Posted
Its a complicated setup with a vienna ensemble pro server to get the midi tracks from the stories
A test setup
All tracks in rootcontainer and thinning out the sounds to start the composition with and later on adding more tracks or less ..keep it simple as base composition?
Thu, 2025-05-15 - 19:42 Permalink
Thanks ,
I see two drone scenarios :
- Synfire hosts the sounds + compose alongside recorded audio possible
- Cubase hosts the sounds + compose alongside recorded audio possible
At least if I got it right...
Advantages and disadvantages..possibilities setup ?
I think the Cubase Midi drone has the mixing in DAW..
Fri, 2025-05-16 - 09:25 Permalink
Thanks, you are absolutely right there is an audio and a midi drone to use in Cubase and have since been able to figure out the location of the midi drone on the computer.
Now make sure Cubase recognizes it.
With the midi drones connection Cubase acts as a sound module for Synfire
Fri, 2025-05-16 - 23:12 Permalink
Check the last comment in the tutorial about syncing synfire and cubase pro, might help.
https://users.cognitone.com/tutorial/synfire-daw-cubase-pro
Sat, 2025-05-17 - 10:00 Permalink
you might be having sync issues if you are trying to use the same channel to sync as you are using as input in synfire, and it looks like you are then looping that back out.
If you are only using sounds in your daw that are vst/au then you dont need midi drones. They are mainly used when the instrument in the daw isnt a vst/au. For instance, in ableton live, the supplied instruments are ableton specific, they can't be hosted in other hosts, so cant be placed in an audio drone. The answer in this case is to use a midi drone to feed the ableton midi track that contains the ableton instrument with midi data.
Sat, 2025-05-17 - 11:58 Permalink
Apparently someone has managed to synchronize Synfire and Cubase. The key seems to be that you need two MIDI loopback channels to enable two-way communication between Synfire and Cubase.
https://users.cognitone.com/comment/26442#comment-26442
However, I have not tried this. It's not for me. I find it quite incredible that we are now supposed to be messing around with loopback drivers again.
Sat, 2025-05-17 - 14:31 Permalink
Totally understand. This synching stuff is quite a mess.
As for the MIDI drones: In Cubase they show up as VST effects, not as VST instruments. You can therefore not load them like instruments, but you have to load them like effects.
You can proceed as follows (just tested):
- Create an instrument track and load the desired instrument plugin.
- Then load a MIDI drone into an insert effects slot (for me it shows up as "MIDI Drone" in the "Others" section of the effects list)
- Then you have to select the MIDI drone as the input source for your instrument plugin. At the "Routing" section of the track inspector open the list of MIDI inputs. The MIDI drone should show up there
Sat, 2025-05-17 - 16:39 Permalink
It's not a MIDI fx insert. It appears like a regular Audio FX plugin. But it does not produce audio output, it produces just MIDI data. That MIDI data needs to be routed back to the instrument Plugin.
That "MIDI Drone" you have selected in the picture is the correct one.
And the MIDI Drone topic has nothing to do with the synchronization topic. That's a different thing.