The Midi Thru property window opens when you press the Midi Thru button on the Midi Setup page.

It contains the Thru Mode page shown below, plus a Default Setup page and an optional Session Setup page (depending on your settings).

Midi Thru is the process where Midi events coming into Songtrix via the Midi Input device are also passed directly through to the Midi Output device to be played.

There are two scenarios for Midi Thru, which are treated separately:

• When recording events into segments

• For general workspace use (such as exploring sounds or playing along)

There are several options which affect how Midi Thru operates.  In addition to the controls shown below, there are extra buttons which are common to all property windows.

Controls

Enable For Workspace

Enables or disables Midi Thru for general workspace use.  If enabled, you can adjust how the Workspace Setup is managed.

This option is not available for the Qwerty Keyboard input device, which can be used only for recording.

Retain On Deactivate

Normally Songtrix will maintain the Midi Thru connection even if a different program is the active window on the desktop. 

However other music programs may also have their own Midi Thru systems, causing conflicts.  In this case, you can untick this setting so that Songtrix releases the Midi Thru connection when deactivated, and then resumes it again when a Songtrix window is reactivated.

Enable For Recording

Enables or disabled Midi Thru for recording.  If enabled, the setup of the track being recorded will be used as the Midi Thru setup.

Usually it is helpful to have Midi Thru during recording, except when high input latency or output latency causes delayed event sounds, which can be very distracting.

Workspace Setup

When Midi Thru is enabled for the workspace, you have three options for managing the setup.  This is the collection of Midi controllers which determine the sound output, such as the voice, volume, modulation, reverb and so on.

Some Midi keyboards can send controller messages to adjust the setup, but you may not want the keyboard to have this type of control over Midi Thru.

Ignore Control Changes - Ignores any controller messages coming from the Midi Input.  Midi Thru setup can be updated only from within Songtrix using the Default Setup page.

Update Session Only - Midi Thru starts in each session using the setup specified in the Default Setup page, which can only be updated from within Songtrix. However the piano keyboard can send controllers to change the sound during a  Songtrix session, which are then discarded when the session ends.  You can see the current state in the Session Setup page.

Update Default Setup - Midi Thru uses the setup specified in the Default Setup page, which can be updated by any controllers sent from the piano keyboard.  These new controllers are stored at the end of each session of Songtrix and reinstated when the next session begins.

Midi Output

It may be the case that you have a low-latency hardware Midi Output device on your system, but you prefer the sound of a high-latency software synth.

Since latency is mostly a problem for Midi Thru (when you hear the sound noticeably after you play a note) you can elect to have Midi Thru played through the hardware device, while all other sound output continues to go through your preferred (high-latency) device.

Channel

Specifies which Midi channel you want to use for output of Midi Thru.

You should always allocate it to a channel not being used by the current song, so the best setting is (auto), which automatically avoids the song channels.  However you may have a reason for choosing a particular channel.

Reset

Resets all options to their default settings.