Hi megafiddle,

Thanks for your response. For me as a programmer this is an interesting topic.

Quote:


When a USB midi interface is plugged into a PC, Windows will detect that the USB device is present. But Windows has no use for any midi data that may be present. It's up to a program like BIAB to read the data in.




Yes I was thinking along this line after I posted. Win XP will have drivers for the USB device itself and for certain devices plugged in like a USB drive. But midi is a string of data coming in as you say (and as I have been learning over the last few weeks).

Quote:


Actually, it may not even be possible to tell if a midi device like a keyboard or midi guitar is connected unless it is transmitting data.



Yeah, I am not sure either. I think if a device such as the GR-1 is written to the Windows Plug-And-Play standard it may detect it as soon as it is plugged in. But I do not think this is necessary to operate.

I brought google in to this.
Quote:


http://download.yamaha.com/usb_midi/index.html
The USB-MIDI driver is software that transfers MIDI data back and forth between PC software and Yamaha USB-MIDI devices.



So this means that this particular driver knows where to get the Midi data on a USB device and presents it in a standard way for the Software so that the software does not need to know if it is the USB 1.2 standard or the USB 2.0 standard or any other new standard. It may even mean that Yamaha supplies the driver because it is doing something special related to the USB device and the driver converts it to the Midi standard so the software like BIAB does not need to know all this stuff.

Quote:


In the case of a USB midi interface, the driver will be supplied with the interface.



Yes this matches exactly the quote above about the Yamaha Midi USB driver. (I am thinking on the fly here) Yamaha supplies a Midi Interface (much like the Roland GI-20 for example which is a midi interface) and you get a CD with this purchase that supplies the USB midi drivers to do the conversion to a Midi standard for the BIAB software. Not only that, the part of the Midi driver that BIAB sees does not tell BIAB whether the midi data is coming from USB or Midi-5pin on a sound card or Midi-5pin located on a special PCI card. The Midi-Driver tells the Win-XP operating system where to look for this midi data which it will supply to BIAB. To add to this even more, I found a special Midi-driver in my goggle searches that allows Midi software to talk to other Midi software (no hardware involved at all and only the driver knows where the two parties involved are). So that leads directly to my question. The GR-1 is a Roland synthesizer which also has a Midi Interface built in (midi interface meaning a hardware that converts the GK-3 guitar pickup signals to Midi data) But the Roland GR-3 is old and has no USB plug (only Midi 5 pin). So it therefore can not provide a Midi USB driver (unless one was written after the fact which I highly doubt since Roland will want you to buy something new like the GR-33 which was the first synth with a USB output). Okay so if the old GR-1 does work if it is redirected to a USB port this probably means that windows XP likely provides a very basic standard Midi USB driver by default and when the converter cable is plugged in to the Roland GR-1 box to convert the Midi-5-pin to a USB on the other side and you plug this into the computer USB port then the Windows XP supplied Midi USB driver does the job (long sentence, sorry about that).

I am now turning to (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI). It gets into the RTP-Midi standard which is used for computers. It appears MS-Windows had a big influence on Midi Standards once things moved to computers. So although I have not found anything that suggests that Win XP is supplying a default midi driver for the USB port I would not be surprised. It may be that once it detects that a Midi device is there using the "Plug-and-Play" standard that has been around since 1980-something if it can not find a driver supplied by the Midi Interface manufacturer like Roland/Yamaha or whatever, then Win XP supplies it and that is what BIAB sees as you described in your message. Most users would not even realize this since most would have used a Midi device with a USB plug and the USB driver already installed before they even plug in the device. For the very few such as myself wanting to use an older machine such as the Roland GR-1 they may install it without even thinking about this and not notice that Win XP supplied the basic Midi USB driver. The only other thing I can think might be happening if maybe the MIDI-to-USB converter cable has a driver build in somehow and it gets loaded. I guess I will find out when I try it :-)

Last edited by bowlesj; 07/18/12 06:08 PM.