Recommend a USB MIDI controller for me?

[MBTC]

The Belkin power strips I use around here are only about $18 on Amazon and are insured for up to $300,000 worth of equipment, although when you consider the current cost of the Virus Ti2 it may not be enough for some folks

[namnibor]

Originally Posted by MBTC

The Belkin power strips I use around here are only about $18 on Amazon and are insured for up to $300,000 worth of equipment, although when you consider the current cost of the Virus Ti2 it may not be enough for some folks

I have one rack unit power/RMI/EMI/surge protector and three of the newer Furman SS-6B metal floor/otherwise boxes that have heavy duty 15 FOOT long grounded plug that has same protection as their 'Merit Series', and normally are around $$29. usd each but when Sweetwater had a short sale on them got all three for $60., which assures I can use a few different circuits in my townhouse. I believe I could run over it with a dump truck and not do a thing to it and 15 feet is really quite handy .

I wish to correct myself in that it's the Focusrite Sapphire Pro 40 that the new Scarlett 18i20 is the USB equiv. rather than the 24. Sorry, just did not want to confuse another soul looking this info up perhaps on here in future.

Focusrite had quite a few problems with the actual software/driver DVD's they included in the Scarlett 18i6 specifically, in which quite a few people, including MAC users, had the dreaded blue screen of death. Now, we ALL know it's best to download newest direct from any manufacturer's website rather than the disc as a "general rule", but now the new Scarlett 18i20 does not even come with any disc and a person is directed to go to site and do all that before ever connecting interface. No idea why it was that particular interface's DVD but I really like all the helpful information and tech support Focusrite gives for their products and the new, tidier forum is quite nice as well.
I probably would not use Automap for my Waldorf Q Rack Synth, as the abundant knobs/buttons make it a breeze to go deep down it's monster rabbit hole. Just thought it was cool a sound designer submitted a total Automap for Novation and the library list of hardware and software has grown exponential in last year. What I like about the Remote SL61MKII controller is I can easily make my own assignments to all four, 8 stage loop able envelopes and each of three oscillators and two wavetable sub-oscillators, to have as much access as the much more heavily knob adorned Q keyboard. Key action is not bad at all but aforementioned, find the x/y pad pretty useless and love/hate relationship with the rather odd joystick.

Need to figure out most efficient way to utilize both midi out ports to make a few rack synths play nice with each, the interface, and PC in a midi daisy chain. Any advice here on latter point? Still reading........

[MBTC]

I'm probably not a good person to ask about any elaborate hardware setups, since aside from the UltraNova, Maschine, the MKII and CMC-CH and CHC-AI controllers, everything else in my environment currently is software based, but maybe someone else will chime in.

Although I will add one possible consideration... the reason I went with Firewire actually was with an eye toward future Virus ownership (or UltraNova or any USB-integrated synth). Based on a past experience with a Ti2, I put a dedicated USB3.0 card in my music PC to handle things music and USB related. However, since audio streaming can be a real hog, and my Firewire port on the mobo wasn't doing anything, I thought it might be better to put all of that on Firewire and leave the USB for other things (synths). I don't know, call me superstitious. So far however it has worked out very well, both the interface and the Firewire port get along splendidly as does the Ultranova with the USB card. May be a consideration for you if you have a spare Firewire port.... up against USB 2 it is faster.

[namnibor]

My DAW PC build has high speed USB 2 ports that can handle I believe 4X normal powering capabilities. Have a couple USB 3 as well. I made a newbie mistake in not getting an TI Chipset Firewire 400 and it is a VIA 6308. Everything else about the build is right on and I wrongly assumed that something like Firewire would be "standardized" like the Universal Serial Bus/USB is and I did not want to take the chance and expense of FW interface if it was going to give me issues simply because it's not TI Chipset. Yes, I KNOW I can buy a separate FW card and have plenty of expansion space to do so but since USB 2.0 audio interfaces have come a long way and most probably will not get a Virus Ti anytime soon, and to be honest if and when I do, will wait to see what Access releases next and hopefully utilizing full bandwidth before I go down that road.
If anything, since I have a lot of great hardware synths, it would be something along lines of a standalone/vst such as Izotope Iris; intense sampling and mangling of field recordings coupled with the hardware currently have, not really foreseeing myself growing tired of options. Both of my 1 TB 7200rpm 64mb cache drives are internal and will use my eSATA port to back up to external third 2 TB drive. Plan on putting visual art experience in learning some non-linear video editing as well to go with sonic creations.
Perhaps an expensive hobby to another's perspective but hell, what I have done in a military career to finally be retired and disabled from it with nice pension...screw them! HA!
(I think someone paying $600. to Apple for a cell phone is crazy , let alone same person would probably buy a piece of my cat's crap if it had an Apple logo on it... )
Love to learn, love music, creativity, fast cars, writing my book...still, and am not abusing small animals nor myself with substances...and lastly, getting back into music has been very therapeutic for military induced PTSD(for real).
I do hear you on the FW thing though and manned-up to my newbie screw-up.
JUST WHY is a TI Chipset better when that nexus is going to same place on the motherboard any other FW would? Inquiring mind would like to know.

