Looking for some help before I completely reinstall Windows

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Posts: 5
Joined: 28 Apr 2017 - 04:28
Looking for some help before I completely reinstall Windows

Firstly, I know that these are not the forums for bassmidi, but, the community seems more active here and I'm hoping that someone can point me in the right direction.

Please see here

I am also lukeman3000 on those forums and as can be seen, I posted about a problem in which the Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth disappeared, and a couple of duplicate ports popped up in the default midi synth drop-down menu. So, what I'm wanting to accomplish are these two things:

1. Get Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth back

2. Get rid of the duplicate port entrie

I tried virtualMIDIsynth but decided to go with bassmidi because I wasn't crazy about the system tray icons (which I couldn't figure out how to prevent from showing any time I launched a game that used midi), and I also read something about bassmidi having lower latency or something like that, but I dont know if and/or how true that is.

Anyways, if anyone could point me in the right direction it would be greatly appreciated.

Posts: 1972
Joined: 25 Mar 2012 - 01:19
Re: Looking for some help before I completely reinstall Windows

Can't help on BASSMIDI but, since you're looking for a MIDI devices procedure, there's a VirtualMIDISynth FAQ for that (see here).
Skip the instructions that are specific for VirtualMIDISynth and focus on the general ones.

They should work immediately, just restart your audio programs.

Please let me know if they work...

Posts: 5
Joined: 28 Apr 2017 - 04:28
Re: Looking for some help before I completely reinstall Windows

Great, thanks. A couple more questions, if I may:

1. I only have midi, midi1, midi2, and midi3, but in another computer in my house, it has a midi5 in addition to the others. Why is this? The same applies to mixer and wave. Plus, the other computer has aux, aux1, and aux3 whereas mine just has aux and aux1.

2. I assume you prefer VMS.. what makes it better as compared to bassmidi? Does bassmidi have any strengths over VMS?

3. If I'd rather use VMS, is there some way I can prevent the system tray icons from showing up whenever I launch a program that uses midi?

Posts: 1972
Joined: 25 Mar 2012 - 01:19
Re: Looking for some help before I completely reinstall Windows
  1. AFAIK you must keep midi and midi1, the others can be deleted; the extra ones (up to ...9) were added by installed drivers.
    The same rules applies to wave keys.
    You can rename them (midi3 --> _midi3), check if everything work as expected then remove.
  2. I prefer VMS because... I wrote it ;)
    A comparison made by me could be biased, so I won't do it.
    Version 1 does not differ too much with BassMidi, but version 2 has some outstanding features you can't find anywhere else.
    You also have an option to lower the latency (output buffer) to your will. Beware: lower latency needs high CPU power.
    Check here for details.
  3. VMS2 has only a single icon, even if you open more than one MIDI client.
    Also, the icon only appears if the MIDI client opens the device; simply asking for its capabilities won't start the icon at all.
Posts: 5
Joined: 28 Apr 2017 - 04:28
Re: Looking for some help before I completely reinstall Windows

I guess the icon isn't a huge deal, but still, it would be nice if there was an option to hide the icon during it's operation. Whenever I launch a game that uses midi, it brings up the icon (I just like to have a minimalistic system tray).

There is another issue I'm having. I have speakers in my monitor and I also have headphones plugged in. I frequently switch between the two. If, for example, the headphones are currently selected as the default playback device and VMS opens up, then when I switch to my monitor's speakers, midi will continue to play through my headphones. I've found that I can fix this by right-clicking the system tray icon, exiting VMS, and re-launching the game that I'm wanting to play.

This is a minor annoynace, but it would be quite nice if VMS could detect when the default playback device has changed and account for it. It would also be nice if the system tray icon would close once whatever program that was using VMS stopped using it. This would also help with the former problem, as it would be one less thing that has to be messed with in order to get the sound to play through the correct output device (i.e., if VMS automatically closed when my game closed (for example), then I would only have to restart the game itself in order to fix the audio).

As an aside, what does "Disable mixer VUMeter and activity indicator" do?

Posts: 1972
Joined: 25 Mar 2012 - 01:19
Re: Looking for some help before I completely reinstall Windows
lukeman3000 wrote:
it would be nice if there was an option to hide the icon during it's operation

The systray icon is the only way you have to access the synth component of VirtualMIDISynth. If it will be hidden, well, you have no way to change configuration, open MIDI Mixers, ...?
What about moving it to the hidden icons area? (https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000734.htm)

lukeman3000 wrote:
Whenever I launch a game that uses midi, it brings up the icon

The icon should appear only if the game uses the VMS device; using MIDI (i.e. scanning for available IDI devices) is not enough. Could you confirm it?
If you don't want a specific game to use VMS then you can blacklist it (Configuration --> Options --> MIDI clients blacklist).

lukeman3000 wrote:
it would be quite nice if VMS could detect when the default playback device has changed and account for it

Actually there's no auto-sense on default device, will check how difficult it could be to implement it.
Anyway there's no need to restart VMS and the game: you can select a specific device (instead of default), then click Apply to have the output switched immediately.
Please note that the device list is loaded when the configuration window is opened, so if you plug a new device you need to close/reopen the configurator dialog to let it appear in the list.

lukeman3000 wrote:
if VMS automatically closed when my game closed (for example), then I would only have to restart the game itself in order to fix the audio

See the answer above, no need to restart everything.

Also, VMS2 best feature is exactly it persists between usages; think about people playing MIDI files in a playlist: VMS1 unloaded/reloaded at each track change, leading to delays.
That's why this feature won't be removed. But one thing to be improved is "how and when VMS should close when last MIDI client ended using it?".
This is something I'm going to create a poll for... ;)

lukeman3000 wrote:
As an aside, what does "Disable mixer VUMeter and activity indicator" do?

It only removes the realtime volume level indicator in Master track of VMS MIDI Mixer to save some CPU cycles.