I want to use my midi controller to record my melody notes in real time. I have set up my audio with ASIO using a FocusRite Scarlett USB Box. Although there is a good low value for latency, I have a very low audio level on the Thru channel during my recording. I overcame this by connecting a Dynamics Plugin on the Thru channel and increased the gain on the plugin. This allowed me to record the notes with a decent audio relative to the backing. However, when I play the recording I still the low level from the Melody track. The melody track has a default synth on it, so I added a pluging to the synth but this has no effect whatsoever on the melody gain output. So, even with the melody volume control at max, there is still a poor volume.

Surely adding a plugin to the Melody track synth should fix this gain.

Any ideas please?

export the file as wav and use third party program to normalize and then re-import the audio file.................or ............

you can do all this in RB - open the BIAB file, render the midi as an audio tracks, normalize and then reopen the file in BIAB.

must be a way to do it in BIAB but RB is so simple.

Have you looked at the velocity that the notes come in as. I have a keyboard that sends everything out with a velocity of around 60, so it comes across very quietly. There is a setting to boost incoming velocity to get a little more volume while recording.

Or you could just add that same dynamics plugin to the melody track to get the melody to play as you heard it while recording.

There is also a setting for increasing melody track velocity after the fact (if in fact that is the reason for the volume disparity).

Also, depending upon the synth you are using to play the track, some of them control volume level via the modulation wheel. So you may need to a CC1 value to the track to lift the volume. That could happen with Garritan and other instruments.

Don't know if any of that helped.

Great advice right there... Thanks jford

Hi Bob,
Now, I am getting even more confused! You mention exporting the file as a .wav file. This isn't the problem I have. The problem I have concerns the way that midi data input from the midi controller is processed from within BiaB.

The way I see it, and I may be completely wrong here, is that the midi from controller is passed in to BiaB via the Thru channel. This midi is passed to the selected BiaB channel and is converted to audio by the synth on the Thru channel.

So, when I record, what I am really recording is just midi which will be visible on the Piano Roll. Now all of this works correctly. With the Melody channel selected and I play the keys on the controller, then the sound generated by the keys is as expected by the sound defined by the synth on the Thru channel. Where I have a problem is that when I play the keys I get a low dB value from the synth, way below the levels on the other tracks. To address this I added a Dynamic plugin to the output of the synth on the Thru channel and then increasing the gain of this plugin. This work just fine.

However, having now used this output during a recording session and playing back the midi, I now get that reduced volume again. This is because the midi is now coming from the Melody track and through a synth on the melody track. So, I did the same here, I inserted a plugin and increased the plugin gain. But this time the output was not affected (I don't understand why). Anyway, just to try something out, I chhanged the Melody synth to the Sonar TTS-1 and this DID work. So I have the process working quite well. It's just that I thought there might have been an easier way to do. I mean, I would have expected the faders on the Thru and Melody channels to have sufficient volume range to meet this requirement.

In fact even RealBand suffers a bit like this where the midi generates a very quiet audio. RealBand gets around this by providing a 'Volume Boost' in the range -24dB to + 24dB which I have had to muse on many occasions. But no such mechanism seems to exist in BiaB.

I'm hoping somebody can point out that I'm doing it all wrong and tell me what I can do.

I was just suggesting a workaround I use when a midi track is too quiet. Export as a wav, normalise the wav, reimport as audio and mute the original midi.

Hi John,
As always, a very informative reply that really helps me a lot and I will experiment with this now. I've usually relied on RealBand for the creation but decided to try and as much is possible in BiaB for exporting to RealBand. I wasn't sure if I was understanding the routing of the midi within BiaB but I think I do now.

Thanks again

Hi John,
I've been using your advice. The velocity increment on the THRU channel worked well, but there is a peculiar issue with the adjusting of level of the Melody track. On my system this level has a default of 10. If I change this to anything else and OK it then OK the the main preference, it doesn't make any difference at all and when I open up this preference I observe that the original default value of 10 is still set.

As always, I am especially grateful with the time you spend on your very illustrative graphics, you do this a lot and I know, at least for me, it takes such a lot of time.