MIDI turns 30

[wayne]

Cool article, nice pic of JZ

Scroll down in the comments to see Atari Cubase 2.0 screenshot. If that is familiar to you, go get your prostate checked

[garyb]

i don't need to be felt up to know i'm old. had that on floppy...

[Nestor]

Only gratitude is what I can feel thinking about MIDI, all the instruments at home....

[wayne]

Yeah G, I may have framed it that way as it's the big news story in ockerland today

[jhulk]

still have my trustee ste and its upgraded to the teeth with the latest tech ssd ultrasatan disk

and nice big vga screen

4mb

and 64 midi channels

notator and cubas 3 with dongles

and still the tightest midi

i midi all my hardware synths with it and its clock runs my daw

because of usb midi crap timings

[dawman]

It was worth checking out just to see a pic of Zawinul I never saw.
Ankyu

[Bud Weiser]

still have my trustee ste and its upgraded to the teeth with the latest tech ssd ultrasatan disk

and nice big vga screen

4mb

and 64 midi channels

notator and cubas 3 with dongles

and still the tightest midi

i midi all my hardware synths with it and its clock runs my daw

because of usb midi crap timings

Congrats !
I´m using a similar setup for the same purpose (MIDI front end),- ATARI Mega STe 4, Emagic Unitor2, Log3, Notator SL 3.21, Notator Logic ATARI, X-alyzer, Polyframe 1.2.
I had Cubase 3.1 special edition too,- but sold it 2 years ago because I don´t need it.
Some Steini Synthworks programs here, MIDEX and MIDEX+, much better than any modern editor/bankmanager application.
Most Digidesign ATARI stuff here too.

Bud

[Bud Weiser]

It was worth checking out just to see a pic of Zawinul I never saw.
Ankyu

My screensaver since years ...

Bud

[dawman]

Dual 2600S Models...........He's killing me.

[Nestor]

I still keep this jewels into my boxes here, I appreciate much having this memories at hand, just to remember how wonderful was to start making music with MIDI:

Here you have a picture of the software I started with – Cubase Lite was version 1.1, wow! :



These two software would look like this:

MIDI Orchestrator Plus


And Cubase would look like this:


THANK YOU CHARLIE! I will never thank you enough!

[Bud Weiser]

I still keep this jewels into my boxes here, I appreciate much having this memories at hand, just to remember how wonderful was to start making music with MIDI:

Here you have a picture of the software I started with – Cubase Lite was version 1.1, wow! :

For me, the MIDI world startet w/ a SCI Prophet 5 rev3, a EMU Drumulator, the Commodore SX64 and THIS ...

mini-SC 64 Seq 1.JPG

followed by a MIDI interface from Charlie for the Commodore 64 and all the programs comming until the ATARI ST was out.

I still own the SCI 64 Sequencer in almost new condition, it´s my original pic above,- I think is very rare meanwhile ...

Bud

[Eanna]

For those slaving their DAWs to an ST - do you send Midi Clock into your PC from the Atari via Scope?
Putting stable Midi clock thru a USB Midi Interface kinda negates its stability?

Altho I do know that it's not just USB Midi I/O that causes jitter - some DAW's internal clocks and their sync interface to external hardware is crappy too..

I still have my ST, threatened to make space for it on my desk, never did it. STFM, 2.5 meg of RAM. 1987 vintage, still works great, last time I checked which was only 3 months or so ago..

Don't want to turn this into a "Midi Jitter" thread, there's more than enough on the web about it, just wonder if slaving a DAW to an ST over Scope's Midi In is the 'right thing to do'...

[jhulk]

i use a parallel port opcode 8x8 device

i dont use usb midi interfaces for making music

and i still use vst 3.5 on pc as cubase got more and more feature the worse the midi got

i have all the latest updates but like using my old parallel port dongle and the opcode is to that

live midi is awfull and no sysex

prosonus studio one version2 is ok but im so used to theflow of cubas from the atari days then using it on mac and pc

that i like the simpler cubase 3 on the atari

a lot of great records was done with it

and my hardware sequencers mpc60 i still use

[Bud Weiser]

i use a parallel port opcode 8x8 device

i dont use usb midi interfaces for making music

Wise man,- bravo !!!
That´s why I kept my ASUS P5WD2 Premium motherboard,- it has a parallel port.
My interface is a 8PortSE and I use the Earthvegaconnections DirectMusic driver.
Rock solid !!!

