advantages of midi over USB for a control keyboard

lejockey · Post by **lejockey** » Mon Feb 14, 2011 11:40 pm

Hi guys, I was wondering if there were any advantages to having my control keyboard going into the midi in on my soundcoard as opposed to running it off usb? Is the latency going to be lower?

Thank you in advance

trak660 · Post by **trak660** » Tue Feb 15, 2011 5:43 am

Probably not. Anyone that I know, including myself has had better luck with USB. Maybe some sound cards do MIDI faster than the ones I've used.

pafufta816 · Post by **pafufta816** » Tue Feb 15, 2011 7:46 am

the latency of the USB device depends on the speed of your computer. fast computer, no problem.

hydrogen · Post by **hydrogen** » Tue Feb 15, 2011 8:14 pm

I've only experienced latency from a midi controller when I'm running bad drivers....

In my experience... the latency is usually dependent on your audio drivers and has more to do with your audio buffer settings than the speed of your computer. Less latency the better.

pc: make sure you are using asio drivers... Try ASIO4ALL if you don't have an audio interface...

on osx: Use the core drivers and you should be able to get pretty short latency.

Also avoid using plugins that introduce lots of latency, i.e Linear Phase EQ and some Limiters have potential to introduce quite a bit of latency in your signal chain.

KryoShift · Post by **KryoShift** » Wed Feb 16, 2011 4:30 pm

I'm using a K5000S into a MOTU micro lite 5x5 on a PowerMac G5 dual 2.0 and it's quite speedy.

lejockey · Post by **lejockey** » Thu Feb 17, 2011 11:32 pm

@Hydrogen

How stable is the asio4all? Do you run it yourself? I am just running off my internal soundcard but I am slightly skeptical about installing new drivers incase its not stable and I have difficulty getting back to my current setting. Am I just being over caustious?

Thankyou

hydrogen · Post by **hydrogen** » Fri Feb 18, 2011 4:50 pm

lejockey wrote:@Hydrogen

How stable is the asio4all? Do you run it yourself? I am just running off my internal soundcard but I am slightly skeptical about installing new drivers incase its not stable and I have difficulty getting back to my current setting. Am I just being over caustious?

Thankyou

i havn't run it in a year since i've been on core audio (osx)... but i wouldn't live without asio4all on an internal soundcard. (i was running winXP32). If it were me on a PC... I would definitely try it because when it is working... super low latency is what you get.

Isn't there system restore for things like that too?