Old Midi Instruments Don’t Like Modern Midi. What’s To Be Done? | Hackaday
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In theory, MIDI is an electrical and protocol standard that allows any such equipped instrument or computer to talk to any other. But as the wonderfully named [Knob Monster] will tell you, when the computer is new, and the instrument is old, it ain’t that simple.
They specialise in using the Web MIDI interface to allow browser control of an instrument. This might typically be done with a USB to MIDI interface, but in this lies a problem. The 8-bit microprocessor on a 1983 synth has problems keeping up with the rapid-fire data that spews relentlessly from the supercomputer-grade machine controlling it, and bad things happen as a result.
Expensive MIDI interfaces have a buffer built in, but a better solution lies in the Web MIDI code itself. They detail how to use the Web MIDI API’s built-in packet scheduler to slow things down a little and let your Yamaha DX7 chill a bit.
Meanwhile, if you need a USB to MIDI interface, we’ve covered one in the past.
33 thoughts on “Old Midi Instruments Don’t Like Modern Midi. What’s To Be Done?”
jep. midi sysex had no standard. do what you want. I did not know about knob monster. I will check that out as I am de developing a midi interface for the Pearl DRX-1 and the computer side of the sysex chain was holding things up.
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midi sysex had no standard. do what you want.
Well that was the entire point of it, wasn’t it.
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Midi and midi sysex are not the same unfortunately
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I didn’t know about knob monster either. It’s seems to be a nice tool that could be self-hosted but sadly they keep it as a SaaS solution with subscription-based licencing so you don’t own you beloved data voices and it’s a platform/product ready to be enshittified because of that so I’d stay the hell away of that tool if I were you.
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I’d love to buy this as software, but I don’t have any interest in renting access to it. Too bad.
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Same concern, we don’t rent it.
One payment, lifetime license, export .syx whenever. No monthly fee. Browser app, not a boxed installer, but you’re not paying for access to your own files.
If “buy once, run offline forever” is the bar, MIDI Quest still wins for full editor depth. We’re aiming at “backup + search + flash in Chrome without MIDI-OX.”
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Agree. Subscriptions are stupid and predatory.
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It is named after this girl I used to know.
Apparently sucks.
Too much chaos.
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Fair pushback on rent-seeking tools, we agree.
knob.monster is not subscription. Personal is $39 one-time, Studio is $399 one-time. Paid tiers include unlimited .syx download/export; your banks are not hostage on our servers.
Cloud vault is for search/backup convenience, not DRM. If we ever changed that we’d deserve the hate. Free tier exists to try a real dump before paying.
Self-hosted would be cool for hackers; we’re web-first for people who don’t want another daemon. Tradeoff, not lock-in.
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Fair pushback on rent-seeking tools, we agree.
knob.monster is not subscription. Personal is $39 one-time, Studio is $399 one-time. Paid tiers include unlimited .syx download/export; your banks are not hostage on our servers.
Cloud vault is for search/backup convenience, not DRM. If we ever changed that we’d deserve the hate. Free tier exists to try a real dump before paying.
Self-hosted would be cool for hackers; we’re web-first for people who don’t want another daemon. Tradeoff, not lock-in.
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Good luck with the DRX-1 interface. Computer-side SysEx pacing was our pain too. We ended up sending complete F0…F7 messages on a schedule with midiOutput.send(data, performance.now() + offset) and ~60ms between messages instead of arbitrary byte chunks. Happy to compare notes if you hit a specific failure mode.
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Even Back in the 80s, we had tools in sequencers to reduce the density of CC messages. Midi is only 31.25k baud… It’s easy to choke it with continuous controller data.
Any proper tool should know to rate limit itself.
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Yup, came here to say this. MIDI is at a fixed standardized baud rate that even old 80s synths with 8 bit processors could easily handle. I’ve used well designed modern MIDI controllers on vintage synths, I’ve used vintage midi controllers on modern synths, and I’ve used modern cheap USB to MIDI devices on synths. Hell I’ve even used SPG on MSDOS 6.22 to control synths, new and old, over MIDI. The issue isn’t 8 bit processors not keeping up with modern MIDI, it’s lazy modern day programmers not buffering their MIDI properly so that their 31.25k UART line isn’t choked
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yep – "The issue isn’t 8 bit processors not keeping up with modern MIDI, it’s lazy modern day programmers not buffering their MIDI...