I have recently switched to Ardour and have a fairly simple set-up. All instruments and mics via mixer into Steinberg CI2+ and into PC. Everything seems to work fine.
However, I have a Korg SmartKey USB keyboard that I can only connect directly to the PC and I can’t understand how to get Ardour to recognize it so that I can use for Midi/Drum effects. Can anyone help or is it the fact that I have all input set to the Steinberg limiting Ardour being able to use the keyboard. It does come up under Midi devices at start-up. Any help much appreciated.
My guess: you are using Ardour with the JACK backend. Stop doing that, use the ALSA backend. Then once you understand how things work when the MIDI devices show up, you can switch back to JACK if necessary, first reading the Ardour manual section on setting up MIDI (with JACK, and particularly with JACK2 as found in most Linux distributions, it is notably more complex than it really should be).
Thanks Paul. I downloaded Jack2 for Windows and installed it but it crashed every time I tried to start it. I will download the ALSA product and see if that does the trick. I did have a look at the manual but it seemed highly slanted towards Linux so was unsure if there was any difference with a windows version but will let you know how I get on.
It appears that ALSA only runs on Linux but I have found the issue with JACK, which was a config problem which you need to address on windows, so will try this and see if I can get the keyboard to function.
graynoth: sorry, the forums do a terrible job of identifying that you were posting in a window sub-forum, and I assumed you were on Linux.
There is no reason for you to be using JACK on windows (unless you really need JACK for other reasons). Ardour’s own builtin audio/midi backend there should do the job. Apparently it does not, in your case. We lack the resources to address system-specific issues on Windows, but possibly someone else may have some idea about things you can try.
Thanks Paul. I have abandoned Jack2 on windows as it will only start when the Steinberg sound card is disconnected for some reason and also seems to be heavily over engineered for what it actually does and a little bit ‘techie style over substance’. I will persevere as I am sure that there must be a simple way to sort this. I have tried changing the Ardour driver from Asio to windows variants (windows 10) to see if this picks up the Korg Microkey but no joy as yet. The Korg Midi Driver is running and the device is working fine and Ardour sees it as a Midi device in the audio/Midi settings. I have checked with my old version of Cubase and it is fine with that but I really like the Ardour interface and functionality, except for the Midi set up
