My friend Greg Blake helped me through this process. Greg has been using this type of technology for years when composing scores for movies, videos and Flash. Here is what he said:

Default MIDI Input

The physical MIDI out of your M-Audio keyboard needs to go into the MIDI in of the Tascam FW-1082; the FW-1082 has two MIDI inputs, so you might as well use MIDI IN 1. I'm not sure if this is necessary but it will provide extra flexibility.

Nuendo will look at the input ports of the FW-1082 for any incoming MIDI signal, which will be forwarded from from your keyboard controller. Unless the M-Audio 88es keyboard has built-in sounds that you want to hear (and it does not), it doesn't need to have MIDI going into it nor should it be assigned as a MIDI in.

The MIDI Output doesn't need to be connected unless it is going to some kind of outboard MIDI gear.

Once you've configured this, you should see some activity on the right side of the transport panel when you play the keyboard.

Set up a project

Put the 1082 into computer mode.

After you have set the MIDI Inputs as described above, start a new project, press F11 and add a simple Virtual Instrument like the Emagic EVP 73 electric piano or the LM drums that comes with Nuendo. Add a MIDI track - PROJECT/ADD TRACK/MIDI. In the MIDI track that you have just created, rename it from MIDI 01 to piano or whatever, for clarity. On the far left in the track inspector, you will see MIDI: All Inputs - this is ok as long as you've made the changes to the MIDI Inputs as described above. To be sure, click on the down arrow to see if the FW-1082 ports are present - it should say FW-1082 Port 1, Port 2 etc. If it does, you are good for MIDI inputs. Directly below that it will say OUTPUT: FW1082. What we want, however, is the signal to go to the virtual instrument you have selected so change it to the EVP 73 or whatever simple virtual instrument you have selected. Immediately below that, make sure the channel is set to channel 1 or ANY. Some virtual instruments will not respond to channels other than 1 - which ANY includes.

Enable Recording

The final thing you need to do is arm the track for recording. You can do this from a couple of places - the first place is the track inspector on the left side using the round button with the red dot in the middle. This can also be done in the Mixer (which is what I do.) You can get to the Mixer by clicking DEVICES/MIXER or pressing F3. You will see the channel strip with the name you gave to the MIDI channel with the same enable record button. You might ask, why so many steps - well Nuendo is built with a professional studio in mind and the connections setup is very much like a pro studio. The record arming is to prevent you from inadvertently recording over existing music, so its a good thing.

Screen shots

Here is a complete set of screen shots for Devices, Midi Device Manager and Device Setup.

The Tascam FW-1082 input connections are:

1. Microphone
2. Classical guitar

The MIDI keyboard controller is plugged into the FW-1082's MIDI input 1. Devices are:

Midi Device Manager shows:

I don't hear output with this setup:

BTW, if the Tascam FW-1082 is turned off while Cubase is running, the ASIO driver is unloaded and the computer must be rebooted before the mixer works again.