Well, hardware solutions are always more robust 😀

Personally, I think hardware mods are fun!

gdjacobs wrote:

Personally, I think hardware mods are fun!

Gonne pop the thing open and mod it in the next hour. My brother has a better hand with soldering so he's gonna do the soldering for me.

Will post results 😁

Pictures or it didn't happen 😉

I'm also worrying.. Hopefully nothing was occasionally burned... 😵
Well, software solutions are indeed safer.

Which reminds me, Dougal, install Munt (you will need the MT32 ROMS) and test how that works with native Dosbox on OS X.
(You will need to use the Dosbox SVN from my signature because that allows choosing the Coremidi port in the preference file)

Ok, the soldering is beyond my capability or else my soldering iron end is caput.

The issue is definetely beyond a doubt SYSEX not working. Its well documented that most cheap USB to Midi adapters have these issues.

Sooooo, I saw on a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqComjnBZZs this dude says to disable one of the ports. But he isnt using dosbox or gaming. How can I do this on Win7 and DosBox ?

Or maybe there is some custom driver ?

EDIT: MIXER /LISTMIDI gives these devices:

0 "Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth"
1 " USB A"
2 "Midiout 2 (USB A)"

Hence like the video, two devices (ports?) were added. So my guessing is that disabling one of them or whatever like that guy on the video did may fix it

Here I made a short video showing the issue

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2toTAlemvk - This video shows Space Quest. I dont know if that has SYSEX or not (forgot) but it sounds OK though still it is not sounding right.

EDIT: This shows the problem more as I think Space Quest was sounding right: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECos6aVlau4 - Notice no SYSEX and instruments all messed up

Practically every game I tried runs into some issue:

4D Sports Driving(Stunts) - Music is perfect but no sound when driving
Ski Or Die - Music and sound messed up
Lotus III - Title music sounds good - The rest not so good
Monkey Island II does not sound good and no SYSEX
Doom - Sound as it normally sounds without MT2GM (General Midi programming) But when I try to program the MT32 with Playmid MTGM it "hangs" while programing.

etc..

I think that fixing video is just about getting rid of doubled notes. Indeed, when a sysex is sent via both MIDI ports, it turns into a mess from the device PoV and is confidently ignored.
From my experience, both of the ports are equally bad. We don't have to worry about that as DOSBox only opens one of them. Either one I choose, sysexes get lost (with original Windows class-compliant USB-MIDI driver).
The problem with my cable is that it is unbuffered and cannot send more than 3 bytes which is exactly the maximal length of a short MIDI message. Any sysex is screwed when I attempt to send it by the Windows class-compliant driver. In contrast, Linux driver sends long sysex messages by 3-byte packets and in perfect sync, so sysexes are transferred flawlessly.
Fun fact, but my custom driver also removes the second MIDI port as a side effect 😀

BTW, you probably want to know how to debug this kind of issues. My way: I connect two MIDI cables to CM-64 using it as a precious MIDI-thru device. 😀 Luckily, my second MIDI cable has a buffer (though too short for usual MT-32 timbre sysex), so I can receive back the mess I send. MIDI-OX is an example of a tool that allows to send any byte sequence through such a MIDI chain and observe the changes. Obviously, having two quality USB-MIDI cables, you'll receive exactly what you send. But unfortunately these cheap cables are seemingly unbuffered, so (as philscomputerlab also noted) you cannot use them to get MIDI input. 🙁

Would this solve all my issues ?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NEW-Roland-UM-ONE-M … zn4AAOSwcdBWSac~

That's the one Phil recommended in his video.

I'm a bit lost. Dougal, have you tried the "low-cost" cable with Linux? Or do you have more problems with it aside from sysex transmits?

sergm wrote:

I'm a bit lost. Dougal, have you tried the "low-cost" cable with Linux? Or do you have more problems with it aside from sysex transmits?

Not yet tried the Linux. I went on your link but I'm a noob on Linux. How do I install the driver on Ubuntu ?

Dougal wrote:

Would this solve all my issues ?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NEW-Roland-UM-ONE-M … zn4AAOSwcdBWSac~

I have the UM-ONE no problems so far everything i tested with it just worked.
I bought it after the huge fail with the crap cheap adapter.

Dougal, usually you do not have to install drivers for Linux. Either Linux supports a device out of the box or it doesn't support it at all. In case of USB-MIDI, you just look to the available ALSA MIDI ports after the cable gets recognised.

I'm away on holiday now but when I get back I will try the cheap USB MIDI using Linux.

I also just ordered a brand new Roland UM-One MK2. This should definitely be one of the best I guess.

For what it's worth, I've been using the M-Audio Uno for years without a single issue. It's a reliable and cheaper solution than the Roland cable.