So I have these midi sockets on some devices ..

[RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE]

Howdy ! 
I'm recording stuff through my Line6 Toneport ux1 . All  good no complaints . Could do with an extra input socket , but  hey ho not the end of the world . 
 

Looking at some of my equipment , I notice that  a few of my bits and pieces have midi sockets . 
I use TRS and  don't know if I'm missing out by not using midi sockets . Plus I have actually no idea how midi is supposed to work in layman's /woman's terms .

I have a couple of pics showing the hardware I use .( Please excuse the mess 😺🙀) 

The gear I'm talking about in particular is : Moog grandmother , digitech bass whammy , Boss dr groove DR02, Boss DR Sample SP202, radium 49  usb keyboard , mic input on the line 6 toneport ux1,  and a behringer UB802 eurorack mixer. 
 

Things to mention ( and ask 😺):

I don't use the euro rack mixer / Is it worth keeping the sampler ? If so, what would be a good alternative ?I haven't used the radium 49 keyboard for years , but thought I'd mention it as it has a midi socket 

I use the akai mini keyboard a lot , plus my iPad a lot . 

So is it worth buying a few midi cables , or forget about it and move on ?

Thanks
 

 

 

 

 

[lurksalot]

MIDI is really useful , but I only use it in simple mode , I have a few virtual instruments , drums, keys a synth or 2 and effectively the midi you send to the DAW triggers an appropriate response from the ‘instrument’ you are talking to.

play with using simple MIDI and you will probably find a reason to use some of the kit that works best.

I'm sure someone who knows stuff will pop in at some point , but I would keep it simple to start with 

[Happy Jack]

You can get some more midi socks here:

https://www.oneills.com/uk_en/accessories/player/socks1/midi-socks.html

[Woodinblack]

18 hours ago, RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE said:

So is it worth buying a few midi cables , or forget about it and move on ?

Forget it and move on. If there is something you can't do now that you want to do, and a midi cable solves that, get one. If not, don't!

[Dad3353]

MIDI signals are what connects my keyboards and electronic drum kit to my PC, to trigger Vst instruments and Fx. I also use, occasionally, a MIDI converter to record MIDI signals from my bass and/or guitars, to play brass or woodwind lines that I'd struggle with on keys, for instance. They allow me to play, recording the MIDI, and, if required (quite often, as it happens..!), edit the recorded MIDI signals to remove duff notes, tidy up the timing, adjust velocities and other Fx parameters. It's not difficult to do easy stuff; it only requires the PC to know on which MIDI channel to expect the signals to come in on, and this is done in my Reaper DAW. If you've no need, ignore it, but I have found the MIDI connections to be of great utility. 

[adamg67]

MIDI connections on most things are for sending or receiving digital note data (not the same as audio data), as mentioned above, but there are also a few things that use MIDI for control so you can automate effect changes using program control signals or use  a MIDI footswitch that can change multiple pedals or effects units. I'm pretty sure that's what the one on the Whammy is for. Not sure about the mixer, or the interface "mic input" - are you getting MIDI (5 pin DIN) and XLR mixed up? 

 

Edited November 10, 2020 by adamg67

[RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE]

Thanks for your replies .

Adam g67, it does seem like I have mostly 5 pin din sockets , which are labelled midi on the drum machine /sampler and bass whammy. 

I haven't taken a pic of the grandmothers backside , but you get the gist . 
Back in the days of cassette decks I remember those 5 pin din plugs and hated them .

The impression I am getting , is that I'm better off forgetting about midi . 

Usb seems to be plug and play , and of course computer based.

If I was old  skool ( wow! My trendy spelling ), I'd imagine I'd be doing everything midi . 

One of my friends who does recording with old , new and computer equipment was the one to recommend a mixer and midi to me . I gather from what he was saying , is that I'd have all of my gear together which makes sense .Having said that , for a semi novice like me, I prefer the plug and play usb line 6 interface I have where everything seems straightforward . 
I'll leave it there ...

Edited November 11, 2020 by RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE

[Woodinblack]

Althought midi is the old skool thing now, it still has some big advantages over USB. USB is a directional protocol, you need an smart host and a largely dumb controller.

So you have a keyboard, the dumb bit, and you have a computer, the smart bit. The keyboard sends data to the computer and the computer sends it back. However, if you have two keyboards, you have two dumb sides, two keyboards can't talk to each other over USB, you have to get something smart in the middle to pick up the keys from one and send it to the sounds of the other.

With midi, you have a send and recieve as separate sockets. So with two keyboards, you can send data from one to the other without having to have a computer involved anywhere. This is why in this day and age, most musical devices still have an interface designed back before charles and diana got hitched.

