Pro MIDI i/O worries as the world goes soft

[alexdingley]

Hey there,

I'm curious if anyone else is in the same boat as I am... worrying that using full fledged hardware MIDI i/o units is going to become increasingly more difficult as developers start assuming that everyone's just using soft-synths and USB keyboard controllers.

I'm currently using an old M-Audio Midisport 8x8s midi interface (the grey rack uni) on my mac... and It seems like Avid / M-Audio / whomever-buys them next isn't in any hurry to provide Mac 10.8 drivers for that unit. I've got 10.8 (Mountain Lion) running on a new SSD in my Mac Pro so I've had to experiment a little on that drive. I'm currently using the 10.7 driver and it gave me a message saying that it wasn't able to locate the device, but then the mac found it and it seems to work.... mostly. For weeks it's been running just fine and my use of Logic with an external MIDI keyboard has been awesome in 10.8.

Today I had a weird episode where I bumped the "mode" button on the 8x8s and all the sudden Logic couldn't see any midi input from my controller keyboard. I realized the Midisport was no longer in (USB) mode and so I toggled it back. No dice. restarted Logic... nada. Rebooted the machine... nothing. I tried using logic to send MIDI data out to my keyboard and my rack FX units... nothing. MIDI silence. I opened the mac's Audio/Midi utility and the M-Audio 8x8s was greyed out... indicating it was not visible to the system. No matter what I toggled on the device's mode button... restarting the 8x8, unplugging and replugging the USB cable, trying different USB ports... nothing brought it back.

To be thorough, I rebooted the mac into 10.6.8 where I had a long-standing stable setup with Logic and Pro tools. The device was fully visible in the old operating system's Audio/MIDI setup and logic saw it fine. Software completely recognized my MIDI input. So I rebooted into 10.8. viola! everything's fine again.

So now I'm really weirded out.

I know I could just go out and buy a MOTU midi unit... they're cheap, and prevalent. but I've had two separate and bad experiences where MOTU units have had bad USB jacks and they would tend to vanish from Audio/MIDI setup on their own. It was incredibly frustrating for me and the client for whom I'd setup a MOTU unit.

If anyone feels that my two MOTU sob stories are complete flukes and I should just go buy a MOTU 5x5 or 8x8 unit... speak up. I'd be curious to hear from people who swear by or just trust the MOTU stuff.

[trevord]

I feel you
I have a bunch of legacy equipment which is getting less and less support MIDI-wise.

Fortunately the newer "workstations" can act as masters to the older equipment but I worry about the future - I am not a bleeding edge person and as long as what i have works then it good enough. SO i dont upgrade much.

[Knights Who Say Neve]

A friend of mine had that problem, and it turned out to be a physical problem with the button on the front of the unit. The plunger was sticking and not reaching the contact on the circuit board.

[tjcasey1]

A very cheap and quick thing to try is zapping the PRAM. I have no idea what it means, but Apple recommends it. When my iMac is acting funny, I reboot while holding down P,R, Option, and Command. The machine boots up with the "dong" sound, waits a second, and then boots up again with the "dong" sound. I keep holding down the keys for three or four "dongs", and then let go and let the Mac boot up. This has solved so many problems for me over the years with audio interfaces, hard drives, and printers, so it might work for MIDI interfaces as well.

It's voodoo, but it's a lot cheaper and cleaner than sacrificing a chicken....