Proteus wrote:I have Notion 3 on on a PC using Windows 7, also on an Imac too. I have tried on both computers to export files in Audio, Midi and Xml forms but when saved to disc I cannot get then to play.
I have Itunes and Realplayer on my Macintosh computer and Windows Media Player on my PC.
I feel I have followed the instructions from the Notion Manual to the letter so where am I going wrong?
On the Mac, the exported Notion 3 audio will be a WAVE file (.WAV), and it will play in iTunes when you double-click on the .WAV file . . .
Once the .WAV file starts playing in iTunes, you can find it in the "Music" folder and then right-click on the file name where there will be an option to create an MP3 file, which takes just a few seconds . . .
You can change the quality of the MP3 file by setting it to a custom quality, which is the way I have iTunes set for creating MP3 files . . .
If this is not working on your Mac, then there are several possibilities, all of which involve various system configuration settings and preferences . . .
Because you have RealPlayer on the Mac, it probably changed the defaults for playing audio files so that instead of iTunes being the default audio player, RealPlayer is the default audio player, so if this is what happened it is possible that RealPlayer cannot handle .WAV files, although perhaps not . . .
Another possibility is that you have the Mac audio output set to headphones but there are no headphones connected to your Mac . . .
QUESTION: When you play a song directly in Notion 3, do you hear the audio? These are the key bits of information for configuring your Mac:
(1) In Notion 3, when you click on "NOTION" at the top left of the screen just to the right of the tiny Apple icon, there will be a "Preferences" menu item, which you will click. The "Audio" tab panel should look like this:
(2) When you have a song open in Notion 3 with no subset of measures specifically selected (very important), when you click on "Export Audio", the dialog box should look like this:
[
NOTE: Observe that the "Bit-depth" is set to "16-bit", since this is very important. The reason is that everything is 16-bits, so if you set the "Bit-depth" to a higher setting, what happens is that instead of the sound quality increasing, it actually decreases, because converting 16-bit audio to a higher resolution (for example, 24-bit audio) requires some combination of dithering, expanding, and whatever, all of which basically adds noise and hiss and reduces the quality of the audio. This is not the most scientific explanation, but the concept is correct. I tend to forget all the details, but I discovered this a few years ago when I was reading the user manual for Digital Performer (MOTU), and I think that I summarized the information sufficiently well. The audio generated by Notion 3 is standard CD quality, which maps to 44.1-Hz at 16-bits, and this is the correct setting for exporting audio from Notion 3. It is somewhat intuitive to think that increasing the resolution to 24-bits or higher will make the audio sound better, but in this instance intuition is wrong, because it makes it sound worse or perhaps inaudible. I use IK Multimedia virtual instruments, and all the IK Multimedia virtual instruments are standard CD quality (44.1-Hz at 16-bits), so trying to force it to a higher resolution not only makes no sense but simply does not work. And while a lot of folks think that 64-bit operating systems and higher resolution audio are spanky, the reality is that virtually everything at best is standard CD quality. There is nothing wrong with standard CD quality audio, and most popular music is heard either on radio, YouTube, or iTunes (iPad, iPod, iPhone), and it is MP3 quality or whatever. "Bad Romance" (Lady Gaga) has approximately 383 million plays on YouTube in the US, and this is a big clue from my perspective. Of course, if your interest is in doing something other than creating hit songs, then there might be other considerations, but so what . . . ]
(3) If you open "System Preferences" on your Mac and select "Sound", which is found in the second row "Hardware" at the far right, the dialog box will look like this when you have headphones connected to your Mac:
(4) Start iTunes on the Mac, and then click on "iTunes" just to the right of the Apple icon at the top-left of the display, where there will be a "Preferences" menu item, which you will click . . .
The "General" panel will look like this:
This is where you set the quality of MP3 files that you create, and in one of the most mind-bogglingly confusing bits of user-interface design in the known universe, the way you specify MP3 quality is to click on the "Import Settings" button, which is to the right of the "When you insert a CD:" line. This displays the following dialog box, which will look similar to this, but it might have different settings:
(4.1) You want the "Import Using" item to be set as shown in the screen capture ("MP3 Encoder) . . .
