21. How do I record multiple MIDI or Audio tracks simultaneously, or send different tracks to separate ports?

If you are recording MIDI, PowerTracks Pro Audio will not record on multiple tracks, but you can record to one track and then use the Edit | Extract Channels to Tracks command to split the track into multiple tracks. This works if there is multiple channel information in the MIDI Stream.

If you are recording audio, you can record either mono (left or right) or in stereo. To access these settings, go to Options | Preferences | Audio. If you are recording both left and right channels, and your audio track is set as a MONO Audio track, the left and right channels will be recorded on to consecutive tracks. If your track is a STEREO Audio track (PowerTracks Pro Audio 8 or higher), then both channels will appear on a single track.

If you have a sound card or audio interface that has more than one input port, you can record from each port on a separate track. You can record as many tracks simultaneously as your hardware supports. To set this up in PowerTracks, go to Options | Preferences | Audio | Drivers. If you are using the ASIO diver type, select each input port that you want to use by control-clicking. If you are using the MME driver type, select each input driver that you want to use, and make sure that Microsoft Sound Mapper is not selected. To record, you simply need to select a single track - PowerTracks will use as many tracks as it needs to. Note that each Input port is a stereo pair, with a left and right channel. If you select 4 Input Ports, then you would be actually getting 8 input channels, since each audio port has both a left and right channel. This would use up 8 mono-audio tracks.

Note: Multi-port audio recording will only work if (1) the current audio track is a Stereo audio track -or- the current audio track is Mono and the input channel is set to L+R (Options | Preferences | Audio) and (2) there are multiple audio input ports selected in Options | Preferences | Audio | Drivers.

To use more than one MIDI output device at the same time, you first need to select all of the output drivers that you want to use. In the MIDI Driver Setup dialog (Options | MIDI Devices), you can choose more than one MIDI Output Driver at the same time. The top MIDI driver that you have selected is considered to be port 1, the second is port 2, and so on. In the Tracks window, click on the Track Info field, point to "Port", and select the port that you want to use. You will note that it is possible to send different tracks to different DXi synths as well as different hardware devices. For more information on this, see this FAQ topic.

In the same way, it is also possible to output different audio tracks to different ports, however note that if you are sending different tracks to different sound cards, you may have timing problems.


Alyssa - PG Music