Question about midi interface

S

SUPER300

New member
Hi all,
I am about to buy a USB audio interface (i havn't decided yet which interface, but that doesn't matter now...), and i already have a midi-usb interface which of course connects directly to the computer. My question is this:
If i will use my usb audio interface, will i be able to use my midi-usb interface at the same time? Or maybe i have to buy an audio interface with midi inputs and outputs and connect my midi keyboard to it?
Thank you very much :)

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They should be able to work simultaneously - but getting an interface with MIDI as well wouldn't be a bad idea.
 
Will i get lower latency with a midi interface combined with the audio interface than a seperate midi interface? Iv'e got a cheap midi interface from ebay for about 5 bucks... But it works well and i don't have any problem.
 
SUPER300 said:
Will i get lower latency with a midi interface combined with the audio interface than a seperate midi interface? Iv'e got a cheap midi interface from ebay for about 5 bucks... But it works well and i don't have any problem.
Click to expand...

Probably, but the bulk of the latency usually comes from the audio side of things - ie. the time it takes the computer & audio interface to output what's being triggered by the MIDI. Which is to say that the latency problems rarely stem from the MIDI side of things, even if it seems more logical at first glance.
 
So i should check the audio interface latency? is this latency is the time that takes for the audio interface to pass an audio signal? If they tell me the audio interface has 2ms latency, it means it takes 2ms everytime for every audio to pass through the interface?
btw, i probably can't control the latency the computer causes. am i wrong? is there something to do with this?
Thank you very much for your help. I really appreciate that!
 
The latency figures are always a combination of your system and the audio interface's (and its driver's) performance in that particular system - so you can't really get exact figures (except from your setup). But basically there's input latency (when recording audio), MIDI latency (when sending MIDI commands from an external source to the computer) and output latency (which we're discussing here), which is the gap between the computer receiving the "command" to play something and the actual sound outputted from the interface. And then there's the combined input & output latency called round trip latency (you'd hear this, for example, if you're monitoring through the DAW while recording something). And to add to the confusion, most DAWs nowadays employ some kind of latency compensation methods, so for example recorded audio lines up instead of every subsequent pass being delayed by the amount of latency in the system (because you're technically hearing it a bit late).

But all that said, you only really need to worry about getting an acceptable (usually ~10ms or lower) latency figure - which usually just consists of adjusting the audio interface's buffer setting so that it's a balance between glitch-free operation and the smallest buffer size (=lowest latency) that works. And before getting caught up in the latency figures, it might be clarifying to remember that even the speed of sound is so slow that 1 foot equals 1ms of latency, so a few milliseconds here and there aren't gonna f*ck up your style.
 
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