 

In your pictures, one of those is a Mic XLR socket, not a midi.

Edited November 11, 2020 by Woodinblack

[BigRedX]

Of course just to add to the confusion the original MIDI spec called for the use of XLR connections with DIN being a low-cost alternative. Unfortunately almost no-one (including the inventor of MIDI - Dave Smith of synthesiser company Sequential Circuits) went with the XLR option, and the rest unfortunately is history.

Despite being the same form-factor DIN as those terrible audio devices of the 70s and early 80s, MIDI devices use different pins on the connector and the protocol is for the transfer of digital performance data (and lots of other things) rather than audio.

[Woodinblack]

4 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

Of course just to add to the confusion the original MIDI spec called for the use of XLR connections with DIN being a low-cost alternative. Unfortunately almost no-one (including the inventor of MIDI - Dave Smith of synthesiser company Sequential Circuits) went with the XLR option, and the rest unfortunately is history.

Although I agree that it was a bad choice of socket, if it had been an XLR, you would have had a life time of accidently plugging microphones in the wrong place!

And now a lot of smaller devices use 3 pin stereo mini jacks for midi to save space, or other connectors

and quite a few 90s and early 000s devices (most korgs) use a mac serial port!

Edited November 11, 2020 by Woodinblack

[Dad3353]

8 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

..., if it had been an XLR, you would have had a life time of accidently plugging microphones in the wrong place!...

There are other XLR sockets, with more pins, available (See DMX lighting controllers, for instance...). It would have made sense, but would have cost more; I suspect that was a major driver at the time. 

[Woodinblack]

Now I checked the Midi 1.0 specification actually specifies Din 5 pin 180 degree connectors as the only acceptable connector. Later additions of the spec tried to introduce better connectors, but once everything has the sockets and leads you are on to a non starter trying to change it.

Connectors: DIN 5 pin (180 degree) female panel mount receptacle. An example is the SWITCHCRAFT 57 GB5F. The connectors shall be labeled "MIDI IN" and "MIDI OUT". Note that pins 1 and 3 are not used, and should be left unconnected in the receiver and transmitter. Pin 2 of the MIDI In connector should also be left unconnected. The grounding shield connector on the MIDI jacks should not be connected to any circuit or chassis ground

[BigRedX]

The MIDI 1.0 specification dates from 1996 some 13 years after the first devices with MIDI sockets appeared.

I am 99% certain that when the very original MIDI specification was drawn up in 1982/83, XLRs were the preferred connector. It appears that only the Octave Plateau Voyetra 8 synthesiser used them though. 

In the late 90s I was playing in a high-tech dance/rock band that made extensive use of MIDI on-stage. Wherever possible we used XLR cables to make the various MIDI connections between the racks of gear we had. Inside the rack the DIN sockets were epoxied into place on the equipment so they couldn't become detached and then the cables terminated on patch panels with XLR sockets. This allowed us to use a single type of cable to make all the connections between the different equipment racks. Everything was properly labelled and I can't recall a single instance of cross-connecting MIDI and audio sockets.

Edit: For some MIDI devices the DIN sockets were totally impractical as they simply were not robust enough for live use. The MIDI DIN socket on my Yamaha KX5 keytar was replaced within a week of buying it with an XLR as this was the only way of getting reliable connection and one that didn't produce stuck notes. This is where the connection momentarily failed between playing a note and releasing it, the receiving synth would get the MIDI note on command but would never receive the corresponding note off, and the note would continue to play until you either sent an "all notes off" MIDI command or played enough notes simultaneously to exceed the polyphony limit of the synth.

Edited November 11, 2020 by BigRedX

[Woodinblack]

The original spec was 1981, I had it in print (you had to send of for it), the address was in ETI magazine at the time. The very original specification only allows (or recommends I guess) 5 pin din plugs, but obviously people can use whatever 3 pin plugs they wanted, the 5 pin was just for operability.  

Not arguing that they aren't a great socket as they deform when you tread on them, but they are cheap and commonly available anywhere. 

Certainly not a good choice if you have something that is mobile

[Pea Turgh]

Yeah, you should sell the sampler... to me!

[RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE]

25 minutes ago, Pea Turgh said:

Yeah, you should sell the sampler... to me!

😹 Believe it or not , I used it for the first time in yonks last week .I'm going to hold onto it . Sorry about that 😼
I have a memory card with it .

I was gonna get the cheap akai mpx8  but actually had fun using this and think it will be a keeper. 
They do appear quite frequently on flea bay , but it's the card that is costly . It seems the £40 I paid for that was a bargain .

