[linux-audio-user] silly midi volume stuff :)

[Brian Redfern]

Sounds like your keyboard is dying, or has something essentially broken,
you might want to look around your local area for someone to fix it, or
think about getting a midi controller that's new, you can get just a
keyboard controller for under $100, probably less than it would cost to
get yours fixed. I used to have an ensoniq mirage that started to slowly
die and stuff went weird like that, until eventually it just died
altogether.



On Sat, 14 Jun 2003, Ryan Underwood wrote:

> 
> Hi,
> 
> I have a MIDI card (Yamaha DB50XG) that I use as a performer for my old
> Ensoniq controller.  It works fine.  However, it seems that the Ensoniq
> keyboard sends the velocity information at only half what it should be
> -- if I pound on the keyboard, the volume is increased from normal
> playing, but still rather quiet.  If I play a midi file through tse3play
> or something similar, the volume is full.
> 
> To get around this problem, I have two sysex files; I cat
> volume_high.syx > /dev/midi when I want to use the keyboard, and cat
> volume_low.syx > /dev/midi when I want to play midi files.  The sysex's
> each set the midi master volume to a level which is comfortable to use
> with either.
> 
> However, this feels like a kludge.  In addition, sometimes annoying
> things happen like after I've been playing the keyboard at its
> comfortable volume, I visit a web page with a MIDI on it, and it plays
> at 250% volume and blasts my ear out.  Or I play a game like DOOM which
> has hardware MIDI support and have to lunge for the volume on my mixer
> to keep from disturbing the neighbours. :)
> 
> The keyboard is a Ensoniq SDP-1 from 1986 or so.  I tried the volume
> setting on the keyboard in the hopes that it would modify the volume of
> the notes sent to the midi card, but it seems to have no effect.  (Is it
> broken possibly?)
> 
> I was thinking about hacking the mpu401 driver so that when midi data is
> received externally, it rewrites the velocity somehow before it reaches
> the midi device.  Or if that isnt possible, when a file is played to
> /dev/midi, after the file sets master volume, reset it to a lower value.
> 
> Thoughts?  Suggestions?  This has been annoying me for a while now. :)
> 
> Thanks,
> -- 
> Ryan Underwood, <nemesis at icequake.net>, icq=10317253
>