Questions & Answers

Studio One with Kurzweil workstation

+1 vote
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asked Apr 15, 2020 in Studio One 4 by B4time (510 points)
I have followed instructions for setting up S1v4 with a workstation, setting up the PC3X as both a new keyboard and as a new instrument with appropriate send and receive assignments as described in the manual (there is a brief paragraph at the end of the section on setting up external instruments that specifically describes routing for a keyboard workstation). I can see the midi  hitting the track but there is no audio response from the synth. So, it seems the midi out from pc3x is getting to S1 but not returning to the pc3x to trigger the selected preset and produce audio output.

Not sure if this behaviour is unique to the Kurz usb midi implementation or not.  I have the pc3x set up with midi usb to my computer. I will try (although I dread it) routing midi cables to my Roland Octacapture instead; using the Octacapture as a midi interface. It does not seem like that would make difference, but I will try...

I am a recovering Sonar user. I have been using S1 since Sonar first bit the dust and I have found S1 to be waaaay easier and far more intuitive than Sonar in every respect...except for this. I spend a few hours every 6 months or so trying to make this work. It seems like it should be utterly simple and I keep assuming that I am just doing something wrong but reading other posts suggests that others have had difficulty integrating with a workstation.

As a workaround, I have no trouble recording the pc3x in an audio track, but I would like to have the midi available in order to swap sounds easily without creating new audio tracks each time. Ultimately I usually just fall back to using vsti instead but the truth is that pc3x has some killer sounds, esp orchestral sounds that I cannot replicate in vsti. I have NI session strings and horns and a few other vsti avail but they really don't compare, especially in terms of ease of use to what I have in the pc3x.

Is there a solution to this? In Sonar I could select pc3x presets from within the daw. It was a little cumbersome but it worked. I don't really care about selecting patches from within the daw. Since there is no bank and patch selection in SI I am pretty sure that isn't possible. All I really want is for S1 to talk to pc3x and get audio output from presets I am happy to select manually.

Any thought appreciated!

2 Answers

+1 vote
answered May 3, 2020 by B4time (510 points)
Answering my own question.

The Presonus instructions are correct. The issue was twofold with the PC3X. Not sure if this generalizes to implementation with other workstations.

1) MIDI MODE must be set to MULTI (NOT OMNI) in order to properly channelize midi data. If set to OMNI it will create a midi feedback loop no matter what channel is selected (see below).

2) Local keyboard channel must be set to off. If it is set to any channel there will be a midi feedback loop on that channel in multi mode.
0 votes
answered Feb 6, 2022 by waltermazzaccaro (190 points)
could you please take a couple of pictures to show the configurations to do? i just can't get midi in with studio one! the same thing that happened to you happens to me but i can't find a solution... thank you very much!
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