Its been a while since I last connected my Arturia Keylab 49 Essential. It works fine if just using a stand-alone VST app such as Analog Lab V. However in Cubase 15.0.21 I get no sound in an instrument track. Pressing a key shows that the midi code is seen by Cubase (bottom right corner). It seems to be set up in Studio and I have tried several changes and restarted Cubase as well rebooted the PC. I must have done something stupid
What is also strange is that certain keys do things in the Cubase GUI - eg opens up the “Save” dialog box, or the Pitch bend will move one of the track faders in the mix console and so on - This seems weird to me.
The port names I see are not what I would expect to. You have identical names for both the DAW and the MIDI ports of the Keylab. Can’t know how this happened, still, I would advice for a start to deactivate the WinRT MIDI option, and upon a restart, post a screenshot of your new MIDI Port Setup. What you describe is basically that you have accidentally setup your MIDI Port acting as the input/output of the Mackie, and I cannot blame since I don’t see a way to distinguish them by watching the screenshot.
I did what you advised - and all is good now. Many Thanks!
I have no clue how WinRT MIDI was checked since it just didn’t work from the gitgo before I started troubleshooting. The Cubase dialog screens are far from intuitive…
I’m assuming you’re on a recent update of Windows 11.
You can change the port names using the new tools available for MIDI in Windows 11.
Visit the discord server: Windows MIDI / Audio for a how-to and link for where to get the tools (see #workarounds-and-instructions section with “how to rename ports …”
When creating the new MIDI stack, we tried really hard to replicate the old naming scheme used by WinMM exactly, but there must be some condition we missed. Naming of ports is surprisingly far more complex than one would think, given all the different places the possible names come from.
Edit: In the new MIDI stack, WinRT and WinMM names are the same, so it looks like this is not the actual issue here. Our old WinRT MIDI 1.0 names were pretty terrible.
Pete, Thanks for the reply. Unchecking WinRT solved the problem. I am sure I didn’t check it so maybe it is a new default when I updated Cubase or Windows (yes I am on the latest public version).
I am not sure why I would change any port names in my simple system. For many years I try to avoid any non-default “personalization” of Windows and most applications I use - simply to avoid the hassle of when getting a new PC or using a different one and having to remember all the little “tweaks” I might have made…
Your in-depth knowledge of Windows and MIDI etc are a boon to us all - but frankly, the average user really does not want to get that technical and wants “it” to “just work” if possible. Certainly, many aspects of Cubase’s Studio set-up dialogs are probably very powerful but very non-intuitive and very poorly explained and likely unnecessary for the average user.
When I googled WinRT it said “a modern Windows API introduced in Windows 10 for low-latency, multi-client, and native Bluetooth MIDI support. It replaces older “Win32 MIDI” (WinMM)” so that seemed like it should work (and be better) on an up-to-date Windows system. I wonder if Cubase set it on in the recent Cubase 15 updates? I certainly didn’t knowingly check it. Nevertheless, surely it should have worked though? (not that I care now my keyboard is working again!
Being able to change MIDI port names is one of the top 5 or so requests for MIDI on Windows over the past 10+ years. Even macOS has a “use new names” option as I recall and the ability to change the names to be anything you want.
The reason that option is there in Windows now is because the old port names in Windows are ugly. But they need to stay ugly to remain backwards compatible like you saw here. However, those ugly names don’t let you use things like the better port names on an iConnectivity interface, or many of the other more flexible MIDI interfaces out there.
Plus, if you change from using a third-party driver, which are mostly not needed anymore, to using our in-box class drivers (which I generally recommend) you usually need to change the naming style to match what the vendor driver provided. Otherwise, because of 30 years of an API where the only way to identify a port on Windows was its name, scripts in DAWs and other apps fail.
WinRT MIDI 1.0, from back in Windows 10, tried to switch to using the preferred names on devices, but there wasn’t enough varied testing of that, so you could end up with something like a MOTU Express 128 with 16 ports named “MIDI”. That API never took of almost entirely because of the naming issues.
If you are on WIndows 11 24h2, 25h2, or 26h1, the new MIDI stack uses the same names for WinRT MIDI 1.0 and WinMM “Windows MIDI”.
FWIW, I’m not aware of Steinberg defaulting to use WinRT MIDI at any point. It’s possible, but doesn’t seem likely.
You’re correct, they’re not. The old one is the default, I never encountered defaulting to winRT.
@Hooby2, it’s a common ground for all of us, when trying to solve an issue, to sometimes tweak things, we don’t even remember a sec later, so please don’t exclude the possibility of accidentally enabling winRT
