Patches and discussion for Ensoniq VFX family

I am new to all this so your indulgence  would be appreciated.
I would like to simply and inexpensively interface with Dell latitude D600 laptop PC.

On Wed, Nov 04, 2009 at 05:05:12PM -0000, bigcowboytim wrote:
> I am new to all this so your indulgence  would be appreciated.
> I would like to simply and inexpensively interface with Dell latitude D600 laptop PC.

bigcowboytim,

Summary: 1. Any brand name cable will probably suit you.  2. You'll be
disappointed with the cheap Ebay knock-off cables.  3. Consider
whether you'll eventually need a USB audio interface, as some of them
include a MIDI interface basically for free.

You'll probably be OK with any brand-name midi interface, at this
level also referred to as a usb to midi cable.  By brand names, I mean
Emu, M-Audio, roland, etc.  I see an emu cable on clearance for $30 on
musiciansfriend.com.

There are CHEAP usb midi cables on ebay, probably availble elsewhere.
I DO NOT recommend them.  If you look closely, they all seem to be the
same knock-off under different labels.  The one I tried has a bug
where MIDI running status does not get decoded correctly.

That sounds like an essoteric feature; last time I mentioned this many
people confused it with active sensing, which is a little used feature
that is not what I'm talking about.

Instead, this is a commonly used feature, where the first ("status")
byte of a message can be left out for subsequent messages where the
status byte would be the same.  So the sequence "NoteOn/Channel1 Note1
Velocity1" "NoteOn/Channel1 Note2 Velocity2" can be sent as
"NoteOn/Channel1 Note1 Velocity1 Note2 Velocity2".  (The first way is
6 bytes, the second way is 5 bytes.)

That's a lot of technical info that you really don't need to know.

But the result is that with these cheap knock-off midi cables, playing
my VFX into my computer, the computer only sees the first note of a
chord, not the second or subsequent notes.  In fact it doesn't see any
more notes until you let other notes up, and you can get stuck notes.
Maybe OK if you only play one note at a time, but I don't.  I verified
all this with Midi-OX.

I don't know what kind of horsepower your particular laptop has, but
if think you might get into audio recording with it as well, many
audio interaces come with a built in midi port that will work fine as
well.  For example, the well known tascam us-122 looks like it can be
had for around $70 on ebay; subtract the $30 you'd be paying for a
midi cable and you're only paying $40 extra for a decent audio
interface (but you've got the whole used vs. new thing to deal with; a
new, current version us-122 is around $130).

I haven't used any product mentioned above excpet the china knock-off
cable.  I have used older PC's with the game-cable midi ports, an Emu
1212m (PCI audio interface with midi), an M-audio quattro, and now
have an MOTU 8pre.  

All but the last two wouldn't work with your laptop.  The quattro is
available used but I've run into driver issues with it, and have heard
the tascam is much less troublesome, more versatile, and has a rep for
quality.  The 8pre I wouldn't count as inexpensive.

--> Steve
-- 
Steve Wahl    steve@...

<classyhorse23>  I had to google "jfgi" to see what it meant. The irony
is overwhelming.
    -- bash.org #761884

On Wed, 2009-11-04 at 17:05 +0000, bigcowboytim wrote:
> I am new to all this so your indulgence  would be appreciated.
> I would like to simply and inexpensively interface with Dell latitude D600 laptop PC.
> 

Pretty much any USB MIDI interface will work.  If it comes with a driver
CD, don't buy it.

Gordon MM0YEQ

""Pretty much any USB MIDI interface will work. If it comes with a driver
CD, don't buy it.""

My humble opinion?  Ignore that last piece of advice.

The Edirol (Roland) USB midi interface comes with driver software to 
make it talk to Windows in a much more efficient way than any default 
driver would AND, in the owners manual (you remember some woman telling 
you what one of those is.....:)  there are a number of Windows tweaks 
suggested that also improve the efficiency of the device out of sight.

And by "efficiency" what I'm talking about is "latency". The inherent 
delay that is ALWAYS present between the time your finger hits the key 
on your midi keyboard, and the computer (or external device) getting 
hold of that piece of information.  The object of the exercise in any 
midi system is to reduce this latency to imperceptible times. - WHICH 
THE ROLAND DOES PARTICULARLY WELL ON PC!!!!! - And it's very cheap!!

I use Logic Studio on a Mac with an Emagic midi interface - which has 
it's driver at the very heart of the Mac operating system, and 
perceptible latency is (by design) impossible.

On my Dell D800 (ironic) I had to work very hard to get a system that 
was acceptable. On a PC the machine is SOOOOO bogged down with Virus 
checkers and auto-this and auto-upgrade-that, that you have to fight 
hard to get it's attention!!  The Edirol does all that stuff well.

(oh and by the way, I used to own the company that imported Logic and 
Protools into Australia, I kinda know this stuff a bit  :)


cheers

Soundthinker

I have the Tascam  US-144, I paid $70 used for it (you see quite a few 
US-122s and US-144s on craigslist here in L.A.). ITs nothing special, but it 
works well, and the audio portion is pretty low latency.

----- Original Message ----- 

From: "Steve Wahl" <steve@...>
To: <Ensoniq-VFX-SD@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2009 9:59 AM
Subject: Re: [Ensoniq-VFX-SD] Midi interface

> I don't know what kind of horsepower your particular laptop has, but
> if think you might get into audio recording with it as well, many
> audio interaces come with a built in midi port that will work fine as
> well.  For example, the well known tascam us-122 looks like it can be
> had for around $70 on ebay; subtract the $30 you'd be paying for a
> midi cable and you're only paying $40 extra for a decent audio
> interface (but you've got the whole used vs. new thing to deal with; a
> new, current version us-122 is around $130).
>