• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

For PC musicians: midi cables?

Rat

Not bored. Never bored.,
Rat
Joined
May 19, 2003
Messages
10,629
Location
Leicester, UK
I don't know if I'm missing something really obvious here. I've never done music on PC before, and it's about time I started. I really just want to use Cubase to record my piano and drum parts.

My piano (a Roland ep-9e, if it matters) has a female 5-pin DIN socket (a standard midi connector, I gather) for midi output. The soundcard on my PC has a female 15-pin D connector.

Now I know I could buy a midi hub and various other bits and pieces to join them, but is there not a cable I can buy to go from one to the other? I've looked in all the obvious places, and tried googling for relevant terms.

Is there something I should know? Apart from its not being the best solution, is there something inherently wrong with plugging the piano directly into the PC?

Advice appreciated.

Cheers,
Rat.
 
OK, I admit defeat. I guess I was searching for the wrong terms.

I rang round a couple of places that deal with this sort of thing, and they tried to convince me that this sort of thing is all usb hubs these days.

Cheers,
Rat.
 
Also, the MIDI isn't the sound coming out of your keyboard, it is the information about the note you hit and a way to sync all of your stuff up.
http://www.midi-classics.com/whatmidi.htm

In Cubase you can play into a MIDI track, and assign the notes to any sound/vst you make/have and they will respond the way you played them.

With this, your keyboard is only a controller.

If you want to record the sound from your keyboard, you will have to use the line out into your sound card, and the quality of your sound card will determine the quality of your sound.

The only other good hint I have is that when you do get it hooked up and are setting levels, never let it go into the red, unlike analog recording where you set your levels to peak just in the red, digital really craps out when you do that.
 
Rat- you are using gold coated midi cables for best dynamic response I assume?
Ask jj- he'll explain it all.
 
Soapy Sam said:
Rat- you are using gold coated midi cables for best dynamic response I assume?
Ask jj- he'll explain it all.
Click to expand...
And they have to be conditioned properly, used for a couple of weeks, before their superior performance really comes out.
 
I'm assuming that these last two are joking? I can come up with a million reasons why it's bs, but there are always people who believe this sort of thing.

Cheers,
Rat.
 
ratcomp1974 said:
I'm assuming that these last two are joking? I can come up with a million reasons why it's bs, but there are always people who believe this sort of thing.

Cheers,
Rat.
Click to expand...
I was. I've always loved the "you have to condition them" part of the black art of audio cabling. We all know how much copper "breaks in," right? :)
 
I have a cable that goes directly from my keyboard to my soundcard. One end is a 5-pin male that says MIDI IN, and the other end is a 15-pin male that says SOUNDCARD, which has a 15-pin female on its back end which says JOYSTICK.

It's probably pretty old-school. It came with my Kawai MIDI KEY II which I bought in 1997. But I still use it daily with the program Finale 2003.
 
Hmm. Hadn't thought about using it with Finale. Presumably it makes a better job of transcribing to score than Cubase does.

Cheers,
Rat.
 
Presumably it makes a better job of transcribing to score than Cubase does.
Click to expand...
I would assume so. Finale is designed for score creation. Cubase undoubtedly does a much better job at everything else, however.
 
Cubase score is generally unhelpful and nonintuitive. Every time I try to use it, it seems incapable of sensibly arranging things or anything.

By default, at least, it puts everything in C, with accidentals, and everything on the treble clef, with dozens of leger lines to accommodate bass instruments.

I'm sure it can do better, but with Finale at hand, I've never really bothered to investigate far.

Cheers,
Rat.
 
"I'm assuming that these last two are joking? I can come up with a million reasons why it's bs, but there are always people who believe this sort of thing.

Cheers,
Rat."
____________________________________________________
What DO you mean Rat? Joking? JOKING? There's nothing funny about maximising dynamic range on MIDI cables, mate! Please tell me you went with the cryogenic banana plugs; I couldn't bear it otherwise.

No, really. PM jj and ask. He'lll explain everything.

(I'll just be under this desk...):D
 
15-pin banana plugs? Banana DIN plugs? Tell me where I can get them and I will. And if all the molecules in the cable between are pointing in the right direction to send the signal the right way without its getting confused, so much the better.

Cheers,
Rat.
 
ratcomp1974 said:
15-pin banana plugs? Banana DIN plugs? Tell me where I can get them and I will. And if all the molecules in the cable between are pointing in the right direction to send the signal the right way without its getting confused, so much the better.