And,- the formerly discontinued 64Bit driver,- is available again !
http://www.earthvegaconnection.com/evc/ ... index.html

I have 2 of the 8PortSEs, one connected to my SCOPE PCI card machine, the other to the XITE-1 machine.

ATARI MIDI directly to SCOPE MIDI In is excellent too.

prosonus studio one version2 is ok but im so used to theflow of cubas from the atari days then using it on mac and pc

Studio One v2 Pro, now v2.5, is o.k.,- but to be true, I more or less hate all these DAWs for MIDI.
For MIDI Logic is the best of all IMO, but ATARI MIDI timing is not to beat for hardware instruments.
I´d wish Reaper´s MIDI timing wouldn´t depend on ASIO buffer settings because Reaper MIDI timing is good too, but not on par w/ Atari/Notator or ATARI/Cubase.

that i like the simpler cubase 3 on the atari

a lot of great records was done with it

and my hardware sequencers mpc60 i still use

MPC60 = dead on MIDI timing and groove !

Bud

[dawman]

The MPCs 960ppq in hardware is the best in the business. I remember having fun with our drummer one night and the Swing features are incredible. I tried to do that w/o any templates years ago and it was a mathematical approach, even had snares zippered way back in the 80s using 128th note blasts, but i couldn't get that funky swing, the Akais are definately more than the generic BOOV-BOOV stuff.

[kensuguro]

sort of irks me that a lot of "MIDI" controllers are actually connected through USB, but still stuck with the crappy MIDI standard implementation. I guess most times it's not all that critical tho, still can make good use of 0-127 and make good stuff. Not prohibitive, but no ideal. By the time most MIDI equipment turns USB, maybe a new standard will emerge just based on ubiquity of USB. It's hard to imagine any other standard that's been around for that long in electronics.. floppy's gone, CD ROMS came and pretty much went, DVD is pretty much out (as data transfer method anyway), html changed quite a bit, VGA is now DVI/hdmi, firewire's pretty much out,.. maybe C stayed consistent as a language, and other older languages (fortran, etc). TCP's probably the same. Cat 5 cables are probably the same, so are phone connectors. Oh, you know what doesn't change? Power plugs. That'll probably never change. Records also still work the same, though everyone uses serato now.

I also wonder if you can't do something like ADSL with a midi cable. I mean, the cable's just a cable, so as long as there's a connection, you could just change the protocol and increase bandwidth. I guess the problem is with "thru" since legacy devices can be mixed with new devices speaking the new protocol in a chain.. It seems to make sense to just have a central converter where all legacy and new protocol devices connect to that internally works at the new protocol's resolution, but just downsamples the values for legacy devices.. a protocol translator. 3PO.

I guess MIDI's at that point of barely not being broken enough so it's hard to "fix".. and "making it better" is just not a powerful enough proposition.

[jhulk]

midi is great

all the last 30 years great records was made with it its still great today

and it also has multi messages 14bit cc which goes 0-16383
and hard ware is still being manufactured with it

most peoples complaints is the actual daws implementation of it using usb

usb is the problem to many protocols to go through before actually being sent to its destination

we have created a 14bitcc ctrlr panel for bc modular and it makes very smooth changes to filters and other controls

so midi is not a problem

and even osc protocol still uses midi and cooperlan its still midi implementation still controls midi gear its just runs at a faster rate so timing is not a problem and this was designed because of the poor usb timing

but its still midi i have fitted alex to some of my synths but they still connect to the midi i/o what is great about cat5 is long runs and the cable is cheap

easy to connect no soldering involved

there are so many people saying ditch midi but if you ditch midi then 30years of equipment become obsolete

and seeing the hardware market is booming and analog is back in big time which is seeing new synths being recreated from old tech with new chips

they realise that you cant beat analog for bass sounds period

every one now see's that vsti just does not cut it in a mix they sound weak

i only use vsti for sound pallete i then put it in my hard ware as the sound sounds so much better

trying to program an sy99 with out midi would be a nightmare

and why the creator of ctrlr made it as there are so many synths require midi why vsti control panels are being created

and i use scope very much as another midi module

[tgstgs]

usb is no probl. for midi at all_
the probl. comes form the os_

good vibes

[Nestor]

usb is no probl. for midi at all_
the probl. comes form the os_

good vibes

I think you’re right, because the bandwidth USB offers is way more than enough for MIDI.

[siriusbliss]

usb is no probl. for midi at all_
the probl. comes form the os_

good vibes

Correct.
MS mucked around with the clock handling in Windows years ago.
I presume also for OSX.
Early Windows 3.1 running in DOS was very tight.

G