When I was reading Epsilon's excellent blog I was reminded of a question I've had for some time. I know there are some music people on this forum. This is a USB question for any platform. I used to have a lot of fun with Music-X on my Amiga 2000. Then I switched to Cakewalk on my PC. There were various interfaces: the parallel port on the Amiga 2000, joystick / MIDI port on the PC. Now most interfaces are USB based. One thing that's fun is having the piano sound coming directly from my electric piano, and one or more instruments coming from the computer. You can play in real time accompanied by several additional instruments. The last time I tried it was with Cakewalk on a USB2 (I think) MIDI device on an ASUS EeePC netbook. There seemed to be a lag between the direct piano sound and the instruments from the PC. Is USB2 fast enough to do this? It would have to be pretty instantaneous. If USB2 is fast enough, the lag must come from some other source. It seems I could do it on my Amiga 2000. I thought you don't need a powerhouse computer for MIDI. The USB MIDI device connects to the keyboard by the standard MIDI IN/OUT round 5-pin plugs.

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@thinkchip

USB2 is fast enough.
USB1 is fast enough.
The delay you experienced may have been from the driver, or possibly because some interface drivers have a preset "delay" option.

While I don't use windows much, I know that most windows users opt for proprietary drivers instead of the built-in windows drivers, both for performance issues and because the built in drivers are not "multi-client" capable.

On most Amiga-like platforms, CAMD is accepted as the standard MIDI library. CAMD is by definition multi-client capable. I know that there is a "Class Compatible" USB to MIDI driver for OS4, I assume the others may have a similar driver.

Please note that these "class compatible" drivers will only work with "Class Compatible" equipment. Some devices follow the standard, some do not. Most that do offer a switch to select, to give them an easy way to abandon the windows standard drivers.

If you'd like to know about the compatibility of any specific equipment, you have three choices:
If it is advertised as working with the builtin OS drivers, it should work.
If it appears in USB Inspector as "Audio Class, Subclass 3", it should work.
If you reply with the brand and model number, I can probably tell you directly.

The "5 Pin plug" was the standard for MIDI connections. Nowadays, many devices have just a USB connection instead.

Finally, the need for an external synthesizer has always been the biggest obstacle to gettting an Amiga to make music with MIDI. There is now a beta release of "SoftSyn", a CAMD software synthesizer available for OS4. It is still early beta, but it allows the user to play MIDI music directly through AHI without any external MIDI gear.
Since it is CAMD capable, it should work with any CAMD programs that look for CAMD linkages to MIDI equipment.

Last edited by lylehaze on 08-Aug-2012 at 11:47 PM.

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