[namnibor]

My FW Chipset is VIA 6308...correction

[MBTC]

One of the things I like about the PC is the fact that I can just put new cards in it all day long if needed, or tear down any part of it and replace with something faster if needed.

FWIW, the Firewire chipset on my mobo is apparently VIA and it works flawlessly. I do remember reading something about the TI chipset being preferred with Focusrite interfaces but maybe they've worked that out or I just got lucky? I had some initial speedbumps with that PC, but they all went away when I removed the Creative X-Fi card that was apparently causing conflicts.

As far as why TI is better, it's most likely just a recommendation for those buying new today maybe? Sometimes a manufacturer will make a recommendation like that if they run into a situation where, during initial testing, a device works properly 95% of the time with one chipset but only 70% of the time with another chipset.... but then the chipset in question gets a flash update or whatever such that equal compatibility in both is eventually reached, yet all of those internet posts remain and even sometimes official documentation is never updated, the chipset is just deemed incompatible and lives on. I was fully prepared to drop another card in if needed to get it off the USB bus, its probably like a $10 card but the gods were on my side on that one and I never needed to.

[namnibor]

Thank you for that comment as I know for instance an AI was seriously considering was the PreSonus Firewire Mobile or Firestudio Project AI where PreSonus stated the VIA 6308 worked but issues *could* arise at higher track counts. The native soundcard in my build is made by VIA as well but has been simple enough to totally disable it and select outboard audio interface as my card with no conflicts and will always totally disable Norton 360 when doing audio stuff as the only time this build is on the net is to download drivers, et al and certainly want that protection whilst doing those things but my laptop is my internet use machine. The DAW build is just for that with absolutely no bloatware nor games...and have it optimized for audio/video. This AMD+ 6100FX 3.3GHz, 6 core with 12 GB RAM and NVIDIA GT430 w/2GB can be overclocked quite a bit and have ample cooling but really feel it will serve my purposes well. I made sure to not have a wireless card in DAW build just to ensure it's not randomly wanting to search for a connection.
Yes, having tons of space in tower to pop-in this or that certainly is easier than a laptop. I have WIN 7 64 bit Home Prem. and NO plans of going WIN 8.

[TweakHead]

This thread keeps going and always interesting. Well, I own a firewire (800) interface myself connected to my imac - which is my main music computer. Never had any issues with it, didn't require me to install any drivers, it was plug and play bliss.

If I was to go for the Virus - that, like namnibor said, would like to wait and see what comes next from Access before making such decision - I think I could manage to use wireless connection for both keyboard and mouse if in any way having a free usb bus would help get things going. However, if that's the case it would be a shame, since I have only three USB ports on the Imac (without counting the two extra on the keyboard, which is really like a hub), and the usb hub I bought that doesn't count even for plugging the midi keyboard, despite having it's own power supply and all of that. On the Remote SL, if I plug it to this hub, the screen is somewhat duller, seems like it doesn't get all the energy it should - so that's connected directly to the USB port as well.

Those sound cards you guys are talking about are very good from what I ear and the DSP one was highly recommended - I considered it myself back when I was going for such things. Sure you can't go wrong.

I don't know if I'd buy a sound card with connections to cover such a vast hardware setup. If this was me, I'd rather invest in some good mixer - check for noise-to-signal ratio on them, very important! At least that's what I plan to do myself: connect the hardware to the mixer instead of buying a new sound card with more connections - with the extra bonus of being able to introduce an analogue EQ on the path of course - and being able to create an audio loop for mixing the sub groups of audio from the DAW. Seems pretty convenient to me, and if I plan to get some external effects that's also covered and can even use the sends on the mixer for that as well.

" I have WIN 7 64 bit Home Prem. and NO plans of going WIN 8." Wise words
Cheers

[MBTC]

Originally Posted by TweakHead

" I have WIN 7 64 bit Home Prem. and NO plans of going WIN 8." Wise words
Cheers

I actually have to disagree with this. There's been lots of evidence to support Windows 8 as better than Windows 7 with regard to music production. The whole metro interface thing does take some getting used to and still bugs me sometimes, but check out these benchmarks and keep in mind this comes to us from Cakewalk/Roland, who has absolutely no motivation to get you to upgrade to Windows 8:

http://blog.cakewalk.com/windows-8-a...-applications/

From the summary : "The results of the benchmarks were surprisingly good! Windows 8 performed better than Windows 7 across the board in all categories, and in many cases with fairly dramatic performance gains."

[MBTC]

Also forgot to mention, as we drift farther from MIDI keyboard recommendations ...

Supposedly they are bringing back the Start button/menu and addressing some other common complaints in Windows 8.1:

http://www.neowin.net/news/start-but...insiders-claim