Hi, two more basic questions, sorry to pester. 3) How do I get any instrument tracks (MIDI) to play out to external (physical real-world- plastic-and-metal) synths via my interface? Where is that selection/setting? 4) For that matter, how can I control other MIDI apps that respond to MIDI? (I'll bet the answer is a donationware Midi routing app) In my case, in trying to send notes to Reaktor 5.1.2. It seems sidechaining is not available in Logic Express, therefore I can't use vocoders. But the vocoder works perfect in Reaktor when opened as a Standalone app. So, if I can get MIDI streaming from Logic to Reaktor, I'm golden; I'll just use Reaktor's record box to capture to resulting audio file and port the .aif to Logic. I think at times like this, Maybe I'm just too oldschool for this stuff... I was a MasterTracksPro junky for years; and that was after my Atari Dr.T's days. I'm just getting into true DAW work. Thanks for your replies in advance. ~Robb

If you connect a synth to your computer's MIDI interface, and the MIDI Interface is registered in Logic, then Logic would be able to send MIDI to the synth from an Instrument Track. Logic is pretty good at this. I am not sure how you would get Reaktor to work over MIDI though.

I use Logic Express 7.2 and I figured out a way to run the Reaktor 5 vocoder. Reaktor, like most software vocoders, needs a left and right signal. One is for the carrier, and one for the modulator. Assign two seperate audio tracks, one panned hard right and the other left, to a bus in logic . Open Reaktor and vocoder as an insert on the bus, set up the ensemble ins and outs as usual , and it works. If it doesn't sound right, switch the carrier and modulator around by switching the pan directions or switching the ins around on the vocoder. This worked fine for me when using audio instruments and pre recorded files, but when I needed to use live hardware the busses would not pick up the signal, I don't know why. So I used the seperate outs on my sound card the same way I would use a bus on logic , and ran that back into my mixer. Works great. Nice presets on this vocoder, learning to edit them will be another challenge.