MIDI Interface for £2 !

May the computer gods take a liking to you.

Rgds,
Ed

My MidiSport 4x4 has the annoying problem of not "waking" up when I boot the PC. I have to unplug it and then replug it. I'm running Vista32. Any solutions? (No, I can't afford a Mac ) Thanks

My MidiSport 4x4 has the annoying problem of not "waking" up when I boot the PC. I have to unplug it and then replug it. I'm running Vista32. Any solutions? (No, I can't afford a Mac ) Thanks

If it's the class-compliant (newer, uses Windows built in drivers) version, I suspect it's the Vista drivers as I occasionally saw that with my ESI MIDI box too, but never with my older version Midisport4x4 (non-class-compliant). I can't use my 4x4 on x64 so replaced it with the ESI box, but that sometimes takes 15s or so to "wake up" after you start sending MIDI through it...

And the exorbitantly priced Motu Microlite five-way MIDI-USB interface is just as bad under Vista 64-bit.

GrahamH

And M/S says all your worries and cares will be gone with Win7 - right out of the box, First Edition. Yeh, right! And I'm a believer.

Rgds,
Ed

I have been rreading this thread with interest deWaverley.

I would just like to know, if you look in Windows:
"Control Panel -> System -> Device Manager -> Sound, Video and Game Controllers"
can you tell me what name the device appears under?

Thanks

Ken.

Hello Ken - It is just listed as "USB Midi Device", and in Hauptwerk it shows up as "USB Midi : 01"

...and so far it's still working!

deW

Thanks deWaverly for that! I can tell from your answer that yours is different from the ones I had.

Before I completed my present console I tried some of that type of device (I mentioned it in my project account on my music website), and they did indeed work, even with two keyboards and a pedal board sending data through three different MIDI channels through the one device.

Even better they worked with Vista x64. However, they didn't last long as I had two failures of what looked like an ASIC chip on the tiny little PCB inside the devices. That may have been bad luck on my part, but in any event it didn't matter as I only used them during my initial investigations of suitable organ designs and setups.

Thanks again for the response - remember that you are welcome to visit for a chat and a look at my instrument if you wish, as you are only about 8 miles away!

Regards

Ken.

Well I am expecting it to fail really, so every day is a bonus!...and at £2, I feel it's worth giving it a shot.

Many thanks for your kind invitation - I do intend to come over for a cup of tea one day, if I ever get a moment free of child/work/wife/labrador-demands!

deW

child/work/wife/labrador

Interesting priority order. hmmm

Rgds,
Ed

I've been doing some experiments with one of these very cheap units (my pedals interface through one) with some interesting results.

For note-on and note-off messages only it actually copes with a greater message rate than my M-Audio 2496 interface.
Specifically, sending a note on and note off message pair (ie six bytes, no running status, in one burst) the USB unit will
keep up with messages sent almost continuously. The M-audio starts to drop messages unless there is about a 2mS 'breathing
space' between the message pairs.

I'll report back when I've done some more systematic tests (system exclusive, continuous controller, system realtime messages etc).

Also, this has been done so far with no attention to CPU load. This may make an important difference (as Martin pointed out).

Nick

Artisan have advised me that the Edirol USB interface is the only one to support the full protocol and should be used with their system.

Actually that's not quite true. I have already told Red and Mark that the E-MU X-MIDI 2x2 is fine with the Artisan Configer. There are others, but they've not tested them, that's why they're not supported.

As this thread has been resurrected, I had a quick re-read and saw that I had promised to report back on the longevity of these things.

Well the original post was August 2009, so I have been using them now for three and a half years without the slightest problem. During that time, one of them stopped working altogether...but as they only cost £2, I had a spare one ready to go.

So yes, my experience has been entirely positive. But do read Martin's post if you are planning to use them - my good experience with them might be partly because they are attached to a mac pro, which is powerful enough to cope with the 'lack of buffering' issue (but then I should think most of us are using powerful computers with our Hauptwerk setups these days).

deW

I went back to using my old £2 Midi USB on my new computer after the last computer got fried.

The odd note sticks here and there but it seems to work fine.

The odd note sticks here and there but it seems to work fine.

Curious how odd note sticks and seems to work fine can coexist in the same sentence?

Rgds,
Ed