Maybe a Live! or Audigy card with the kX driver?

Kamerat wrote:

Maybe a Live! or Audigy card with the kX driver?

Do Audigies have MIDI ports? Maybe they have those as a breakout?

I do have a CT4830 I could repurpose for this, but is there a utility that would allow me to route Live! kX drivers' WAVE Out to the Xonar DG's AUX In (Or Line In or whatever) in the Windows mixer?

RME professional internal sound cards still have MIDI in some cases: http://www.rme-audio.de/en/products.php

HDSP-9652
HDSP-9632
HDSPe MADI FX
HDSPe MADI
HDSPe AES
HDSPe RayDAT
HDSPe AIO

Otherwise, if you can still find them , some of ESI's Maya and Juli@ sound cards have MIDI - they're only out of production for a year or two now...

appiah4 wrote:

I know USB MIDI is an option, but I would rather not go that route as it is its own can of worms..

Why do you think that would be a can of worms?
I've been using USB MIDI for many years, semi-professionally, with an E-mu 0404 USB, and never had a problem. Works as well as any PCI card I had before that.
Pretty sure even the simple Roland USB cables would do the job just fine.
I mean, we're talking MIDI here, a standard originally built with simple 70s technology. Just a 31.25 kbps serial connection, basically a variation on RS232.

Some combinations of computers and USB MIDI interfaces have serious timing issues (in some cases this is entirely due to the MIDI drivers and/or interface).

Simple advice:
- Don't cheap out on the MIDI interface.
- Don't get a no-name Chinese interface.
- If buying a vintage USB MIDI interface, do your research first.

yawetaG wrote:

Some combinations of computers and USB MIDI interfaces have serious timing issues (in some cases this is entirely due to the MID […]
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Some combinations of computers and USB MIDI interfaces have serious timing issues (in some cases this is entirely due to the MIDI drivers and/or interface).

Simple advice:
- Don't cheap out on the MIDI interface.
- Don't get a no-name Chinese interface.
- If buying a vintage USB MIDI interface, do your research first.

Yea, most importantly: if you use a decent interface, with decent drivers (Roland, E-mu etc), then USB MIDI will work fine.
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if most musicians use USB MIDI these days. They generally use laptops these days (especially DJs traveling the world), so PCIe cards aren't an option to begin with (which is why they're so rare these days, I suppose). It's USB or FireWire, but it seems that FireWire has gone out of style years ago, since I don't see it as standard on the average laptop anymore.

Also, avoid VIA USB controllers like the plague. I had lots of problems with my Athlon back in the day, with a KT133A chipset. Its USB implementation was useless for audio use (heck, the PCI implementation was worthless as well, because even my Terratec EWX24/96 card was acting up in that machine).

Wow, the options for a PCI card is really limited isn't it? The best I could come across is an X-Fi XtremeMusic, which I will actually grab, but I think I will try using my Dreamblaster X3MB as a USB MIDI interface for a while first.

appiah4 wrote:

I know USB MIDI is an option, but I would rather not go that route as it is its own can of worms..

?
MIDI is just a crappy slow serial port, nothing special

Scali wrote:

I mean, we're talking MIDI here, a standard originally built with simple 70s technology. Just a 31.25 kbps serial connection, basically a variation on RS232.

exactly

as for gameport, there are usb converters for old joysticks

I've had terrible USB Midi latency issues with my mainboard's USB 2.0 (AMD 970) or USB 3.0 (ASMedia) ports so I would rather not try to fix that if I can just drop in a PCI card..

appiah4 wrote:

I've had terrible USB Midi latency issues with my mainboard's USB 2.0 (AMD 970) or USB 3.0 (ASMedia) ports so I would rather not try to fix that if I can just drop in a PCI card..

Perhaps dropping in a PCI USB card is your answer? 😀

appiah4 wrote:

Do Audigies have MIDI ports? Maybe they have those as a breakout?

Yes, they need a DB15 breakout cable. They also got a second MIDI interface on the AD_EXT connector (at least the Audigy 2 ZS does).

appiah4 wrote:

Wow, the options for a PCI card is really limited isn't it? The best I could come across is an X-Fi XtremeMusic, which I will actually grab, but I think I will try using my Dreamblaster X3MB as a USB MIDI interface for a while first.

If you look closely at the back of the X-Fi XtremeMusic it ain't no DB15 connector you see. Report back how it went with the X3MB then.

Kamerat wrote:

If you look closely at the back of the X-Fi XtremeMusic it ain't no DB15 connector you see. Report back how it went with the X3MB then.

*facepalm*

...

So ashamed.

Looking for an Audigy 2 ZS Platinum with external breakout box right now..

