8 ports of midi over a pc network = 128 channels :)

Chadwick · Post by **Chadwick** » Thu Mar 28, 2002 3:18 am

Hey guys,

I just found a post at the Yahoo Giga forum which pointed out a new programme from a Russian company which has been doing midi plugins for Sonar and Cubase. They're called MusicLab and they're home page is here:

http://www.musiclab.com/

They have a programme called the MIDI Replicator Driver.

Sounds like they started out designing it to get around the Windows 'Sorry that midi device is in use' problem by applying a multiclient approach to windows midi devices, but then they expanded it to include sending midi over TCP/IP networks.

The programme appears to allow up to 8 midi ports to operate over your network simultaneously.

Thats 8x16 = 128 midi channels

I know there have been a few 'midi over net' type programmes, but they've been limited in features.

I'm also wondering what the jitter would be on a network based midi transmission setup. Would it be worse than sending things across two good hardware midi interfaces, like my Unitor IIs?

Is there a problem with time stamping midi packets over a network??

I've seen a lot of people complain about the cost of adding multiport hardware midi interfaces in order to run synths and seqeuncers on separate PCs.

Maybe this could solve a few problems?

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Thu Mar 28, 2002 3:49 am

That looks very interesting. I'm gonna try it, just for the LAN option.
I bet 2 dedicated patchbays will be faster, they're on lower latency I think. But there's plenty of space on my LAN cable, yes.

test test gonna test it now. If I can get my LAN back to work at least.

Thanks for the hint!

Chadwick · Post by **Chadwick** » Thu Mar 28, 2002 3:55 am

Atomic,

I'd really appreciate the results of any serious test you do. My music PCs arean't networked, so there's not much I can do.

It'd be very interesting to compare latency and jitter over hardware compared to their net software.

Good luck
Rick

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Thu Mar 28, 2002 4:16 am

will mostly depend on network card latency I guess. i'll let you know, buying it now.

amax · Post by **amax** » Thu Mar 28, 2002 8:05 am

Here is MIDI flow when you link two computers using MIDI interfaces on Windows 9x (95/98/ME):
A[32-bit sequencer]->B[16-bit part of sequencer engine]->C[16-bit WinMM]->D[16-bit MIDI Driver]->E[MIDI Card out]->F[Midi cable]->G[MIDI Card in]->H[16-bit MIDI driver]->I[16-bit WinMM]->J[receiving app callback]

The main delays are on G->H stage (deliverind events from MIDI card to driver). The overall latency may be in order of 2-5 msecs.

When you are using MIDI Replicator via net interfaces, steps D-H are replaced by
D1[16-bit Replicator Driver]->E1[LAN Interface]->F1[LAN cable]->G1[LAN Interface]->H1[16-bit Replicator]
(To minimize LAN transmit time, we chose UDP datagrams for packet transmission)

Contra:
In contrast with MIDI Cable, LAN interface can add some delays if there are another communications on the same segment of LAN Cable.Therefore with LAN cable you potentionally can add some latency, but in real life and with spare LAN you can get 0-1 ms extra latency, that will not significantly make worse to 2-5 ms you already have.

Pros:
1) Scheme with MIDI interfaces can't provide time stamping for delay compensation occured on D->H stages.
MIDI Replicator adds time-stamps to each packet and provides these timestamps to receiving part. The receiving part (softsynth or sequencer) can use this time stamps for compansating delays and minimizing jitter. This is especially significant when syncronizing to MIDI clock. Softsynths can also make use of time stamps.
2) MIDI Replicator can quickly transmit large amount of MIDI data. Usual LAN interfaces allows 10 000 Kbps or 100 000 Kbps wich is much quicker than 31.25 Kbps of MIDI. These can make an advantage when transferring system exclusives, dense MIDI stream or even in situations when you have number of simultaneous events to be played.
3) You don't have to have extra MIDI ports and MIDI cables.

To summarize:
With MIDI Replicator and spare LAN you can achieve the same of sliglty bigger latency compared to MIDI Interfaces, but MIDI Replicator provides time-stamping that can reduce jitter and can be used to compensate delays. MIDI Replicator can quickly transmit MIDI data and it eliminates necessity of extra MIDI ports and cables.

Neutron · Post by **Neutron** » Thu Mar 28, 2002 8:10 am

This is interesting. what programs will recognise time stamping?

amax · Post by **amax** » Thu Mar 28, 2002 8:36 am

All (professional) sequencers recornize time stapms and use them for storing events with original time (i.e. if you will ever have a delayed event, it will be stored and played back at a time) and for synchronization.

Softsyths may use timestamps if there is reserved time in sythesis algorithm (f.e. patches with smooth attack), but I can't say for sure whether this implemented - I'm not a softsynth writer.

