[sdiy] Midi opto isolation

[Dave Kendall]

On Jan 1, 2008, at 19:24, Sean Ellis wrote:
>
> I wasn't implying that there is something inherently wrong with midi, 
> I have used it also for many years without problems except for a few 
> units that frequently suffer hanging or dropped notes. With the live 
> setup I used to use I'm sure some of the problems were my own fault, 
> long cables, up to 4 stages of midi through ports etc...

The best way I've found to reduce hanging notes and other nasties is to 
send Midi clocks, or Midi timecode (which uses up a lot of the midi 
bandwidth) down a discrete MIDI port, and only use midi clocks on the 
other ports when strictly necessary. Spreading the load across the 
remaining ports according to the amount of notes being played, or data 
sent (eg from a breath controller or pitch wheel) helps too, so a 
multichannel sampler or a primarily pad synth has it's own port, 
whereas a monosynth or two, and a few FX modules could share a single 
port easily. This combined with filtering unwanted data out (sysex and 
aftertouch for example) helps keep things tight.

This is probably easier to set up in the studio than in a rig.....

cheers,
Dave