midi volume level?

Russ

Should midi be able to modify the synth level (i.e. the midi synth volume level slider in kX mixer) through midi messages? I do not remember this behavoir previously (with CL drivers or with previous sound cards, etc). I could understand a midi master volume level change, that is a percentage of kX mixer's midi synth volume level (i.e. the synth volume slider's value, sets the max volume level and thus defines the range for any midi master volume change messages), but should it be able to modify the mixer's (synth) volume directly? This doesn't seem right to me. I mean, I set my volume levels how I like them for comfortable listensing, and then play some midi file and suddenly the volume is cranked up (I generally keep the synth and wave volume sliders at a relatively low volume, which BTW, is what I have always done (with the CL drivers, etc), and I do not remember midi playback ever being able to effect the sliders in the Windows mixer). Is this considered normal behavoir, or is it a kX "feature", a bug, or what?

-Russ

NightBreed

The only time I have had this type of behaviour was when having something like winamp running. Winamp, when focus was placed back on it, would set the volumes in kxmixer to what it was on it's mixer.

Other than that, I don't recall having this problem.

You don't have anything running in the background that's having access to your synths do you? That's the only thing I can think of that would effect your volume this way.

Russ

Yeah, that seems to be what is happening (rather than midi messages doing it). It seems that volume settings in various apps are setting the kX mixer volumes to match their levels when the application starts. That is kind of annoying. I think I would prefer it if the applications matched thier settings to kxmixer's master volume level, and any volume adjustments in kxmixer or the application should be sync'd with each other (and should only use the master volume level, and not the wave or synth volumes). I do not remember this being an issue previously (using other drivers/sound cards, etc), so I wonder if kX is handling it differently?

i.e.
Set the kXmixer volumes to something like 10 (Master/Wave/Synth volumes).
Play a .mp3 in WMP (Windows Media Player).
Set WMP's volume to someting like 80% (notice that kxmixer's volume's do not change).
Close WMP.
Play a midi with WMP and notice that kXmixer's synth volume changes to 80% (to whatever WMP's volume was set at... volume adjustments while playing a midi in WMP are only partially sync'd with kxmixer).
Also notice that playing .wav's/.mp3's, etc in WMP doesn't effect kxmixer's volume levels.
On the other hand playing .mp3's with DeliPlayer causes the Wave/PCM volume level slider in kxmixer to change to match the volume level of DeliPlayer (changes to the volume level in DeliPlayer does also seem to be partially sync'd with kxmixer's Wave/PCM volume slider but differently from WMP's behavior). So it seems the behavior is not consistant among different applications either.


BTW: The reason I thought it might be related to some midi commands, is because when I was originally testing, it seemed to only be a problem with certain midi files. Further testing showed that this is not the case, and it is related to the volume setting in the applications used for playback.