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

Allan Klinbail allank at labyrinth.net.au
Sun Jun 15 04:53:00 EDT 2003


On Sun, 2003-06-15 at 05:24, Brian Redfern wrote:
> 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.

Wow.. doesn't give Ensoniq (now aka EMU & Creative) a good wrap..

The closest I have had to any hardware gear dieing is an output port
going a bit dodgy on a Yamaha DX-27 (fixed with a bit of solder)   and a
button dieing on an RX-5 drum machine.. Oh yeah and losing one of the
rubber bits from the hammer of a Rhodes piano


Never lost a whole machine.. 

> 
> 
> 
> 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
> > 
-- 
Allan Klinbail <allank at labyrinth.net.au>




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