USB to Midi?

[dchurch24]

Does anyone know if it's likely that this will work in UbuntuStudio 8.04?


http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/USB-MIDI-Cable-Ad ... 1|294%3A50

I used to have the m-audio midisport, but it got lost somewhere along the way in two house moves

[thorgal]

I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work. It's like having a USB cable from a MIDI controller to your PC, like in most digital pianos. ALSA supports MIDI through USB.

[SR]

Looks similar to this one that I use that works great:

http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/pr ... sku=700698

[dchurch24]

Excellent - thanks guys.

At that price I'll give it a go in any case - I just can't stretch to replace the m-audio one I had - had to shell out to get my car repaired this month, so elecronics and music equipment have to be put on hold for a bit or my girlfriend will extract my manhood with a blunt spoon.

[Nyrup]

Hi
It's very cheep indeed, but what about drivers? Does Linux support it out of the box?
I bought an Roland Edirol UM-1EX which seems to work without any problems because
I by then couldn't get my Midisport 4x4 to work. Now I have read that it's something
about a firmwareloader that I need to install, but I have not yet tried that.
But is there some kind of "generic driver" for simple USB-MIDI interfaces in Linux?
Kind regard
Nyrup

[thorgal]

Hej Nyrup,
The very 1st time I tried MIDI through USB was about 3 years ago. My girlfriend and I were renting a digital piano for practice (Kawai CA5) which came with a MIDI through USB output. So I plugged a USB cable from the piano to my old laptop. I opened rosegarden for the 1st time in my life, and things just worked out by themselves, I recorded MIDI notes (some Beethoven stuff that I could barely play at the time) and it saved that OK, I could then export to some lilypond rendering, and it looked quite nice, like a real music sheet but it was rubbish (time signature wrong, tempo completely random, it was free playing, and as far as I could see, this was no piano music sheet, as it was single-staff'ed). But anyway, it was just to show my girlfriend what one could do. I didn't know how to read notes so all this was just a proof of concept. I could play back the MIDI track by sending the rosegarden MIDI events through the USB cable which triggered the digital piano sounds.

Conclusion: all that was needed was a USB cable. ALSA was supporting MIDI through USB. No firmware needed, nothing else. But some controllers need some firmware for some reason or another. So YMMV

[raboof]

but what about drivers? Does Linux support it out of the box? I bought an Roland Edirol UM-1EX which seems to work without any problems because I by then couldn't get my Midisport 4x4 to work. Now I have read that it's something about a firmwareloader that I need to install, but I have not yet tried that. But is there some kind of "generic driver" for simple USB-MIDI interfaces in Linux?

There is a 'generic driver' (snd-usb-midi), which should work with 'standards-compliant' devices.

Indeed, for some midisport devices, you need the http://usb-midi-fw.sourceforge.net/firmware ('midisport-firmware' package in ubuntu). Mine worked out-of-the-box though.