USB midi interfaces

[ngstime]

I just wanna say.... I HATE USB MIDI INTERFACES! images/icons/mad.gif (for my mac) this thing is such an unstable piece of _ _ _ _! my old pm8100 had the two serial ports and I ALWAYS! had midi going in and out! There has gotta be a better solution to this then USB. I so sick of losing midi everytime I turn my back. If it was as easy as re-inserting the USB cable, I wouldn\'t mind, or if they updated the drivers so it would work, i\'d be happy there too. but NO! I gotta be stuck with this unstable junk! And I\'ve been using this for how many years! only because I have to! or do I? Is there like a ethernet interface? I wish apple would put the old serials back in.

What are you guys using on your macs?
maybe I just need another USB brand....
what are my other options?


Aaron Dirk
NGS West

[Simon Ravn]

You haven\'t told us which USB interface you use. I use a MIDISport 8x8 running on USB on one of my Giga machines and it works flawlessly.

To answer the ethernet part - yes. Many people on this forum are running MIDIOverLan - check out www.musiclab.com. (\"http://www.musiclab.com.\")

[ngstime]

ummm.... ok, it\'s a midisport. and the MIDIOverLan doesn\'t have midi inputs for my controller. It must be a mac thing, I\'ve emailed M-Audio about this.... nothing.


Aaron Dirk
NGS West

[Simon Ravn]

MIDIOverLan is a PC thing - but they are working on a Mac version.

[ngstime]

Originally posted by Lee Blaske:
I\'ve got five Emagic AMT8\'s networked together on my Mac, and they work great. I\'m also using AMT8\'s with a serial connection on my GS rigs.

Avoid MidiSport USB interfaces for GigaStudio, because they have problems with certain interfaces (like RME). Actually, the problem is most likely not with MidiSport, but with GigaStudio\'s software kernel not playing nice with XP. Tascam has not been able to fix it.

Lee Blaske <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">WOW! 5 of them! thats 640 midi channels! ....sweet.
if you can get 5 of them going \"great\", then goodbye to MIDIsport! it\'s time to pay the dork at guitar center a visit, although I\'ll only get one.

thanks,

Aaron Dirk
NGS West

[ed hamilton]

I have had nothing but problems with midiman usb interfaces on a MAC!!!

They suck eggs. period.
Motu stuff is completely stable for usb midi.

[ngstime]

Originally posted by ed hamilton:
I have had nothing but problems with midiman usb interfaces on a MAC!!!

They suck eggs. period.
Motu stuff is completely stable for usb midi. <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">thanks
I\'m glad i wasn\'t the only one!
yes, they suck big time!

[donimon]

I\'ve got a Midisport 4x4 usb on one Giga PC (With a Gina24) and have been getting all kinds of pops and clicks (Via motherboard). Some people have told me it\'s a known problem with the Midisport. Any ideas?

[dnortana]

Hi Guys,

USB woes seem to pop up on every Giga forum in the world, I guess for good reason.

The advice I got a couple of years or so ago when I was building a Giga PC was to avoid USB like the plague. As a result, I have USB totally disabled on my machine. Maybe this is overkill, but it works for me.

MIDI options then, are either parallel or PCI based. If I were to do it again now, I\'d buy a soundcard with on-board MIDI. As it is, I have a Hammerfall 96/52 soundcard (no MIDI), so I run MIDI through a MOTU Micro Express (parallel).

I\'m quite happy with the result.
Trond

[Lucas]

Has anybody tried it with USB 2.0 yet?
I\'m curious to see if it works any better for midi.

[Scott Cairns]

Has anybody tried it with USB 2.0 yet?

I have USB 2.0 enabled on my motherboard but to be honest I have no idea if it is running anything under that specification. I suspect that the drivers would have to be written to make use of USB 2.O

I run an edirol USB interface on my AMD and midioverlan+ to link my PIII and AMD together.

I havent exhaustively tested the midioverlan+ just yet, but my USB interface is rock solid.

I dont own Mac but I did noticed that a lot of the newer models seem to run mouse, keyboard, modem, printer and just about everything else via USB. Perhaps this is the problem? A computer keyboard and mouse have to be sending more traffic than anything else on the machine surely?

Via USB I run an ADSL modem, midi interface, hardware dongle (for Cubase) and a printer, no problems at all.

Regards, Scott.