Questions about Metro 3.5

[max]

I know very little about MIDI sequencing and need advice about a couple of things in Metro 3.5 using only Quicktime instruments.

First, when I open a MIDI file in Metro all of the instruments appear together on one track with different colors representing each. Is there any way that these can be seperated so that each instrument is assigned to its own track so that I can edit them easier?

My second question is if there is a way to get instruments to respond to panning as right now everything is mono and the pan in the instruments window does nothing.

Finally, I am thinking of getting a MIDI interface so that I can attach my Alesis Drum Machine. My question is if I will be able to use every drum sound in my Drum Machine within Metro and be able to control the panning of each individual sound. Or do I have to define a drumset in the Drum Machine and be limited to 10 drum sounds. Basically what I am going for is a good stereo drumset, but I want a big kit with alot of sounds.

Please help! Thanks.

[Scoot]

I have no idea what the capabilities of metro 3.5 were, but metro 4.0 allowed for panning in the instrument window, and because the option is there, I would assume metro 3.5 could too.

What OS are you running and on what mac?

There are 2 common midi file formats known as type 0 and type 1.
The difference is one has all the notes and data of the instruments on one track and the other has individual instruments split onto different tracks.

In later versions of metro (and hopefully in 3.5) there is a option where you can select the track, goto the edit menu and choose the option expand and the submenu 'by channel' which will split the instruments for you.

Some users may spread a drum set over many tracks so as to have different pannings for the kit. This is easy enough to do and then mix it to anaudio track later in a final mix.

There are 4 places you could go to from here.
1. Status Quo
2. Buy the midi interface
3. Buy a new metro product
4. Buy the interface and a new metro product


The reason why no.3 maybe a better option than no.2 is obviously it works with OSX but also introduces virtual instruments to metro.

So you could effectively have unlimited drum kits to choose from just by paying $70 for SE (or more for LX etc.) and using freely available soundfonts which are probably just as good if not better than the sounds on the Alesis.

It wouldn't hurt to download the demo to check it out.

I assume soundfonts and plugins will install into the demo?

[max]

Unfortunately I am running Metro and Deck II on a very old, very slow Mac 7200/120 . It is adequate for my needs right now, until I get the money together to upgrade. All I really want to be able to do is program a drum and bass track in Metro and record guitars and vocals in Deck. Hopefully I'll figure this out.

Thanks for the info.

[Scoot]

I started audio in Deck 2.5......or was it 2.0? (Actually EZIVision was my first program but that's a different story).

I found this odd menu in Deck that said connect to Metro.
After finding out about Metro I bought metro and after a while thought why do I need Deck? So I dumped it.

I had metro 4.5 running on a PB5300 and when I went to 5.0 I found it much zippier.......I could move menu options while in play mode.

I can relate to a 7200/120 as I had a 660AV so the performance may be around the same.

If the 7200 can run an external or second drive you will benefit greatly in performance with audio tracks.

Happy fiddling.