vB Easy Archive - 8600 MIDI question

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8600 MIDI question
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Posted by: M-dogg

anybody know what midi instruments are available for use on the 8600? i put several ringtones on my phone via the 8300 usb cable but some of the notes seemed to have disappeared. is this b/c the speaker cant produce such low notes or that the specific instrument is not available? any info would be greatly appreciated so i can fix the MIDIs to get a full range of sound. THANKS!

Posted by: M-dogg

anybody... anything?

Posted by: Grandoth

I meant to respond to you earlier. The other day, my computer acquired a virus and I had to reinstall my OS. I haven't reinstalled any of my MIDI software. I was experimenting with this at one time. From what I remember, I believe you have to use the general midi device rather than any other controllers. Each instrument I think has to be on its own track. You should be able to select any of 1-127 patches. One of these days I will get around to reinstalling my MIDI software and I can confirm this. Sorry I can't be of more help at the moment.

Good luck

Posted by: Grandoth

Well, I've finally gotten around to looking at Cakewalk again.

You should theoritically be able to use each and every one of the 127 patches. However, you must realize that the patches may sound different on the phone than listening they do on your PC. For example, the grand piano patch sustains more like a bell, while the rock organ patch sounds is quite a bit softer in volume.

The problem with using a regular MIDI that wasn't written to be a ringtone is that cell phone speakers were not designed to reproduce the entire bandwidth that your home stereo is typically does. You may find low notes on tracks not doubled up, including bass drum hits, bass guitar, and synths, being quite low in volume compared to the higher melodic parts. This makes sense when you think about what cell phone speakers were designed to do (reproduce typical vocal range and typical bell style ringers). Phone are getting better and better all the time, so don't expect this to be true forever.

Here are some MIDI ringer tips:
-check the volume level in your midi program of each track and crank it
-check the velocity of each note (this is like how hard you pluck a guitar string or strike a piano key)
-check to make sure each voice in the midi is using a separate channel (I've used up to 14 independent channels so far).
-to increase volume of a specific track (like a low/midrange voice) after increasing all the parameters above, double/triple/etc it up. IMPORTANT NOTE: ensure that you use the same patch, but on a SEPARATE CHANNEL. Adding a track on a separate track but using the same channel will give NO increase.
-be careful that you don't increase the volume too much. If you do so, the sound can get distorted. This is OK to some extent because your phone isn't a stereo and not playing constantly. However, it is possible that the speaker become damaged.
-Percussion can be created using channel 10 with a null (-1) patch. I haven't figured out a way to double up percussion tracks because they use channel 10. If anyone knows how to do this let me know.

The above is based on my experience with cell phone ringers on the Audiovox 8600, but should apply in general to most phones. I hope that gives some insight.