Nord User Forum

This is to report a solution (and a very relieved programmer). It may not be relevant for most readers, but anyway here goes:

I develop my own MIDI software, until recently I only used native MIDI via adaptors, but I’m moving to MIDI over USB. The chat groups are full of posts about problems with MoUSB, particularly when a USB hub is involved, and I encountered one as well. Sometimes I have to send a string of messages to a single device, including Sysex/es, an example is:

Sysex to change the mode of a sound generator
Bank change / program change
Sysex to set a parameter in a sound generator part.

What I found was that some of these message bundles behaved strangely. Sometimes some actions were completely ignored, or actions produced incorrect results. When I switched back to straight MIDI, the problems disappeared.

The nice thing about MIDI is that it’s easy to view the actual packets using a package such as MidiOx. It’s harder with USB, you need specialised software that I don’t have the energy to find, install and learn (although I probably have to make the effort). Anyway, the only easy thing I could think of doing was to add small delays between the message sends using the Win32 Sleep function, so the above example would become:

Sysex to change the mode of a sound generator
Sleep (20) // 20millisecond delay
Bank change / program change
Sleep (20) // 20millisecond delay
Sysex to set a parameter in a sound generator part.

In my case I can do this without latency problems, because there is always a reasonable time between these message bundles, and a delay of a few 10s of milliseconds is of no consequence. They are only used for patch changes and similar events.

Anyway, it worked, the resultant program seems as solid as the native MIDI equivalent. Given the timing around USB, I expect that the Sleep times could probably be reduced significantly.

In the several weeks I’ve been working with USB, this bundled message problem is the only one I’ve come across. The critical real time stuff, ND, NUs and streams of pitch bend messages & the like, seem to work without fail.

Hi, Do you really mean SysEx? That is not usually used to change programs.
SysEx start with F0 and end with F7, they are manufacturer-dependent and often used to change parameters on a particular hardware.
Or do you mean ProgCh messages?

This is a complete guess: maybe your code is accessing the USB interface quite rapidly, and might not be sending the MIDI bytes out at the right rate (remember that the MIDI standard is quite old and at that time 31250 baud was not particularly slow).
I would have thought that there might be a way of sending MIDI bytes out from your program at the right rate via some software API, so these problems do not happen (imagine that a similar issue in a sequencer program would be catastrophic if every message is delayed by 20 ms!).

I have found I need to put a small delay after sending Sysex to my Korg Triton Extreme to change from Program Mode to Combi mode and back before changing patches. With that said,
I'm running my Korg through midi connectors but the controlling device is either my PC running Bome Midi Translator software or a Bome Box. So there is always a midi over usb component in the mix.


Note, Korg can only switch modes with Sysex and then the Bank and PC is valid from only the mode it is in.

I have found no other instances where I've had to insert delays. I run most of my stuff over USB through a Iconnectivity 4x4 box. My Hammond does not have Midi over USB and I run Korg over midi instead of USB for other reasons.

Hi,
If you use a USB hub that is not powered, Midi over USB doesn't work, even midi sometimes, that's what I realized 4 years ago when I used for the first time my computer with just non powered USB Hub.

Thanks all. It looks like I'm on the right track with small delays, however I would have expected the protocol to handle queuing better than that.

My hub is powered.

As Mr G. Said and even on the traditional 31.25KHz serial MIDI, some older devices had too small buffers for MIDI Data that required slowing down the transmission of long Sysex sequences (and in fact most Librarian programs had an option to add such a delay, also MidiOx does). With MoUSB this problem shouldn't happen, unless you are using a USB to MIDI DIN cable/interface and that interface (translation chip) has too not enough buffers (this happens frequently with some cheap models)