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Big6120
New Participant
November 27, 2023
Question

Cannot select my Akai MPK Mini 3 midi controller in Audition v24

  • November 27, 2023
  • 2 replies
  • 3260 views

I've been using Adobe Audition for several years, but I just recently bought my first Midi keyboard controller, an Akai MPK Mini 3 25-key controller. and at the same time, I'm moving all my DAW software, files and so on to a brand new HP Envy laptop with Windows 11. I've downloaded all the Akai software and I can see the controller in the device list, and I can hear sounds coming from the keyboard when I use their enclosed MPC Beats lite DAW. But when I star,t up Audition, the directions tell me to go to Edit ==> Preferences ==> Audio Hardware, then I can select the midi controller on the input line.  The Akai controller Keyboard is not on the list. Default Input I see  "System Default - Microphone Array (Inel Smart Sound TeYhnology for Digital Microphone}",  and "Stereo Mix (Realtek Audio)", and finally "No input".   So I'm stuck. you guys don't publish a user manual that I could print and pour over, and I haven't got time for wade thru all the video tutorials you've got on  your support site.  Help!!!

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2 replies

SteveG_AudioMasters_
Community Expert
Community Expert
November 27, 2023

This is the user manual page for MIDI controllers. Unfortunately I think you're going to have some difficulty with assigning keys to functions with the mini mk3 unless you do some serious work. It appears to be possible, but I have to say it doesn't look that easy, and definitely not plug and play. One person appears to have done it, and you can read what he has to say here. Just to be clear, you do realise that Audition only accepts control commands, and doesn't record MIDI music at all, don't you?

Big6120
Big6120Author
New Participant
November 29, 2023

No, I didn't know that about Midi. In fact, I don't know much about MIDI at all. I've been pretty much an analog guy, miking my instruments and running everything thru an analog mixer. I have been using Audition since it was  Cool Edit.  Now I wanted to try Midi so I could find some new sounds. Perhaps I went about this the wrong way, but I first looked at some YouTube videos that made me believe I could just plug & play. If you want to take a look at any of video, these are the YouTube links:

https://youtu.be/eIbnj_UUkZI?si=kGfOyH7W3mFPJp1e

 

https://youtu.be/KsriMKLrQ-Q?si=G_4lHnZLWOTOj-bN

 

https://youtu.be/4revAw3lT4g?si=8fs8htnv0tAg_i3_

 

So, am I missing the point with Midi? Is there no way to use my Akai Mini as an input device in Adobe Audition? Is there anyone that can point to someplace to get better basic knowledge about Midi & DAWs? Pardon my stupidity and thanks in advance.

SteveG_AudioMasters_
Community Expert
Community Expert
November 29, 2023

Video 1: there was no music recorded. The keyboard shows up in the inputs section just because it's a USB connection, and that's a bit misleading, quite frankly. The maker of that video was in for a rude awakening if she tried to record MIDI data in Audition 2019, because it can't. MIDI recording has only ever been possible in one version of Audition - and that was version 3 where it was added as a beta feature. Since then Adobe policy has been that no beta features were to be allowed in released software (a situation rather forced upon them by the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation regarding software 'completeness') so all MIDI keyboard recording was dropped.

 

Video 2: There may have been an audio recording because he likes the internal sounds, but he wasn't using Audition anyway, so that video's moot.

 

Video 3: He's using Reaper!

 

MIDI as far as recording music is concerned only consists of data in the form of turn-on and turn-off note values with some additional values about velocity, etc. It's a very old serial protocol that is now rather outdated - it's  very slow by modern standards (32k). Most DAWs can record it, but Audition can't any more (see above). A lot of people are mightily pissed off about this - mainly because they assumed that it would when they bought it, and then get the Nasty Surprise: Audition isn't Music Creation software. It's an audio editor that now has very strong links with Premiere, and that partly explains the situation; Adobe bought Syntrillium specifically for the audio expertise of its development team, and as Adobe has always been a picture-based company, music creation didn't really come into it. So to state it baldly - Audition will record audio data only - it won't record MIDI data. There has been a convoluted attempt to make it 'cheat' but quite frankly it's not worth considering.

 

Several suggestions have been made - the best one being Rewire - which would let Audition synchronise with a basic external MIDI recorder, and this was also tried with Audition 3. Unfortunately it wasn't that well implemented and that led to a lot of frustration so it got dropped too. Other suggestions included working with timecode in other ways, but that was massively complicated to get working. I tried it once and gave up.

 

The most workable solution has, in fact, been to use Reaper for MIDI input - mainly because it was cheap, I think, but also because its developer was very responsive to suggestions for improvements. And he didn't have to answer to anybody so it all happened quite quickly - people liked that.

 

Where Audition scores in music production is as either a mixing tool, or for mastering. A lot of ProTools users use it for mastering because PT is actually pretty useless for it, as far as I can make out. Obviously, the PT users won't admit that - well not in public, anyway...

Legend
November 27, 2023

You need to go to Edit>Preferences>Control Surface.  Click on the Add button and select whichever of the available control protocols your Akai supports.  Hopefully, one of those which Audition supports/uses will also be used by your controller.