(4.2) You want the "Setting" item to be set as shown, so you will need to scroll through the list and click on "Custom . . . ", which will cause a pop-up panel to be displayed, and it will look like this when properly set:
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NOTE: This is the way I have iTunes configured on my 2.8-GHz 8-core Mac Pro, and it works nicely. The actual stereo bit rate often is higher when you create an MP3 in iTunes, so the "256 kbps" value is fine. If you set it to the highest possible value "320 kbps", then the MP3 files are larger but there is no vast increase in quality, so my perspective is that "256 kbps" is fine, and it is what I use . . . ]
(5) While still in the iTunes "Preferences" dialog, when you click on the "Playback" tab, it will display a panel that looks like this:
It is very important to uncheck the "Crossfade Songs", "Sound Enhancer", and "Sound Check" options (
as shown in the screen capture), since these alter the way songs sound, and you want to hear your songs as they actually are rather than with enhanced sound and other stuff added or done by iTunes . . .
(6) In iTunes, it also is important to avoid using Equalizer settings, since the Equalizer will change the way your songs sound if you are using it, and again you want to hear your songs as they are recorded rather than as enhanced or altered by the iTunes Equalizer . . .
(7) In the event that RealPlayer has changed your Mac audio settings, there is a simple way to get the audio settings for WAVE (.WAV) and MP3 files set to iTunes . . .
(7.1) Locate an MP3 (.mp3) file in Finder and right-click on the file name, followed by selecting the "Get Info" menu item . . .
This will display the "Get Info" information for the file, and somewhere in the middle there will be a section that looks similar to this:
(7.1) If the item selected in "Open with" is set to RealPlayer, then you want to change it to "ITunes.app" or "iTunes", depending on whether your Mac is set to show file extensions . . .
(7.2) Once you have the "Open with" item set to "iTunes.app" or "iTunes", you will click on the "Change All . . . " button, which makes iTunes the default application for playing MP3 files . . .
There are other ways to do it, but this is the easiest way . . .
You also will want to do this for WAVE (.wav) files, so repeat steps (7.1) and (7.2) but do it for a WAVE (.wav) file rather than for an MP3 (.mp3) file . . .
SUMMARYOnce you do all that stuff, then you should start hearing the Notion 3 exported WAVE (.wav) files, and you will be able to use iTunes to create MP3 versions of your Notion 3 exported WAVE (.wav) files . . .
For example, this is the MP3 file for "(Baby You Were) Only Dreaming" (The Surf Whammys), which is the current song I am doing in Notion 3 and Digital Performer 7 (MOTU), where The Surf Whammys are my pretend
Rock and Roll band, although at present The Surf Whammys are focused on
DISCO and
Pop songs about ladies underpants, since while I really like Lady Gaga's hit song "Bad Romance" it really annoys me that there is no lead guitar solo, so I decided to spank all the
DISCO and
Pop ladies (Christina Aguilera, Beyoncé, Miley Cyrus, Ke$ha, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears)
metaphorically by doing an album of silly songs about ladies underpants, which I already had started doing after being a tiny bit annoyed by Angela Gossow (lead singer for Arch Enemy) singing a song that included the lyrical phrase "carnivorous Jesus", really . . .
"(I Want) Angela Gossow's Underpants (Ya-Ya-Ya)" (The Surf Whammys) -- YouTube music video"(Baby You Were) Only Dreaming" (The Surf Whammys) -- Basic Rhythm Section (May 25, 2011) -- MP3 (9.4MB, 280-kbps [VBR], approximately 4 minutes and 35 seconds)"I'm Going Goo-Goo Over Ga-Ga" (The Surf Whammys) -- MP3 (9.6MB, 290-kbps [VBR], approximately 4 minutes and 30 seconds)Really! The reality at the dawn of the early-21st century is that when a lady singer annoys me by not having a lead guitar solo or by singing something that makes no sense, I compose and record a silly
DISCO or
Pop song about her underpants . . .
Explained another way, Andy Warhol did Campbell Soup Cans, but I do ladies underpants songs, which is fabulous . . .
Fabulous!