A follow up, because recently all my drum tracks have stopped sounding with Midi-Hits (and ONLY Midi-Hits) files, no matter what program I use to play them. Here's an email I sent to Midi-Hits, after I read a FAQ item on their website which attempted to explain the missing drum phenomenon:

Your (Midi-Hits) explanation:

Your explanation:
"Why am I not hearing the drums when I play the file in my computer?
There is a very serious issue when using Vista, Windows Media Player and General Midi and/or GS Midi Files. For some unknown reason the Vista does not load in the GS Wave Table when opening up the Media Player. As a result, there are no guidelines for the Media Player to play GM or GS midi files - meaning it does not know that channel 10 is reserved for drum sounds. So it's a hit or miss. This problem does not occur while using the XP operating system. Microsoft has published a page on their website declaring this problem.

We have found some fixes around this: 1. Download and use Apple's Quick Time. Quick Time is Apple's version of the Media Player and it's free. Ironically, Quick Time does load in the GS Wave Table and plays the midi files without a problem. 2. Get a professional sound module (rather than use the computer's sound chip). The sound module will come with a driver that will load up into Windows. 3. Worst case you can install XP. This will, however, require you to reinstall all your software. XP and the Windows Media Player does load in the GS Wave Table."


My question:
WHY ONLY FILES THAT I PURCHASED FROM MIDI-HITS? That's right, WHY ONLY MIDI HITS FILES? Files I purchased from YamahaSoft, TranTraks, HitTrax, Trycho, or files I make myself with a sequencer program or BIAB don't have this problem? How do you explain that? Does it have anything to do with that monstrous SysEx header that you put in front of your files? Why do you send a pitchbend message on channel 10? Note duations of 1 ppq?

Hey, I'd be the first to get on MS, but ONLY MY MIDI-HITS FILES ACT THIS WAY.

THIS ONLY HAPPENS WITH MIDI-HITS FILES.

Sincerely,