I was just wondering how to use MIDI Patchbay in Mac OS 10.3. In the Help File, it mentions the program as a way to load the sounds into Sibelius, but doesn't describe how, and the only "manual" that exists for the Patchbay application is a website that only describes hardware channel manipulation. Please let me know soon; I'm dying to get this to work since using Unity has proven to be unsuccessful thus far.

Matt Becker

Actually, if you are using Macintosh OS X 10.3 (Panther), there is some new MIDI functionality in the 'Audio MIDI Setup' program that allows you to bypass using the MIDI Patchbay application previously discussed.

What you want to do is open Audio MIDI Setup (Hard Drive -> Applications -> Utilities -> Audio MIDI Setup). Click the "Midi Devices" tab, and select the "IAC Driver". This driver is new within Panther and essentially does the same thing that the MIDI patchbay program did.

Double click the IAC Driver icon and be sure the "device is online" checkbox is selected. This should be all you need to do for this part. Quit Audio MIDI Setup.

Your sample player (in your case, Unity) should be set to receive MIDI information IN from this driver, while your Sibelius will use it as a MIDI OUT device. You may need to also click "reset sounds" button in the Sibelius mixer, and be sure to set your Vdrumline staves to use the Apple IAC Driver within the "device" pulldown menu for each staff.

Let me know if this needs further explanation.

Adam

Thanks for the information; between what I got from you and what I got from Unity, I'm able to make Virtual Drumline work to a limited degree. Things are running extremely sluggish right now, even when I enable the play from disk option and expand the memory dedicated to Unity. I'm running into problems with playing more than one instrument at the same time, especially in my scores containing pit instruments that are run off of General MIDI sounds (also through Unity). Any ideas? I'm waiting to hear back from Unity as well, but I just thought I'd ask.

I don't know anything about Unity, but sluggish playback could definitely have something to do with RAM limitations or even a machine that's too slow.

If you are using Sibelius 3, I know that runs a littls sluggish on OSX. Jim told me a few days ago that Sibelius is due to release a 3.1 version very soon, so that may help as well...

Actually, I'm still using Sibelius 2. I have an 867 G4 Powerbook with 640 RAM, which I think is the maximum I can have in the computer. I'll keep looking into it.

Okay, what about those of us still on OS 10.2.8? How do I get MIDI Patchbay to do what it's supposed to do?

Basically, Midi Patchbay will be the "link" between your notation program, and whichever sampler program you may be using. Check out this guide for a rundown of how this works. This particular example illustrates for users of the Reason sampler, but it will also work to link your notation program to other midi programs.

https://www.tapspace.com/vdlmacosx.html

Hope this helps!

I'm using Kontakt 1.5, with Sibelius 3.1.

2 Problems:
a) according to the instructions you linked me to, I'm supposed to 'select "MIDI Patchbay input 1" and the similarly named output." There is nothing to select, so I created a virtual input and output with those names.

b) In Sibelius, I'm supposed to click a button called 'find MIDI devices' or something in the 'Devices' dialog box. I don't have a button, and nothing extra shows up when I open up 'Devices' other than what I assume is the default device.

Thanks for your help!

Okay, I've resolved the problems above (I think). A new problem has cropped up, however. I'll start a new thread.