What's new?  - Setup Issue - Playing instrument tracks - Edit midi data - To Do? - How To Report A Great Bug!

System Requirements:

• 1 Ghz Pentium (Dual core or quad core recommended)
• 512 MB RAM (1 GB+ recommended)
• Soundcard or sound device (ASIO drivers are recommended, or Vista)

Optional:

• MIDI keyboard

What's New?

• Support for MIDI (recording & editing)
• Mega preset builder.  Combine various instruments, set ranges, volumes, and pan.
• Bundled Virtual Instruments & Effects include:
  • Acoustica Instruments (General MIDI and more)
  • Monophonic synth (MiniMogue)
  • Polyphonic synth (Impulse)
  • VB3 'Hammond' organ virtual instrument
  • Classic effects, Guitar Amp simulator (Voxengo Amp Simulator)
  • Spectrum analyzer (Voxengo Spectrum Analyzer)
• MIDI Clips can be recorded or edited and looped in the way that sound loops can be looped.
• Popup modeless FX and instrument dialogs.

How to get your sound card and drivers set up properly for low latency.
Mixcraft will default to WAVE/WDM driver mode which has very bad latency.  It will not be conducive to playing virtual instruments back well.  So, click "Preferences" from the "File" menu. (Ctrl+P).  Select "ASIO" if available.  Then select the appropriate ASIO device.  If you are on VISTA, it should be defaulted to WaveRT automatically.  WaveRT is the best option, if available. (However, you will need Vista for WaveRT).  If you do not have an option for ASIO, you should see if there are any updated drivers online for your sound device or sound card.  Also, you could try the ASIO4All available here.

How to play an instrument track
Now that you have your latency lower, you will want to play an instrument.   Look for an instrument track.  It will have a keyboard button on it.  If you don't have an instrument track, click the "Add Track" and select "Instrument".  Here is what an instrument track looks like:

If your MIDI keyboard is plugged in, you should be able to play it now.  The default preset is a piano.  Click the instrument button to select a new preset.  Here is the instrument preset dialog.

 Click a category and then select a preset.  

You can make your own presets or edit existing ones.  Just click the "Show Details" button.  This will expand the instrument dialog to look like this.

You can add multiple synths and effects to make up a preset.   You can save these presets and send them to your friends, etc.  Presets are located by default in C:\Program Files\Acoustica Mixcraft 4\InstPresets\

How to edit MIDI data
You can record via your MIDI keyboard or you can create a blank MIDI clip by selecting "Add Instrument Clip" from the "Sound" menu.  Right click on the midi clip and choose "Edit".  This causes the Sound Details page to come up with the new piano roll editor.  (If the piano roll editor is too small, you can resize it by clicking on the master bar and moving up.)

The piano roll shows notes and controller information.  This should be familiar to anyone who has used Digital Audio Workstation software before.  But, basically, a note is shown as a blue box.   A keyboard on the left shows you what note it is.  You can resize notes from the left and right or move them up and down to change the note.  There are 3 tool modes in the upper left hand corner: arrow, pencil and eraser.  To add notes, choose the pencil.  Simply click where you want a note.  If you want to select a bunch of notes, choose the arrow.  You can then select notes. (Ctrl + Shift modifers work as well.)  The eraser tool allows you to erase notes under your cursor.

You can edit individual notes by selecting them and then right clicking and choosing "Edit...".  You are allowed to edit multiple notes at a time, such as setting all durations to be 1 beat long.

Choose a default note duration.

Quantize Start and Quantize End work based on the current default note duration.  You can also set the snap level independent of the main snap level.  This allows you to accurately position notes regardless of zoom level.

The velocity control lets you set the default velocity when adding new notes.

You can copy and paste notes.  Pasting will occur at the play indicator.

To edit controller information, simply click drag and draw over the old controller data.  Choose  a different controller from the controller drop down (lower left).

What's not finished! :(
Here are some thing and items that are not finished and will be worked on during the beta period.

• Help file.  That's why I wrote this to help you out while we are 'help-less.' :)
• Installer is not finished
• More presets will be coming.

How to report a great bug!
Look, this is the love/hate part of beta testing.  We are asking that you report all flaws and bugs that you find.  We ask for as detailed a report as possible and that you send some important files, as well.

Example Bad Bug Report - Do not do this.

Subject: Software crashed.
Message: It crashed.  Fix it.

This will have us basically asking you to send in a better bug report.  We can't do much with this, could you?  Here's what we would like in a bug report.

Good Bug Report - DO THIS!

Subject: Software crashed after clicking "Play"
Message:

1) Load in sound.wav on to track 1.
2) Click "Play"

==> It crashes for me every time

I am using Mixcraft 4.1 build 69.

Attached: Mixcraft-crash.txt, Mixcraft-crash.jpg, Mixcraft-crash.mx4

When you send in a bug report, please send in the following:

• Version of beta software.
• Operating system used
• What happened
• Details to reproduce, if possible.  (Please try to reproduce it)
• Special crash files:
  • Mixcraft-Crash.jpg
  • Mixcraft-Crash.txt
  • Mixcraft-Log.txt
  • Mixcraft-Crash.mx4

Send your bug reports to betazoid * acoustica.com .  (Substitute the * with an @ sign and remove the spaces.)

Thanks for your time!  And thanks for helping us to make Mixcraft as rock solid as possible!

-Mixcraft 4 Development Team