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From: wtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: getting a MIDI
Message-ID: <629@neoucom.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 19-Jul-87 01:12:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: neoucom.629
Posted: Sun Jul 19 01:12:20 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 23-Jul-87 03:46:22 EDT
References: <604@madvax.UUCP>
Organization: Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine
Lines: 65
Keywords: features
Summary: MIDI interfaces all pretty much the same


Interfacing MIDI divices to an Amiga isn't terribly difficult.  The
normal serial connector can be used as the basis.  The
serial.device is programmed to run at 31250 bits/second.  The MIDI
adapters are really just opto-isolators and a couple of
transistors.  Some of the fancier models have a dpdt swich so that
leads 2 & 3 of the serial port can be switched from MIDI to a
standard serial db25 connector.

If you are a serious hardware hack, you should be able to build the
MIDI interface yourself for about $10.  I was a dummy and bought a
commercially made box.  The going price is about $49 for the
commercial MIDI connectors, thus they are on the border of being
worth building it yourself.  If sufficient interest warrants, I
could upload a "how to build" article from one of the local BBSs
(no pirates allowed on that one, since its run by the dealer!).

Re DMCS:  the MIDI support from DMCS is pretty minimal (to say the
least), although the results are much more listenable than the
yucky aliased amiga bases instruments that come with DMCS.  I've
got one of the so-called "quiet upgrade" versions, though I'm not
sure what rev it's supposed to be.  It is still very, very buggy,
and one time even wiped the WCS (causing a need to reload
kickstart) when I forgot to "cd" to its drive when loading it up.

DMCS has the ability to send a packet to ask preset 1-16 to be
loaded.  The MIDI supervisor chanel is the same as whatever the
active channel is.  You can not change presets in the middle of a
song (boo!).  No support for MIDI system exclusive codes.  For MIDI
input, DMCS is pretty awful, as it doesn't store any key velocity
data.  It also requires you to do press-n-relase type playing,
which is especially obnoxious without any sort of metronome to
guide you.

What would help make DMCS a real music tool would be to have a
staff that served as a midi control track that would allow you to
insert system exclusive stuff.  Such a feature would need to be
coupled to a lookup table so you could enter the system exclusive
codes for your synthesizer.  DMCS uses the regular serial.device
from workbench to talk to the MIDI.

DMCS does have the ability to live together with the Pro Midi
Studio from Mimetics.  The Pro Midi Studio takes care of most of
the gripes (or at least some) that I have about DMCS.  Since DMCS
cost $~100 by the time I paid the fee to get the copyable backup
disk, I haven't had the $$ to get the Pro Midi Studio yet, so I've
only had superficial exposure playing at the dealer.  The mimetics
audio digitizer (8 bit) plugs into the game (yuck!) port.  I have
the Soundscape digitizer that usese the parallel port, and thus
seems to not be Mimetics compatible.- oh well.

I'll also put in my $0.05 about copy protection since it is now the
vogue.  I don't like it, and do my best to obtain stuff that I can
back up.  The most important feature of stuff I buy is being able
to call the company to ask questions, which I couldn't do if it
were pirate.  Companies with good user support (Like Borland in the
Pee Cee world) sell tons of copyable programs since users know that
if they spend the $$, they know they have easy access to
assistance.

Unfortunately, EA has had some difficulty in the user support
dept., thus many users have probably turned to unsavory practices.

Bill
(wtm@neoucom.UUCP)