Midinous is an standalone software MIDI sequencer.
I’m trying to use it with Renoise 3.4.1 on Windows 10.
Midinous creates a virtual MIDI device (or more specifically two of them, the second one is for optional master clock) that it sends the MIDI data through. As far as I know there is nothing non-standard about it and it seems to be sending the data correctly. I was able to make it work with Reaper, it controlled a VST instrument without issues or special settings.
I would like to use it with Renoise, but don’t know how.
I selected the Midinous devices as MIDI inputs in settings, loaded a VST instrument into instrument slot 00, selected it and tested that it plays sound within Renoise (using standard keyboard input), selected the main Midinous device as input in the instrument’s MIDI tab.
At this moment I expected the instrument to start receiving MIDI data (it was set to receive all channels), but nothing plays and no data turn up in the MIDI Monitor. I tried pressing play and enabling edit mode (thinking maybe it works as “record arm” in Reaper), but nothing happened. The MIDI control “lights” in the top right aren’t blinking either.
Since I don’t normally work with MIDI I have no idea if this is a bug or if I’m just doing some stupid mistake when setting it up. However, as mentioned above, doing pretty much the same thing in Reaper works and data is received correctly.
Could somebody help?
Here’s a screenshot of my Renoise window with settings opened, which should show what all the relevant settings are set to:
Works fine here, even without the settings in above screenshots (I don’t select anything in the preferences), but perhaps I’m using it differently?
First I open midinous, then Renoise. In Renoise I create a vsti instrument, for example surge. Go to the midi tab of that instrument and in “input device” select “midinous port”, not sure if the wdm version of this is better?
Once this is selected, create some trajectory in midinous, pressing play in it will send the midi to Renoises instrument. You can set up multiple instruments in renoise, give each instrument its own channel number in the midi tab and route the midinous signals to the different channels through selecting a place point and giving it the wanted channel property. Pretty fun stuff, I recently bought it, seeing it in Benn Jordans video, but haven’t dove deep into it yet;
Could you test if the Midinous Port (WDM) works for you and actually receives data?
I think I found an issue: “Midinous Port (WDM)” can be set as an input device without throwing an error message, but it doesn’t receive anything. However “Midinous Port” cannot be set as an input device at all, Renoise throws an error saying “Failed to open the MME MIDI device Midinous Port!”.
Both Midinous Clock Port and Midinous Clock Port (WDM) do receive MIDI clock data, so at least something is coming through.
I have found in Steam forums that Midinous uses an audio device to stream MIDI data, and that it might not work if the same device is being used by another application in exclusive mode. That sounded like a clue, but in that case Midinous should throw some error, and changing the sound device used in Midinous should fix the issue, neither of which happened.
I’m at work now so can’t test, but did you make sure you have booted up midinous before starting up renoise? Dunno if it is necesary, but that is how it works here. Perhaps a reboot and make sure you don’t have anything else open besides midinous and renoise.
The error notice you’re seeing, I’ve also have had in the past while accidentally opening another instance of renoise. So the midi stuff was already in use by the first instance. Something seems to be already in use on your end.
Thanks for your reply. I do boot up Midinous before Renoise and as far as I know nothing else is using MIDI. Rebooting did not help. What Renoise version are you guys using?
I just found out that Midinous works normally with Renoise v 3.3.1 and 3.4.0, but not with 3.4.1 and 3.4.2 - a possible regression?
In the older versions I can normally open the “Midinous Port” (without wdm) and Renoise immediately starts receiving MIDI data as expected.
Damn, I wonder what it is that’s special about my setup then. I’m using Windows 10 with Focusrite Scarlett Uno 3rd edition with Focusrite ASIO drivers and it works on 3.4.0 but doesn’t on 3.4.1 and 3.4.2.
