PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

Hello,
As the title says this is a banal question, but one I would really appreciate the answer to.
I have an Emagic AMT 8 MIDI Interface. What I would like to know is whether it is best to connect it via USB or via the COM Port?
Is there much difference in terms of performance? Is one better than the other? The COM Port would at least give me one more USB socket available.
Sorry it's not really Pulsar related, but your comments would really be appreciated.

Thanks in advance for your response(s)

on the other hand, if you're not using USB for anything else, connecting to com would give you the possibility to disable USB in bios. for better overall performance.

if i'm over my head here please forgive my banal answer

i would connect it over COM and disable USB if you don't use anything else thru USB...

The COM port can easily be driven fast enough to handle MIDI, so I'd agree with the other two chaps.

Royston

I don't understand the bad rap USB is getting around here. As long as the USB controllers aren't sharing IRQ with any PCI devices, there's no problem with using USB, 1 or 2.
I've got an SX dongle and midi keyboard (USB1) and a DVDRW drive (USB2) and two Scope boards (was well as a SCSI PCI card) all playing together just fine. My system is ACPI.

/dave

I wasn't rapping USB - I use about eight USB devices simultaneously no problem on my DAW.

I suggested using the COM port for the MIDI device because a) the port can handle it and b) doing that frees up a USB port which can then be used for something else (probably somehting that the COM port couldn't handle).

I will still bitch about USB 2, though

Royston

Thanks for the replies so far.
However, I need the USB ports for my dongles and only my dongles. So I assume I can't disable USB in Bios because I would need them for Logic and Cubase.

I've made some tests with 8 stacked unitors/amt connected via usb and com on win98/2k some time ago.
The tests were about timing differences between the different ports (in total 64).
It was done with logic 4.8, the chance is high, that the results are only true for this app (and later versions).
One result was, that midi notes have more priority over controllers (ok, that's obvious). Another result was, that usb looses timing much faster then the com port, especially regarding controller messages.

best
Wolfgang

_________________
<a href="http://www.worldless.com/sfp">wolf audio design</a>
<a href="http://www.worldless.com">worldless productions</a>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: wolf on 2004-05-27 12:43 ]</font>

I've got an SX dongle and midi keyboard (USB1) and a DVDRW drive (USB2) and two Scope boards (was well as a SCSI PCI card) all playing together just fine. My system is ACPI.
/dave

that's great dave. however your system specs doesn't apply to everyone, on some systems USB2 may be a performance hog.
my suggestion was of the "better be safe than sorry" -kind.

USB2 IS known to cause troubles on some setups.