Cheers,
Rat.
Click to expand...
Just remember, no gold plated connector or OFC line is going to help until you have straightened out the current comming out of your wall. George Tice has the solution - the Tice Power Block - at about $1,500 US. Its is completely useless as a sound enhancement device but it does have a really cool VU meter on the front. It even has a UK option for that weird 220/50htz stuff yous guys use.;)
 
Weird? You've no idea of the number of times I've plugged myself into 220. Well, until I tell you that it's about three. There's really nothing like it. If you're trying to induce a heart attack and a general sense of confusion.

Cheers,
Rat.
 
NightG1 said:

Just remember, no gold plated connector or OFC line is going to help until you have straightened out the current comming out of your wall. George Tice has the solution - the Tice Power Block - at about $1,500 US. Its is completely useless as a sound enhancement device but it does have a really cool VU meter on the front. It even has a UK option for that weird 220/50htz stuff yous guys use.;)
Click to expand...
Wow, I just Googled on that Tice thing. Amazing. Probing further into these "audiophile" sites I find people raving over turntable arm counterweights (with exactly the same words they use for the power conditioner and special speaker cables).

I guess I can understand some power filtering if you have nasty line quality, perhaps some noise could be induced into the analog side of the amplifier chain, but man, those costs are incredible.

All I can imagine is that those people have some pretty crappy audio setups if everything sounds so bad BEFORE they apply these miracle gadgets. Too bad.:)
 
It even has a UK option for that weird 220/50htz stuff yous guys use.


Actually, it's 240V, nominally.
 
Hey Rat,

Sorry I didn’t see this sooner. I play keyboards and I actually take a PC with me every week to my gigs so I can use some enormous sampled sounds off of my hard drive, hehe. Everyone thinks I’m nuts.

I know some of your questions have been answered already so forgive me if I duplicate any. It’s just easier that way.

First of all what you need are basic midi cables (they are male on both ends). Ignore anyone who tells you that it’s all USB now. That’s a computer geek, not a musician (although it is becoming popular).

You should be able to get them at most Music stores. You are more likely to find them there than at a Computer store.

I’ve never used Cubase so I’ll refer to it in general terms. Most midi software behaves in a similar manner. I would not recommend Finale. It is overkill and is not really sequencing software per se. It is for composing with midi functions added in but any normal sequencing software (and I’m assuming Cubase) will be more intuitive and easier to use.

You will probably need two cables, one to go from your keyboard midi-out to your PC’s midi-in and another to go from you PC’s midi-out to your keyboard midi-in. This will allow you to use your keyboards sound module which will be far superior than your soundcard but you can use your soundcard if you wish.

An important concept to understand is that each midi part (i.e. piano or drums) should be playback on one of 16 channels. This is usually not a problem when recording as most software defaults to record any channel that is transmitted. So you would first record your drums and then on another track record your piano.

If you play it back on your soundcard there will probably not be a problem as you can direct the output to your soundcard and most likely pick the patch (piano or drums) for each track from a selection menu.

If you want your keyboard to produce the sound then you may need to synchronize your channels. Drums are almost always transmitted on channel 10 so if you set the transmit channel on your drum track to 10 you are almost always going to be successful whether you direct it to your soundcard or your keyboard.

Piano is almost always transmitted on channel 1 so again you are probably going to be safe. The main thing to remember is that your midi software will playback a track on whatever channel it’s been assigned to but your sound patch needs to ‘listen’ on that channel.

If you want to actually record the result as a sound wave or mp3 to pass around then things get a little dicier and I’d have to know a little be more about your sound card and software etc. I use Cakewalk and it will record audio and I suspect Cubase will too which would mean that you’d also need an audio connection from your keyboard to your sound card. Again I’d need to know more about your exact configuration but it would mean basically play the midi-sequence and recording the audio output from your keyboard at the same time.

I know this is a lot but if you want to PM me I’ll send you my email address and I’d be glad to walk you through it as much as possible. I got hired at the University of Texas because they needed someone to set-up and maintain the midi stations in the Fine Arts computer labs so don’t worry bothering me with questions. It’s what I do anyway and it’s a lot of fun.

It’s really not as complicated as it sounds if you take it one step at a time and I’d be glad to help.
 
Soapy Sam said:
Actually, it's 240V, nominally.
Click to expand...
230 V, now. I think we split the difference with Europe.

This irritates the hell out of physics teachers, whose textbooks and worksheets are now uniformly wrong.

Vaguely on topic: my MIDI cable has three connectors: MIDI In, MIDI Out (both of which plug into my keyboard) and a many-pinned thing that plugs into a port marked "Joystick" on my sound card.

I got it by going down to my local branch of Sound Control and throwing myself on their mercy in the hope that they'd know what they were talking about. They did.

Like iankaplan, I bought it a while ago.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom