Windows 95 midi device

I have been in this position many times. And then, off you go with laggy kazoo fun. Not all old software can be configured to do otherwise unfortunately. However, those programs that can usually have an option somewhere for setting the MIDI output device. Set the synthesizer to take input from the same MIDI port. NOTE: the port should have messages flowing through it in one direction only. In other words, one program should talk while the other listens. Again, bi-directional communication between the programs would require twice as many ports to avoid feedback.

First, if you are attempting to minimize the latency of the Windows default synth, it is a lost cause. Your best bet is to use a different synthesizer and follow the instructions in the previous subsection.

I usually recommend starting with a value of 10 and testing playback with at least some chords in it to hear some MIDI polyphony. Some systems can go as low as ms latency with this synth, although this is somewhat rare and requires a pretty beefy machine often a desktop tower and good audio hardware.

Many lesser machines, however, will still work with ms. On laptops in particular, the degree to which you can reel in the latency can be affected by power settings. High performance modes can typically function with lower latencies without audio glitching than battery saving modes are capable of. If you are using ASIO drivers, you may need to adjust the buffer size to optimize the performance of the device on your system. The larger the buffer, the worse the latency will be, but the less likely you will be to have audio quality problems clicks, audio dropouts, etc.

High-end audio devices meant for serious music development usually can have the buffer size set quite small. How powerful a PC the audio device is on also impacts this process. I own a brand new PC Win 8. Ans less and less of hairs!!! Idem with asio4all. Buy an other! To get the same problems? Those people are bad programmers I was researcher in computers, the URL sows you a little part of my job, fully working in the end of , recently retired and not goog commercials too!

So, I permit to call for some help everywhere I can, hoping someone will find the right and probably esy to do manip. Thanks for your help. I realize this is a horrendously late response to your post and do apologize for that. Backwards compatibility is a much complained about topic in music, and the options can be pretty limited when you have a really old device.

Similarly to what you have seen, some parts of the device worked but others were unresponsive no matter what I tried, and I ended up having to just buy a new piece of hardware. Can I download one?

Nest step would be playing along with the midi and recording the result. Would the same thing work for that? Sorry to be using you for tech support. I thought your classical woodwind trio generated from number 6 was scarily real. Does it ever end? I mean Can you give the program the means to create a start and a finish?

There are download links for a couple different virtual MIDI ports under section 4. Adding support for more intelligent generation of time-sensitive musical events endings, bridges, etc. Drop down to Windows 7? Surely someone has designed a midi interface that runs on windows 8. The only thing it has dropped is support for setting a default output device at the operating system level.

Some very basic MIDI players have this problem as do some very old pieces of software. Having been brought to realise that this was not a trivial problem, I thought to try this with a virtual Windows 7 computer running on VMware Workstation 12 Player, which I have had to set up for other purposes. The latency is dreadful, but the virtual computer approach will meet my very modest needs, and which is why I write this might be of interest to others, since VMware Player is free for non-commercial use, and recipes for obtaining free limited-lifetime Windows XP are easily found.

Thank you again. Richard Corbett. Hi, my question is simple. Is there any way to get a midi keyboard working on a laptop any laptop without latency? I have to use my old bulky windows 95 desktop with a soundblaster card to play midi instruments without latency. Better spec laptops can typically get down to 10ms latency on high performance mode with non-ASIO drivers, but you need a software synthesizer that works without them. Some very high spec laptops can go down to 2ms with that synth, but how well it does is not just dependent on the machine and power settings, but also use-case factors like how much polyphony is happening at any given time i.

If you use that synthesizer, you will need a program like MIDI Ox to rout messages from the keyboard to the synth. I have noticed that some Bluetooth controllers can lag visibly with this test on some laptops, and this is sometimes solved by kicking the machine into a more power hungry mode, but not always. Regarding how things have changed between Win95 with SoundBlaster cards and the standards in , the expectation these days for serious real-time work with audio and MIDI is that you offload a lot of the burden to an external USB card.

This is true of both desktop and laptop rigs; PCI cards are no longer the norm and on-board chips are not sufficient on many systems. Similarly the kind of built-in MIDI synth features of older Soundblasters is not something that exists on most modern sound cards, and the expectation is to use software synths within a digital audio workstation.

The only issue worth noting is that older software and operating systems can sometimes experience problems with the new trends in bluetooth-based MIDI controllers. Wrote webshots, and they said I must have the above mentioned format player Thanks for your help. Bill Atkinson. Some times ago I had specific Microsoft device. Now I want to give me advice, how can i install it. Where i must go to install it.

