[Rosegarden-user] Re: [Rosegarden-devel] need some info on external MIDI alternatives

[Pedro Lopez-C. <pl...@te...>]

On Thursday 05 August 2004 20:16, Chris Cannam wrote:
> On Thursday 05 Aug 2004 11:24, Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas wrote:
> > The Midisport interfaces are a bit cheaper, and also a bit more complex.
> > Some of them require a firmware program to be loaded into the device's
> > RAM before you can use it.
>
> I have a Midisport 2x2 and the ALSA support for it is an impressive piece
> of work, but it's still a real pain.

Yes, it is a pain if you try to setup it from scratch. You need to install the 
firmware files, install hotplug and ALSA, tweak the hotplug scripts and 
configuration files, tune some init scripts, blah, blah. Everything is a lot 
easier if your distro has already tuned and easy to install packages, which 
is what distros are supposed to do well. Sometimes.

Another problem is that ezusbmidi can be distributed under its GPL license, 
but it doesn't provide support for all the Midisport devices. The other 
firmware loader/extractor depends on closed binary drivers, and the resulting 
firmwares can't be distributed without permission from M-Audio. We have asked 
for permission already, but they didn't answered. That's why the proprietary 
firmware from M-Audio can't be included into the alsa-firmware package. 

> btw, I seem to remember reading that some of the M-Audio USB devices can't
> be used at all with Linux 2.6 kernels, because they aren't strictly
> compliant USB devices at all (never mind standard USB audio ones) so the
> kernel rejects them before ALSA even gets involved.

There is a note about that in http://usb-midi-fw.sourceforge.net/
Some USB devices (Quattro and Audiophile) doesn't work with 2.6 kernels. Other 
devices (Sonica, Ozone, MobilePre, Transit) need a different firmware loader, 
that doesn't work in 2.6

> > I didn't test it by myself, but Evolution (http://www.evolution.co.uk/)
> > now owned by M-Audio, had several models conforming the standard USB MIDI
> > specification
>
> I didn't know they were owned by M-Audio.  I have an Evolution 2-octave USB
> MIDI keyboard and as you say, it works with the snd-usb-audio module with
> no fuss at all.  Plasticky keyboard but it works well.  I imagine other
> manufacturers' wares are probably very similar.

Evolution products are a very rare piece of engineering, because they have  
adhered to the standard USB specifications. Be careful with other vendors, 
for instance Novation Remote 25 doesn't work with ALSA, as noted by Claudio 
Mettler.

Regards,
Pedro