wav file, you can use your favorite burning application to create the audio CD. Again, let me know whatever happens with this.