"Jeanette C." <julien@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > Hey hey, > I have several keyboards now, which come with their built-in USB-MIDI > interface (four to be precise) and I have three more synths that need > to be connected to MIDI. For the latter I use USB-MIDI adapter > cables. Alas, I also have other USB devices, which need to be > connected, not least my braille display. > > So, what would be the cheapest/best alternative to hook up all those > MIDI devices? A bigger USB-hub? Is it possible to have more than four > ports on a hub anyway? > > Due to technical restrictions MIDI-chaining is no option. > > All my devices have standard 5pin MIDI DIN sockets, so some kind of > USB-MIDI interface would be possible. Only two of the synth need to be > connected as inuts, all the other would only receive output (being > modules). > > What would be viable and inexpensive options to get all these device > connected to the computer? I use a Roland UM-4 myself which hooks up 4 Midi devices (actually, 4in, 4out) to one USB port (full-speed, so 12Mbps, USB1.1 speeds). Those are reasonably cheap to get if you can find them on Ebay. If you want to hook up several ones of those via a USB hub, make sure that this hub has a separate "Transaction translator" per port so that a USB1.1 transaction from one Midi interface does not keep other transactions from happening: the 12Mbps limitation should only be per Midi interface, not per aggregating hub which can talk at 480Mbps to the computer. That way you keep latencies limited. I think that 8-fold Midi interfaces are rather rare, so you are likely best off looking for the 4-fold ones. Do not use the cheap Chinese Midi interfaces with a violin clef printed on them: they garble SysEx messages. I am not sure they are even "full speed". -- David Kastrup _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
