MIDI type

[pianoDude]

Hi all

I plan to get a yamaha p105 for my birthday soon and this is what the makers say


"Equipped with USB TO HOST port the P-105 is able to connect directly to a suitable computer for use with music software."



so is this the right kind of MIDI setup,  this is usb MIDI and not the normal type of MIDI port

will I stil be able to install and use Piano Booster?

looking foward to giving Piano Booster a go  :)


TIA

[Louis B.]

Yep, it should work OK. Most MIDI connections to PC use a USB port nowadays. Ideally you would need a GM (General MIDI) sound source to play the accompaniment as well. (The built in GM synth on the PC has a massive delay that make playing along with the PC GM synth impossible)

On Oct 15, 2012 9:32 PM, "pianoDude [via Piano Booster]" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi all

I plan to get a yamaha p105 for my birthday soon and this is what the makers say


"Equipped with USB TO HOST port the P-105 is able to connect directly to a suitable computer for use with music software."



so is this the right kind of MIDI setup,  this is usb MIDI and not the normal type of MIDI port

will I stil be able to install and use Piano Booster?

looking foward to giving Piano Booster a go  :)


TIA

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[pianoDude]

Thanks for the quick reply



when you say

"Ideally you would need a GM (General MIDI) sound source to play the accompaniment as well. (The built in GM synth on the PC has a massive delay that make playing along with the PC GM synth impossible) "

are you talking about when using Windows?

I was hoping to install it on my linux box

here will be my setup

Yamaha P-105 USB MIDI------- Linux pc (Deb Sid) with Radeon 6870-----HDMI----TV-----Speakers

Ive never used any MIDI devices before so am I missing anything?

again Thanks

[Mossy]

This thread is old but I'll reply with my recent experience in case anybody else runs across this thread and has similar questions.

I have a Casio Privia PX-150.  (Yamaha P-series and Casio PX-series are competitors in the same price range.)  It only has a USB MIDI port -- it looks exactly like the USB port on a printer.  Traditional MIDI devices have a round MIDI port with 6 slanted pins.  The advantage of USB MIDI is you do not need an extra MIDI adapter -- just a printer-type USB cable.  The disadvantage is you only can connect it to a computer versus connecting to say a separate MIDI synth module to drive it directly.  

The low-end Casio PX's and Yamaha P's have only limited sound banks.  More expensive models do include GM sound banks.  If you get a digital piano that supports GM, then that's that -- connect it to your computer, choose your MIDI device as both input and output, voila.

But if you pick up a digital piano with limited sounds (piano plus a few others), MIDI pieces with accompaniment still work -- they just play with piano sounds versus what the arranger intended.  In some cases, this is OK -- example: Skip to My Lou on the download pages.  But if you pick up a piece with a lot of drums and fancy effects, it sounds totally wacked out -- example, google up a karaoke version of Santana's Smooth (has extension of .kar).

In this case, if you don't have a hardware MIDI keyboard/module with GM sounds, you can get by with using a software synth.  For Windows, this would be the default Microsoft wavetable midi device.  (If you can find a copy of Yamaha's XG Softsynthesizer, the quality is much better.)  For Linux (and probably MacOX), this would be Fluidsynth.  

For software synths, you need a lot of CPU power if you want good sound quality without laggy latency.  An Intel atom network will not cut it.  I've tested the default Fluid-R3 soundfont that comes with Fedora -- even with the options for slower CPUs, the sound generates garbage noise in complicated karaoke MIDI pieces.  However, the Fluid-R3 soundfont is a whopping 125MB.  There are many alternative GM soundfonts (too many to be honest to test all of them) and from the few I've tried, the best seems to be the GeneralUser GS soundfont at a more reasonable 30MB.  (Sound quality IMO is better than Fluid-R3.)  If performance is of utmost importance, there is a 2M GM soundfont ripped from a Nokia 30 phone -- the music sounds a bit like from an 8-bit gaming console but it's not that bad if you pretend you are using a 70's synth module.  (I'm now using an old AMD 2ghz laptop w/ GeneralUser + Fluidsynth at max sound quality -- never hits beyond 50% cpu usage.)

For best keyboard feel (no latency), let your digital piano play your track and let the computer software synth handle accompaniment -- set your digital piano volume higher than the computer speaker volume and choose the "mute your playing" option.    I personally like using the mellow piano for playing karaoke MIDI as grand/bright pianos are too sharp for pop music.