May be in Control Panel My Options include:. I'm not sure how to help u, but, could u by some chance spare me the grief of attempting to find Presto Arranger, and post a download on the website. Thanks for your help. All forum topics Previous Topic Next Topic. Replies 3. Thanks for your suggestions. I have checked all my sound drivers and they all seem to be working. I have tried the compatibility mode and that didn't make any difference, so I guess it's just one of those things that doesn't work.

Thanks again. Post Reply. Now type in a descriptive name for this instrument. Click "Finish". This new "device" should also appear in CakeWalk's list of output devices. But if dealing with multitimbral instruments, you'll still have to set each instrument to actively ignore MIDI channels reserved for other modules.

If you wish to remove a particular IDF, you can do so. Flip to the "Advanced" page ie, the last page. This displays something that looks like Device Manager's list, except that it only contains devices pertaining to audio, MIDI, and video.

This will drop down a list of all of your installed MIDI devices. Highlight this IDF. Click on the "Properties" button at the bottom of the page. A new dialog should pop up containing information about this IDF. Click on the "Remove" button. The actual IDF itself has not been erased. You can reinstall that file later if desired.

For more information, see MIDI connection and computer setup. This is more flexible than using an IDF because you can usually define more than patches with the former ie, the sequencer supports banks of patches whereas IDFs don't. Plus, the sequencer lets you apply any patch map to any track, regardless of MIDI channel, so it's a lot easier to setup.

Just don't use an IDF in conjunction with the built-in patch naming features of your sequencer. You don't want to remap your custom patch sets. But then, don't select the MIDI Mapper as the output driver for your software that has its own patch naming features. When installing Windows, the "auto-detect" found my SB16 and installed its drivers but didn't find my MPU card nor install its drivers.

Why did this happen, and how do I get my MPU working? Windows' "AutoDetect hardware" only does a search for one non-PnP sound card since that's all that is really needed for normal use.

As soon as it discovers one card, that's the end of the search for an audio card. Needless to say, the first card that Windows searches for is an SB compatible. Also, Windows is written to only check for those sound cards that have drivers that are shipped with Windows. In that case, Windows will detect, but if there are no drivers, it will label it an "Unknown device" without any driver support.

For any second card, you'll have to manually install the drivers. Windows will also not autodetect any card that it doesn't know anything about. You'll have to manually install the drivers for this case too. When using my bit Windows sequencer software under Windows, I get erratic digital audio playback.

Sometimes, there's static or tempo glitches. Why does this happen, and how can I fix it? Most of the problems with old bit software playing digital audio tracks ie, recording to, or playing from, the hard drive are due to the differences between Win3. You can minimize adverse effects Win95 may have on bit software by forcing the disk cache and virtual memory ie, swap file on your HD to fixed sizes.

Find the line that reads [vcache]. For example, here's what it would look like for 16 MEG:. This limits the RAM that Win95 uses for its disk cache. Normally, Win95 allocates all free RAM for that, which could interfere with memory allocations that your sequencer is trying to make during playback, and cause slowdowns in performance.

To set Win95's virtual memory ie, swap file to a fixed size, open Control Panel's System notebook and flip to the Performance page. Click on the "Virtual memory" button. Select "Let me specify my own virtual memory settings".

For the Minimum setting, enter 0. This prevents the swap file from growing and shrinking on your hard drive. It's also recommended that you defrag your drive afterwards. If you have more than one drive, try putting the swap file on a drive other than the one where you'll be recording digital audio. The problem is that this DOS prompt window or screen is really running under Win95 ie, you're running an MS-DOS shell that uses Win95's "Current Configuration", rather than booting into a "New Configuration" without Win95 loaded and in control , and you have incomplete Win95 drivers for your sound card.

Here's the deal. All of your Win95 drivers are managing access to your hardware, including your sound card. And that's why you can enter and exit from that DOS prompt, back to Win95, so quickly. In fact, the Win95 drivers for your sound card are always in control of the card, unbeknowst to your MS-DOS program even. There are 2 things that your Win95 drivers do.

First, they manage interaction between Windows programs and your hardware. Everytime that your MS-DOS program tries to execute an instruction that reads or writes to hardware, the Intel CPU sneaky guy that it is immediately "traps" that access and gives control over to Win95 and its drivers, who then manage the actual access.