Old round port midi to computer. How is it done?

[Riddemtronic]

Hi everyone, I have an Alesis QuadraSynth Plus Piano and have had no luck in getting midi to linux sound apps. I have older sound cards with the old style joystick/midi input. I have an unknown name midi connector box to plug into joystick port.
I've had no luck getting any signal to computer.
Are there any adapters to usb that would work?

How does one do it? I have zero experience with midi.

Thanks for reading.

Rock on.

[raboof]

Yes, there are MIDI-to-USB connectors. I have the 'M-Audio Midisport 2x2 Anniversary Edition' which basically works plug-and-play. You can probably find them cheaper but that might cost you in latency or missed notes, not sure.

[j_e_f_f_g]

There are Lots of usb-midi interfaces:

http://m-audio.com/products/en_us/Uno.html
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/UMOneMk2
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/ ... 7Aod1Q8AJQ
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/mio

And plenty of cheap knockoffs on ebay like:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-USB-IN-OUT- ... 3ce66403c8

Plus lots of audio interfaces have midi ports too, like focusrite scarlett 2i4. So if you have a crummy audio I/O, then kill 2 birds with 1 stone.

[glowrak guy]

Run these commands, aplay -l and arecord -l

Your output in the brackets, will be the detected midi i/o ports.
(The cable connectors need to be in reverse, hardware midi out to soundcard midi-in,
hardware midi-in, to soundcard midi-out.)


~$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: M2496 [M Audio Audiophile 24/96], device 0: ICE1712 multi [ICE1712 multi]
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

~$ arecord -l
**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 0: M2496 [M Audio Audiophile 24/96], device 0: ICE1712 multi [ICE1712 multi]
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Click the qjackctl midi device widgets on the right side of the gui,
you will see the items shown within in brackets on your command output
from arecord -l and aplay -l

These names can be used in the i/o fields, as well as their
co-responding ID's hw:0,0 hw:1 etc etc.

These ID's can very if audio devices have been added or removed between boots,
adjust as needed.

I have a QS8, and barely missed a steal on a craigslist Quadrasynth a wwhile back
Cheers

[Riddemtronic]

Hi all, thanks for the tips. Looks like the simple adapters should be all I need. I just want to get things like zynaddsubFX, bristol, amsynth running with the Alesis keyboard. I am all about the KISS principle and hassle free. I am nowhere near any kind of pro music guy and just want to play around with sound. Moved away from old jammin' buddies and I normally play regular instruments and am quite a hand drummer. So need to get the computer music thing going in replacement for my music buddies.
I have great audio with good old heavy stereos, Bose and Pioneer and the old full size speakers. Today I just, finally...bought a used amp/mixer to run my electric bass guitar and can port in sequences and loops from the computer while using bass or keys, etc. Seven channel, I scored big time: Peavey XR-700... $100 USD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Unreal...
So my audio quality should be very good, the old Sound Blaster Live and C-Media cards still sound great as I always pump my computer sound output through those killer old analog stereos and now a killer amp/mixer.
Winter around the corner so will be time to dive into the linux music thingy... Still pretty busy outside for awhile though.

Rock on... Thanks again.

[Riddemtronic]

To glowrak guy

Thanks for the commands. I'll try that old joystick/midi sound card input again and try those commands. The round midi to usb looks good too, I just have to round up one of the cheapo ones to begin and learn with.
Time to do the new install thing with some new linux multimedia distros, plug it all together and see how it goes... Still may go for the start tiny and build up custom music linux system and compile all the sound apps from source. Crunchbang? AntiX? NuTyx? Hmmm, the linux dillema, so many cool distros, which ones do I want?

Happy jammin'

[glowrak guy]

To play the zynaddsubfx etc, you only need one midi cable,
midi out on the alesis, to midi-in on a soundcard, and then
select the card in qjackctl.

If you get a chance, an maudio 24/96 pci soundcard used or new,
is a great linux soundcard, fast, stable, it's kernel module is
in every distro, snd_ice1712. There is a dedicated mixer app,
envy24control (or the newer mudita24) Has analog, midi, and spdif i/o.
Price range used $40, to new $100
Stack that firewood, winter will be early, and often
I'm bringing a lot of mine inside, neighbor had a whole cord stolen in
one night! Talk about stealth...it takes 3 good men to do that so quietly.
Cheers

[Riddemtronic]

Hi all, well I just installed Tango Studio, hooked up the old midi box to sound card and QuadraSynth, turned on jackqtl and did the commands as suggested, still nothing. It could be the midi junction box is bad (it was given to me) but, I opened it up to take a look and saw no visible damage, fried components or connections...bad chip maybe? Just a single chip and a bunch of resistors inside.
I will order one of those cheapo usb adapters and try from there...
I started to compile from source ZynAddSubFX, got most dependencies installed fine, a bit of a bug running cmake...and not quite there yet. Compiling can be a real pain, but, I have always had far better performance with compiled apps, especially better with FlightGear, that one is a monster.

Off to the garden, tend those veggies...

Ciao

P.S. On a PCLinuxOS box now, I'll turn on the Tango box later and run those commands and paste the output in here. See if it looks ok to you linux sound wizards...

[glowrak guy]

qjackctl Periods/Buffer setting on the setup panel,
might need to be 3, for a usb device.
Cheers

[Drumfix]

If i remember right those older cards use an mpu401 emulation for their midi ports.
The required driver may not be loaded by default.
check if the command

lsmod | grep mpu

outputs anything having mpu401 in its name.

If not, try the following command:

sudo modprobe snd-mpu401-uart

Edit:
You apparently want to used the midi port of your C-MEDIA Card.
In order to do that you have to add following line to the alsa related file inside directory /etc/modprobe.d:

options snd-cmipci snd_enable_midi=1 mpu_port=0x330

for more info look at

http://alsa.opensrc.org/Cmipci

[Riddemtronic]

Hi Drumfix, here's the terminal output/ Looks like the midi end is up on the card. Now will dive into the rest of it.

bob[~]$ lsmod | grep mpu
snd_mpu401_uart 4871 1 snd_cmipci
snd_rawmidi 14731 1 snd_mpu401_uart
snd 44159 12 snd_hwdep,snd_timer,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi,snd_mpu401_uart,snd_seq_device,snd_cmipci,snd_opl3_lib

Cool alsa site too...


Will get back in here as I can, still much outdoor work going on...thanks.

PS. I am not any kind of linux wizard, self taught and just pick up a bit here and there. I do have bunches of old computers and many different linux systems, using Salix at the moment.

bob[~]$ uname -a
Linux darkstar 3.10.17-smp #2 SMP Wed Oct 23 17:13:14 CDT 2013 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux
bob[~]$