![]() Multiple Outs & InsĪs musicians demanded higher and higher performance from their PCs, the restrictions of only having one In and one Out with an MPU401‑style interface became increasingly difficult to work round (see 'Shared Ports' box). The standardised approach of Windows ensures that a new interface simply appears as one or more additional entries in the list of installed Windows 95 MIDI devices, and is therefore available to any Windows sequencer. Don't forget that if you only need a single MIDI In and Out, it may be more cost‑effective to buy a complete soundcard which incorporates these (Time & Space market the Terratec SoundSystem Base 1, which retails at an amazing £34.99 including VAT!).Īll modern PC MIDI interfaces will be provided with a set of Windows 95 (and probably also Windows 3.1) drivers. If you occasionally suffer from glitches (missed or hanging notes, or unreliable SysEx dumps), it may not be the drivers at fault it may be time to buy an interface that can cope with any speed of PC. However, if you currently use an interface that's more than a few years old with a new Pentium machine, you may find that it struggles to keep up, as it was never designed for the much higher speeds of today's motherboards. Although perfectly adequate for simple sequencing use, these early soundcard interfaces were not really capable of more data‑intensive jobs, such as sending and receiving large SysEx dumps.more than anything else, don't scrimp on outputs - decide how many you currently need, and then double it.Īs more advanced soundcards evolved, one of the selling features to differentiate them from early devices became the phrase 'MPU401‑compatible', and many soundcards and stand‑alone interfaces are still based on this standard today. ![]() When the early soundcards started to sprout onboard MIDI interfaces as well, they initially used a different (and rather cut‑down) interface standard, which became known as SoundBlaster MIDI. Thankfully, one model - the Roland MPU401 - attracted more support than any other, and this became the basic standard specification on which other later devices were based, making it far easier to ensure that your interface would work with all models of sequencer. Back in the 1980s, when the Windows operating system was still a twinkle in some designer's eye, the only music sequencers available ran in DOS, and each supported only a few specific models of MIDI interface. The history of PC MIDI interfaces is rich and varied, and not without its share of problems. Martin Walker provides a little background. Now that the MIDI outputs of many soundcards are already occupied by playing back high‑quality internal synth sounds and multi‑channel samples, many musicians are finding that they need to invest in a more comprehensive MIDI interface to service the rest of their synths. ![]()
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