How do I get MIDI working in Steinberg’s Cubase SL or SX?

Emulated MIDI ports and MIDI port filter

The Cubase SX / SL version since 1.02 has a function to filter redundant MIDI ports provided by the MIDI interface driver. For instance if the MIDI interface driver installs both Windows MIDI ports and DirectMusic ports, these ports used to show up doubled in former Cubase SX / SL versions. Since DirectMusic mirrors the Windows MIDI ports as “emulated” DirectMusic ports by itself, it was possible that the MIDI ports showed up even 3 times in the MIDI device list in Cubase SX / SL. These multiple appearances of the MIDI ports were actually “multiple versions” of the same physical MIDI port.
To avoid this, the new Cubase SX / SL has now the MIDI port filter.
However, in some cases the non-filtered, left over MIDI ports that will show up in the MIDI device list of Cubase SX / SL can be the ones that actually do not work as the MIDI interface driver doesn’t support the DirtectMusic architecture as Cubase SX / SL would expect.

This can occur for example with the following MIDI Interfaces:
– Midiman (M-Audio) MIDIsport 8×8
– MOTU MIDITimepieceAV

In this case, you can re-enable the filtered MIDI ports by doing this:

– Browse through the Cubase SX / SL application folder (usually C:\programs\steinberg\cubasesx) and locate the folder “MIDI Port Enabler”
– Open this folder
– Pick the file “ignoreportfilter” and drop it into the Cubase SX / SL application folder (so, one level up)
– Start Cubase SX / SL

Now all available MIDI ports provided by the MIDI interface driver will appear in the MIDI device list of Cubase SX / SL. Please be aware that the MIDI ports now can show up 2 or 3 times in the list. If you’re used to manage your MIDI IN by setting “All MIDI Inputs” in the MIDI IN selector, you should go to the Device Setup/All MIDI Inputs and disable the unwanted ports. Otherwise you will record MIDI from multiple ports which results in double MIDI notes.

Background:

The physical MIDI port of the interface can be supported by one of three different driver models:
(1) “Old” NT4 Kernel mode driver
(2) WDM Model driver
(3) WDM Streaming Model driver (“real DM”, used by our Midex devices)
It depends on the MIDI interface manufacturer, which drivers they deliver.

If DirectX 8 or higher is installed in the system (Win XP includes DX 8.1), drivers (1) and (2) can be adopted by emulating the MIDI ports.
So if a device has these sorts of drivers, Cubase will find the original and the emulated ports.
The result is that a note coming in on one physical input is delivered to Cubase via two “drivers” and thus two apparent MIDI ports at once.
By disabling the emulated ports, only the original input will be regarded.

In case (3) a driver supports two sorts of ACCESS METHODS.

Future versions of CubaseSX/Nuendo will differ between real DirectMusic, emulated and MME ports.

Case 1: The device supports real DM ports.
Both applications deactivate all non DM or emulated ports if there is a corresponding real DM port for the same physical device.

Case 2: The device does not support real DM ports.
Both apps deactivate all MME ports if there is a corresponding emulated DM port for the same physical device.

Case 3: There is no real or emulated port availabe for a device.
This can only happen under Win2K in combination with DirectX 7 or older. Both apps deactivate the corresponding MME port.

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