Dear Anyone who understands virtual MIDI circuitry

I'm a disabled wannabe composer who has to use a notation package and mouse, because I can't physically play a keyboard. I use Quick Score Elite Level 2 - it doesn't have its own forum - and I'm having one HUGE problem with it that's stopping me from mixing - literally! I can see it IS possible to do what I want with it, I just can't get my outputs and virtual circuitry right.

I've got 2 main multi-sound plug-ins I use with QSE. Sampletank 2.5 with Miroslav Orchestra and Proteus VX. Now if I choose a bunch of sounds from one of them, each sound comes up on its own little stave and slider, complete with places to insert plug-in effects (like EQ and stuff.) So far, so pretty.

So you've got - say - 5 sounds. Each one is on its own stave, so any notes you put on that stave get played by that sound. The staves have controllers so you can control the individual sound's velocity/volume/pan/aftertouch etc. They all work fine. There are also a bunch of spare controller numbers. The documentation with QSE doesn't really go into how you use those. It's a great program but its customer relations need sorting - no forum, Canadian guys who wrote it very rarely answer E-mails in a meaningful way, hence me having to ask this here.

Except the sliders don't DO anything! The only one that does anything is the one the main synth. is on. That's the only one that takes any notice of the effects you use. Which means you're putting the SAME effect on the WHOLE SYNTH, not just on one instrument sound you've chosen from it. Yet the slider the main synth is on looks exactly the same as all the other sliders. The other sliders just slide up and down without changing the output sounds in any way. Neither do any effects plugins you put on the individual sliders change any of the sounds in any way. The only time they work is if you put them on the main slider that the whole synth. is sitting on - and then, of course, the effect's applied to ALL the sounds coming out of that synth, not just the single sound you want to alter.

I DO understand that MIDI isn't sounds, it's instructions to make sounds, but if the slider the whole synth is on works, how do you route the instructions to the other sliders so they accept them, too?

Anyone got any idea WHY the sounds aren't obeying the sliders they're sitting on? Oddly enough, single-shot plug-ins DO obey the sliders perfectly. It's just the multi-sound VSTs who's sounds don't individually want to play ball.

Now when you select a VSTi, you get 2 choices - assign to a track or use All Channels. If you assign it to a track, of course only instructions routed to that track will be picked up by the VSTi. BUT - they only go to the one instrument on that VST channel. So you can then apply effects happily to the sound on Channel One. I can't work out how to route the effects for the instrument on Channel 2 to Channel 2 in the VSTi, and so on. Someone told me on another forum that because I've got everything on All Channels, the effects signals are cancelling eachother out, I can't find out anything about this at the moment.

I know, theoretically, if I had one instance of the whole synth and just used one instrument from each instance, that would work. It does. Thing is, with Sampletank I got Miroslav Orchestra and you can't load PART of Miroslav. It's all or nothing. So if I wanted 12 instruments that way, I'd have to have 12 copies of Miroslav in memory and you just don't get enough memory in a 32 bit PC for that.

To round up. What I'm trying to do is set things up so I can send separate effects - EQ etc - to separate virtual instruments from ONE instance of a multi-sound sampler (Proteus VX or Sampletank.) I know it must be possible because the main synth takes the effects OK, it's just routing them to the individual sounds that's thrown me. I know you get one-shot sound VSTi's, but - no offence to any creators here - the sounds usually aint that good from them. Besides, all my best sounds are in Miroslav/Proteus VX and I just wanted to be able to create/mix pieces using those.

I'm a REAL NOOOB with all this so if anyone answers - keep it simple. Please! If anyone needs more info to answer this, just ask me what info you need and I'll look it up on the program.

Yours respectfully

ulrichburke