[Pea Turgh]

I had one for a short while, then child number 1 was born, and I sold it (just because it wasn’t being used).

Might pick up a Teenage Engineering PO 33 instead.

WRT your midi set up, you could have your DAW sequencing your Moog playing a choon, then record the Moog audio output back in to your DAW while you fiddle with all the knobs.  That’s fun.

[RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE]

6 hours ago, Pea Turgh said:

I had one for a short while, then child number 1 was born, and I sold it (just because it wasn’t being used).

Might pick up a Teenage Engineering PO 33 instead.

WRT your midi set up, you could have your DAW sequencing your Moog playing a choon, then record the Moog audio output back in to your DAW while you fiddle with all the knobs.  That’s fun.

Thanks for the tip  regarding moog . I have loads to learn .  It has a usb, but that only makes it act like a controller abd no sound comes from it . 
I'll try your suggestion at some stage . 
Regarding my sampler , would I be right in saying that it's probably the most idiot proof / easiest to use ? 
I hope child no.1 appreciates your sacrifice 😸

[Pea Turgh]

For my suggestion about the Moog, you’d need to go midi out from your computer interface to midi in on the Moog, then audio out from the Moog to audio in on the interface.

The Dr Sample was a while ago for me, but I think you had to be quite on the ball if sampling directly, as I don’t think there was an editing function on board for trimming the samples.  Probably could dump them to disc but then that might be tricky to find a card reader for your computer!

[jrixn1]

1 hour ago, RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE said:

Thanks for the tip  regarding moog . I have loads to learn .  It has a usb, but that only makes it act like a controller abd no sound comes from it .

Might you need to configure the computer to route output midi to the Moog.

[RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE]

42 minutes ago, Pea Turgh said:

For my suggestion about the Moog, you’d need to go midi out from your computer interface to midi in on the Moog, then audio out from the Moog to audio in on the interface.

The Dr Sample was a while ago for me, but I think you had to be quite on the ball if sampling directly, as I don’t think there was an editing function on board for trimming the samples.  Probably could dump them to disc but then that might be tricky to find a card reader for your computer!

I found a midi lead ( or is it din ?) while decluttering . I'll see what gives ,and if it works in the next couple of days . 
As for DR Sample , I tend to load bits from my iPhone / iPad and that goes into  GarageBand on my iMac ( 2017 model ) . I then erase it and reload ideas as and when .I think there is an input for an sd card on the back of my Mac , although I'm not sure if it's worth bothering about .

[RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE]

1 minute ago, jrixn1 said:

Might you need to configure the computer to route output midi to the Moog.

Not sure how to . I may see if the midi lead I have can go into the mic input of my line 6 interface and try that..

[jrixn1]

I can tell you what I did, if it helps.  I'm using REAPER but perhaps there is the equivalent in your software.

My external keyboard (not a Moog, unfortunately) is connected to the computer with the USB cable.  Here is the recorded midi track:

So then I right-clicked on 'ROUTE' and can see that the default MIDI Output is 'None'.  So I changed it to a channel of my keyboard (which seems to be called 'virtual', but just to reconfirm it is an actual physical keyboard):

[Pea Turgh]

Oh, hang on, the Ux1 doesn’t have midi - it’s audio only. 
Just read up on it though, you should be able to use the Moog effectively as a Midi interface with your computer.  So the midi is over USB, but then the MIDI DIN sockets can patch up to the MIDI DIN sockets on your other equipment.  You could then patch the audio outs from those devices through your Behringer mixer to your audio interface.  Oooh, the possibilities!!!

[linear]

The M-Audio keyboard also seems like it will route USB midi from the computer, if it doesn't work out with the Moog for some reason.

The mixer seems a bit redundant, but I guess it could be used in lieu of a patch panel so you don't have to keep plugging and unplugging things into the stereo line-in of the recording interface.  Or just put to one side until a problem it can solve crops up.

Things to get working:

• Hook the midi-out of the Moog to the midi-in of the sampler or drum machine and play them with the keyboard
• Find out how to use the midi functionality of your DAW and play the Moog over USB using the virtual keyboard in your DAW
• Write a little tune in the midi sequencer in your DAW and get the Moog to play it
• And the ultimate goal: write a little midi sequence in the DAW, and have it passed through the Moog and played on the sampler or sequencer

OP - this is going to require some of reading of the midi section in the manuals for your gear, and you'll need to have a basic idea of what midi is, so you understand the midi specific terms.

Edited November 18, 2020 by linear