26 Jul
2015
26 Jul
'15
6:06 p.m.
Hi,
The card choice is settled. i am hunting for the m-audio card Fred
suggested.
Additionally, I followed enough of that USB midi discussion to decide I
will pass.
I am not the sort of computer user to decide that I am aiming for the next
best upgrade. I choose for stability, like a pencil.
I have no reason for example to pub wifi on this box, Ethernet is just fine.
Thanks for your take,
Karen
On Sun, 26 Jul 2015, Len Ovens wrote:
On Sun, 26 Jul 2015, Karen Lewellen wrote:
Hi,
I would much prefer the pci option than using USB for this, yes.
second I am going to put the computer together for this purpose, meaning
nothing has been chosen. Laughs on the soundblaster idea, but I am new
to this not realizing what good pci cards are supported by debian in
general.
As you are only interested in MIDI, and audio is not needed. The old ensoniq
audio pci cards are one of the best solutions (using the "game port") and
they are known as one of the best quality 16bit cards. However, PCI is not a
forward looking solution so this and the delta1010 really are obsolete. It is
possible to find a computer with pci slots still, but it does take some work.
Almost all newer keyboards come with a USB port as one of their outputs. Some
are better than others I don't know if anyone on the list can point to one
that is better than just having a hw midi to USB inside as a keyboard that is
USB direct from CPU would be better.
The computer side: Use an Intel CPU. The person setting it up should be
willing to find out which of the USB ports on the computer should be used for
this (have their own irq) and which usb ports should therefore never be used
for anything else (often two usb ports are on an internal hub).
I have assumed so far the keyboard has it's own audio section (creates sound)
and the computer will not do so. But probably it may be nice to continue
working on the computer even if the keyboard is not available. So the distro
should be fitted with a lowlatency kernel. Your tech will have to find out
which other things need to be turned off for glitch free sound (some wifi
setups for example... many are just fine)
Probably any of the core series cpu will work just fine if you are using just
a GM softsynth for the user to hear their work. For just listening, latency
is not an issue, but you ever decide to play the keyboard and hear audio from
the computer's softsynth, it is a must. As you do not want any external
boxes... you are left with PCIe cards if the Intel internal audio is not
satifactory (generally audio output is quite good, audio input is not good
enough for anything other than skype).
--
Len Ovens
www.ovenwerks.net