[LAU] Cheap USB MIDI interfaces

[Gabriel M. Beddingfield]

Hi Mark,

Mark Knecht wrote:
> What can a guy buy for $20-$30 that will get MIDI into his laptop?

Musician's friend has 2 @ $30:  CME U2MIDI and E-MU Xmidi 1x1.  I don't know if 
they work with Linux.

Midisport 1x1 USB ($40) - Works great.  Love it.

Midisport Uno ($40) - I've heard that this always works great for normal stuff 
(notes, CC's, PC's) but sometimes will act flaky with sysex.  I think the issues 
are often tied to specific production runs (hardware).  I've heard this from 
Linux, Windows, and Mac users.

For M-audio's midisports, you'll probably need to add a package to load the 
firmware in your favorite distro.  On Debian-based distros the package is called 
"midisport-firmware".

> He's currently distro shopping. Probably he'll go with Ubuntu or CCRMA.

I've heard good things about Ubuntu Studio, and I use (and like) 64 Studio 2.0 
(Debian-based) and 3.0-beta (Ubuntu-based).

Peace,
Gabriel