Midi Issue For Newbie With A Midisport 8x8- Help! Options

[12xu]

I'm tearing my hair out here cause I cant figure out why one of my devices won't work in my Midisport 8x8/s. It's a Cheetah rack synth module, a lot older than my other gear. Everything else is working through the Midisport just fine and, if I use my Korg Triton as a midi controller direct to the Cheetah (without incorporating the Midisport) the messages are recieved fine. BUT- if I, for example, connect the Korg to Midi In 1 and the Cheetah to Midi Out 1 on the Midisport, there's nothing! Is there some other issue I can check, beyond the patchbay configuration on my laptop and the cables (all are fine)? Anything to do with it being an older bit of kit? Any ideas?!?! ANYONE?!?!

[miklospower]

Older MIDI devices sometimes have problems with the MIDI grounding cable that is a mistake in the MIDI spec. Basically you have to physicallly modify the cable you are using. Take the midi cable and at one end (no need to do both) look at the midi cable so that the pins inside the cable head are facing you in a "smiley face" configuration, not a "frown. Then you take a pair of plyers and bend the *left most pin on the 'smile'* back and forwards until it breaks off. Don't damage the other pins. That left most pin is not used for anything, and all it does is ground your device with your computer and interface which you don't want - that is not supposed to happy, your device should ground through it's power cable automatically. Some people have mixed results with grounding problems from lost notes to devices completely not responding - like yours. Since you only change the interface, I suspect this is the problem. You should be able to fix it in a few minutes. If this is not right, you have only damaged a midi cable, and it will still be completely usable, as I said, that left pin is not used for anything in midi and all it does is ground which you don't want on any device. Actually, you could modify all your midi cables this way. I had problems with my Kurzweil K2600 constantly it was driving me nuts (with a midisport by the way) until somebody told me to modify the cable, it's been fine since. By the way this is something even the manufacturers weren't aware of until recently.

Hope this helps,
Miklos.

This post has been edited by miklospower: Sun 4 Sep 2005, 01:24