If you are looking for using MIDI on a modern PC what you want is an external audio interface w/ MIDI or just an external MIDI interface. There are loads of options available.

https://www.sweetwater.com/shop/studio-record … dio-interfaces/

Now the reality is most of those are going to be USB although there are also options for Firewire or Thunderbolt.If you don't have either of those ports on your computer already, you'll need to get an add-in PCI card for those ports.

On the subject of MIDI latency, are you absolutely sure it's the USB interface causing the latency and not something else? I ask because I noticed that on a setup I have with a ProFire 610 audio/MIDI interface and PCI-E SoundBlaster card, the only time I would notice latency is running audio through the SoundBlaster. If I used the ProFire 610 for both MIDI and audio, there was no appreciable latency (using ASIO drivers of course).

Yea, I use my E-mu 0404 USB with Amplitube, which allows me to simulate guitar amps in realtime on my PC. Works just fine. Trust me, you can't play guitar when there's more than a few ms of latency.

appiah4 wrote:

mainboard's USB 2.0 (AMD 970)

but you said "modern" in the title! 😉 8 years is vintage in PC world
Bad latency will most likely be coming from Windows running on old cpu, + combination of additional software used.

Heh, yea, even my E-mu 0404 USB is 'vintage' by now. It's no longer in production, I believe.
When I bought it, I had a Core2 Duo E6600, more than 10 years ago. Worked fine on that. Still using it in Windows 10 now, on a Core i7.
I actually bought it because I used a Terratec EWX24/96 PCI, and I had no Windows Vista drivers for it, so I couldn't use it anymore in my new PC. I needed something that was supported in Vista and x64. The E-mu was one of the few solutions, I chose USB over PCI because I figured I could also use it on my laptop when on the road.

rasz_pl wrote:

? MIDI is just a crappy slow serial port, nothing special […]
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appiah4 wrote:

I know USB MIDI is an option, but I would rather not go that route as it is its own can of worms..

?
MIDI is just a crappy slow serial port, nothing special

Scali wrote:

I mean, we're talking MIDI here, a standard originally built with simple 70s technology. Just a 31.25 kbps serial connection, basically a variation on RS232.

exactly

Unfortunately in this case the practice does not reinforce the theory at least as far as the different implementations are concerned. The biggest problem is usually not timing/latency related but the handling of large SysEx messages.

About the problem generally:
https://forum.juce.com/t/problem-with-sysex-t … idi-on-mac/9830
https://github.com/krevis/MIDIApps/issues/59

Although the above software are Mac specific the Blacklist/Whitelist can be useful:
http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=m … rface_blacklist
http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=m … rface_whitelist

Windows related large SysEx problem with default class compliant USB Midi driver:
http://www.midiox.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?bo … ;num=1235670742

Well I doubt an FX 8300 @ 3.9GHz is the latency issue here; regardless I have a plan:

1. Install SB Live! 5.1 SB0100 with kX drivers on Win10 box
2. Set up DOSBOX and Midiplayer to output to SB Live! MIDI port
3. Connect SB Live! MIDI port to MIDI Module
4. Connect MIDI Module Audio Out to SB Live! Line-In,
5. Set SB Live! Line In Listen settings to Listen to this device
6. Set SB Live! Line In Playback Through This Device to VB-CABLE Virtual Audio Device Cable Output

Now I have the MIDI Audio as a universal Line In at VB-CABLE Virtual Audio Device Cable Input, so theorically I can:

7. Set VB-CABLE Virtual Audio Device Cable Input Listen settings to Listen to this device
8. Record the MIDI Audio from VB-CABLE Virtual Audio Device Cable Input device

If all goes well, I will have jury rigged my PCI MIDI interface card with just a 2$ Live card and a Free software..

Does this sound like it would work?

That would work except I believe you can skip point 6. If you connect the sound module to the Line-In and set Line-in as recording source you should be able to hear (and record) what's coming through. /EDIT ok I have owned several Live/Audigy cards and never had to use the Kx Drivers so I don't know if anything else is needed. But with stock drivers it'll work. Plus you get Creative ASIO for lower latency if you're playing virtual instruments.

I have an older model Creative EMU X-MIDI 1x1 USB MIDI interface, you can still get them brand new if you look around. I've used it live many times over the years with different laptops and desktop PCs, even a Mac (where it will work with no drivers installed). A few months ago I transferred the whole factory ROM to a Roland D-20 synth via SysEx and that worked fine on the first attempt. If you have problems with transferring large sets of SysEx data, there are transfer utilities out there that will let you adjust the speed. Slowing it down some usually helps.

Your audio interface/drivers are responsible for latency, not your MIDI interface.