The bargain basement USB MIDI adapters are very often incomplete, sometimes without an opto-isolater. They can be fixed, however. Furthermore, they have a glitchy UART which requires a driver fix to work around. I'm not aware of what's available for Windows, but the Linux driver successfully fragments long SYSEX messages and transmits them cleanly.

Honestly, considering you can pick up Roland's cheapest USB/MIDI adapter for about 40 bucks NEW, and some of their older ones (e.g. Super MPU-64 aka UM-4) for much less second-hand, why would you even bother taking your chances with such cheap no-name junk?

Another inexpensive option is the M-Audio MidiSport Uno .

gdjacobs wrote:

The bargain basement USB MIDI adapters are very often incomplete, sometimes without an opto-isolater. They can be fixed, however.

I tried it, yeah 😀

gdjacobs wrote:

Furthermore, they have a glitchy UART which requires a driver fix to work around. I'm not aware of what's available for Windows, but the Linux driver successfully fragments long SYSEX messages and transmits them cleanly.

Can this cause my issue? That the MidiPlayer4 (or Munt) on my laptop stops receiving the signal.

darry wrote:

Another inexpensive option is the M-Audio MidiSport Uno .

Yeah, I ordered one. Will get it on tuesday and try it out. I'll return it to the store if it won't work.

So given I use Uno, do I need anything special to connect it to my sound card or just a simple DB15 to DIN5 will suffice (with / without resistors - kinda like I did with that cheap one)?
I really don't want to order one from ebay for 23$ if it's just some cables and connectors.

And thanks for the replies 😀

Your DB15 to DIN only needs the output circuit. Feel free to use a TTL chip for the buffer, or even a transistor based emitter follower (no collector resistor, something like 80 ohm emitter resistor, 5V supply voltage, 220 ohm resistor to the output).

gdjacobs wrote:

Your DB15 to DIN only needs the output circuit. Feel free to use a TTL chip for the buffer, or even a transistor based emitter follower (no collector resistor, something like 80 ohm emitter resistor, 5V supply voltage, 220 ohm resistor to the output).

Nice, thanks! So I'll just use my 74LS00 (I bought a couple of them in case something went south 😀), should be OK, right? As per Jeff Glatt's schematics.
Will give it a go tomorrow when I get the M-Audio Uno.

Yes, the 74LS00 should handle the clock required.

I got the M-Audio Midisport Uno today and tested it. Works great! Previously even when that cheap cable was working it played poorly in some cases (for instance in Dune 2, everything was a mess) - now almost perfect.
One thing that happened is once after a session with Munt, after switching to Soundfonts / VST midi tracks were all messed up. After replugging the USB cable the effect stopped and everything went back to normal, wierd.
Thanks for the help 😀

EDIT: I spent some more time testing and had to ditch my old laptop. It seems it did not work well enough even with M-Audio cable. Failed to play the proper notes... after 2 days of trial and error testing (soldering resistors, buffers and stuff) I discovered prosaic thing. It works almost flawlessly via USB 3, but with USB 2 it's a mess.

Sorry for double posting. If someone by any chance tries to do what I did I have a little advice - use Roland UM-ONE cable.

After initial success with M-Audio cable I ran into some issues in couple of games (for instance Master of Magic or X-com - Terror from the Deep). After some time playing (undetermined amount of time) tunes start to sound messy even using USB3 connection - wrong instruments, hanging notes etc. Initially I though it might've been my gameport - midi out cable or perhaps the buffer wasn't good enough. Tried without it and changed from 74LS00 to 74LS132 IC - nothing changed.

So I went out and bought Roland UM-ONE MK2 today... after few hours of testing I encountered no issues, also USB2 and my old Core 2 Duo laptop was doing great (when previously it was unusable with M-Audio UNO).
On M-Audio Midisport UNO games supporting Roland MT-32 were running fine (though Munt) but in some cases I had to use SoftMPU - for instance Dune 1 was a game that sounded messy without SoftMPU enabled. With Roland UM-ONE there's no need to load SoftMPU for it.

So... there's that. TL;DR - use Roland 😀

Khaal wrote:

If someone by any chance tries to do what I did I have a little advice - use Roland UM-ONE cable.

Yeah, I bought one just yesterday, and now I'm even more glad, that I went for it, and not for some other cheapo knock off 😀