MIDI Sequencers

[Jay Vaughan]

> not tried the midi monitor thing.
> But yes I added a device and cabled it.
> 

You definitely should use Midi monitor on OSX to determine whats going on with the MIDI setup, first .. if it doesn't see your Midex2, thats the first clue.

> Like I say, my midisysex tool works fine, and the interface works fine
> from windows.
> I have two interfaces, an old steinberg midiex 2, which doesn't work
> in OSX but does in windows.


The Midex2 uses a two-stage firmware driver which {possibly} hasn't been ported to OSX/Intel, alas .. and Steinberg seem to have abandoned their drivers on OSX for these older MIDI devices, since there is absolutely no good reason at all for proprietary MIDI drivers any more (the USB-MIDI class driver works fabulously and ships with OSX).

The Midex2 driver first identifies the device, then loads a shim to upload the 'real' firmware binary blob to the device, which then resets and get taken over by another driver.  You can watch what is happening with the Console.app .. and if you look in the Midex2 driver bundle, you can find the 'real' firmware blob, I think.

> The Alesis Photon 25 I have works fine in both, aside from this.

So you want to be able to use your midex2 in OSX with REAPER, but not the Photon25?


> I'll have a bit more of a play next week, it might be that I download
> reaper for windows, though I really would rather stick with osx.
> 


If you want things to be really plug-and-play smooth, upgrade from the Midex2 box to a real class-compliant USB-MIDI cable.  I know you don't want to hear this, but the shim/firmware issue has been a block for Steinberg and their driver writers on OSX/Intel for years and it doesn't look like they're going to fix this any time soon.

Class-compliant USB-MIDI cables can be had for about 5eu,-, I bought a ton of them on Amazon for about $30, and simply use a USB hub and these cables now, instead of the old MTP AV interface (which I'm going to remove from my rack now that these things are working so well..)

;
--
Jay Vaughan