Configure your software

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This document will guide you through the configuration phase of your music software.

Getting started

Basics

First thing first. You need to specify a sound driver to use with the software in question. Many software come prepared to use the default sound driver, which means that you don't need to get your hands dirty if you don't want too. There is however a good chance that the program is not properly configured for the specified driver.

Sound drivers

There are several different drivers one can use. Windows has a load of good drivers, and here is a small summary:

Windows:

  • Primary sound device: This is the windows default sound system. Skip this one.
  • DirectSound: The default driver in most cases
  • ASIO4All: The recommended drivers for musicians

All programs have different places where they have the sound settings. The most logical place is in the preferences, but where the preferences is located differs from tool to tool.

Buffer issues

When you've selected your sound driver then you need to set some parameters. The most important one is the buffer length. The shorter buffer you use the more responsive the MIDI keyboard becomes. You'll find that recording live will vastly improve if you have a buffer length set to 3 - 5 Ms. However the chance that the sound stutters followed by under-runs is much more likely to happen.

Under-runs is what happens when the buffer is full, and new data is tried to be stored in that buffer. A good analogy would be that you have a big dish of your favorite food, you gulped down 50% of the dish, you're full, but want to eat anyways because it is so delicious.

And there is one more thing to keep in mind here, your computer speed:

  • The slower the computer the higher the buffer needs to be.
  • The faster the computer the lower the buffer needs to be.