26 Jul
2018
26 Jul
'18
6:26 p.m.
"Jeanette C." <julien(a)mail.upb.de> writes:
Hey hey,
I have several keyboards now, which come with their built-in USB-MIDI
interface (four to be precise) and I have three more synths that need
to be connected to MIDI. For the latter I use USB-MIDI adapter
cables. Alas, I also have other USB devices, which need to be
connected, not least my braille display.
So, what would be the cheapest/best alternative to hook up all those
MIDI devices? A bigger USB-hub? Is it possible to have more than four
ports on a hub anyway?
Due to technical restrictions MIDI-chaining is no option.
All my devices have standard 5pin MIDI DIN sockets, so some kind of
USB-MIDI interface would be possible. Only two of the synth need to be
connected as inuts, all the other would only receive output (being
modules).
What would be viable and inexpensive options to get all these device
connected to the computer?
I use a Roland UM-4 myself which hooks up 4 Midi devices (actually, 4in,
4out) to one USB port (full-speed, so 12Mbps, USB1.1 speeds). Those are
reasonably cheap to get if you can find them on Ebay. If you want to
hook up several ones of those via a USB hub, make sure that this hub has
a separate "Transaction translator" per port so that a USB1.1
transaction from one Midi interface does not keep other transactions
from happening: the 12Mbps limitation should only be per Midi interface,
not per aggregating hub which can talk at 480Mbps to the computer. That
way you keep latencies limited.
I think that 8-fold Midi interfaces are rather rare, so you are likely
best off looking for the 4-fold ones.
Do not use the cheap Chinese Midi interfaces with a violin clef printed
on them: they garble SysEx messages. I am not sure they are even "full
speed".
--
David Kastrup