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Thu Mar 28, 2002 9:38 am

I'm havin' trouble w my XP<->98 network. Can I use alternative programs for the network? I noticed the midi LAN drivers ask to point the other computer, but I can't do that in My Computer or Explorer.

The problem is only software, I guess it's pasword related or something. Do I need paswords on active account from both pc's?

Cos this midi LAN progam starts to look better and better

If my LAN were working fine of course.

amax · Post by **amax** » Thu Mar 28, 2002 10:26 am

If you are talking about MIDI Replicator, it works over TCP/IP network - i.e. you must have TCP/IP installed.
You can enter IP address of destination manually (w/o using browser). To know what your IP is, just run winipcfg (for Win 95/98/ME) of ipconfig (console tool for Win nt/2k/xp)

amax · Post by **amax** » Thu Mar 28, 2002 10:28 am

and you don't need to use any passwords.

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Thu Mar 28, 2002 12:56 pm

Yes it works and YES it's seems tighter than anything I've played this far.

I vote pro!! Haven't done lots of testing, but here's what I did:
PLayed Cubase on pc1, sent sync to other pc's and notes to sampler. Rebirth sync'ed great to Cubase, the notes were on time. AFAIH.

Valium · Post by **Valium** » Thu Mar 28, 2002 1:23 pm

Hi there,

well at0mic I'm interesting in how things work with this little progie. I'm planning on running reason-rebirth on second pc ... maybe this is a good solution?

Greetz

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Fri Mar 29, 2002 2:50 am

Yes Valium

I think this is a perfect solution. It's very simple to install. As my Unitor was on Win98 pc, which can only see 10 midi ports, I disabled pci soundcard midi drivers and use 1 LAN-pipe + 8+1 AMT ports = 10.

So it works so cool I've never seen anything like this before. 40€ for this sweet utility isn't a waste of money he?

You know I was in difficult situation, out of midi ports and not-too-tight sync (my sync was not useable up to now really, from today on it is:) I'm a fan of time stamping now

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: at0mic on 2002-03-29 02:51 ]</font>

Thanks for that drivers info. Prooves again you people are doing professional work. I corrected my midi setup cos I made some errors in it.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: at0mic on 2002-03-29 06:33 ]</font>

amax · Post by **amax** » Fri Mar 29, 2002 6:13 am

Hi at0mic,
You can use as many Replicator devices as you wish. There is a windows limitation on 10 MIDI drivers, not devices. Unitor installs 9 instances of the same driver (very bad behaviour). Replicator installs only one driver and can provide you any number of devices (LAN pipes, local pipes and multi-client proxies for other devices)

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Sat Nov 16, 2002 10:23 am

Here's a review of Musiclab's 'MIDI over LAN'. They seem quite happy with it!

http://www.soniccontrol.com/tech/midi/a ... rlan.shtml

Post by **hubird** » Sat Nov 16, 2002 11:10 am

amazing thread!
in a few hours everything clear...(to you

)
Great!

mythalethe · Post by **mythalethe** » Tue Nov 26, 2002 4:48 pm

Has anyone here tried out Cubase SX's system link? I think it is supposed to allow for tight MIDI synch between multiple systems? (I think you can also run the old copy of VST 5 on the second comp instead of buying another license...)

-Mythalethe

devo · Post by **devo** » Mon Dec 16, 2002 11:23 am

On 2002-03-29 06:13, amax wrote:
There is a windows limitation on 10 MIDI drivers, not devices. Unitor installs 9 instances of the same driver (very bad behaviour). Replicator installs only one driver and can provide you any number of devices (LAN pipes, local pipes and multi-client proxies for other devices)

Are you sure about that? I was under the impression that it is a device limit, ie how many midi ports will be visible to choose from. Excerpt from MSDN text:

"In Windows 2000, the Windows multimedia functions allow a maximum of 10 device interfaces on each of the following APIs: waveIn, waveOut, midiIn, midiOut, mixer, and aux. For example, an application can create up to 10 device interfaces for waveIn devices, and another 10 for waveOut devices."

As I read this it is not possible to see more than 10 devices even if they are all managed from one driver? I had this problem with my MIDEX-8 and this made me switch from W2K to XP (which supposedly have a limit of 32 devices).

jupiter8 · Post by **jupiter8** » Tue Dec 31, 2002 5:25 am

This is exactly what i am looking for, only problem is that i have a Mac and a PC. And it does'nt work on a Mac. F...

I really hate to buy a USB to midi interface in one end and having a midi to USB in the other.

Can't i just connect a USB cable from one computer to the other??? Probably not.
Sometimes life is just to complicated.

huffcw · Post by **huffcw** » Sat Mar 01, 2003 9:00 am

This thing looks cool - I am definitely going to check it out. Thanks.