Help find an an audio interface for USB midi controller

[jgsmith]

Hi,
Running PT 2024.10 under Win11 with input from various USB-attached midi controllers.
ASIO4ALL is no longer enough, and I want to try a USB-attached audio interface with it's own driver instead.

I haven't had much luck finding a simple box to meet this requirement though -- manufacturer documentation is a bit thin, and you can't expect a sales engineer to spend much time on such a small thing.

Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 _might_ work - but i'm still not sure.
It might need a USB <-> 5-pin midi adapter (?)

Can you recommend a few audio interfaces which should support one USB-attached midi controller ?
Thanks very much for any advice...

[Darryl Ramm]

At one level the question may not be that useful. MIDI and audio parts of an interface are separate things and you can just about use any MIDI interface out there with any audio interface. That also gives you the flexibility or optimizing for audio vs. MIDI features. Low end MIDI controllers are as simple as a USB to DIN-8 cable with the MIDI interface chipset built into the cable for a few tens of dollars.

You give no useful information about what you do need. How many mic and line inputs, how many line outputs, AES/EBU or S/PDIF inputs/outputs? ADAT inputs of outputs? other digital interfaces? What about hardware monitoring features? Do you want host audio loopback on Windows for say recording Zoom calls? What monitor control features if any? How can we guess what you are not sure about with the 4i4? What is your budget?

What *exact* problem are you trying to solve? e.g. you are getting clicks/pops or some other problem (e.g. AAE or other errors? describe them exactly) when using VIs in Pro Tools? The MIDI latency is too high? Are you recording with the interface audio inputs or only needing Audio playback though VIs and pre-recorded tracks etc? Yes you should ideally have an ASIO interface, but that may not be related to whatever is going on.

There are a bunch of good audio interface vendors to look at if you do go that route, I'd start with RME, UAD, Motu, Focusrite, and I'd avoid many others. One thing that is important to me is how well engineered their Windows ASIO drivers are and how long vendors support drivers for and there RME is a winner. RME and Motu happens to include MIDI on their interfaces and RME at least tend to use MIDI for control of some interface features as well, but again MIDI support should be a low-priority requirement of an audio interface.

Most of those vendors I mention have between just-OK to great documentation, and normally reading the doc for an interface you are considering is a great idea, but again you are not giving any really useful information... what *exact* question are you not finding answers to by reading the product doc?

You can make a start on what is out there by looking up products from the brands I mentioned on the Sweetwater and Vintage King web sites and reading up on different features I mentioned above if you are not sure what they mean. I am not sure what issue you have had with contacting sales rep at those companies, they are there to help you. Have clear questions in mind when you contact them. Vintage King staff in particular are normally extremely helpful, and if they don't know an answer will find somebody who does.

[jgsmith]

Wow -- thanks for your time! I usually try to be as brief as possible, because of the whole TL;DR thing. Your input is greatly appreciated; points are well taken. I'll try to address them.

Here's what i need:

I need to use midi devices to record music using third-party plugin instruments. I need to resolve a problem with corrupted output monitoring when playing multiple notes on a midi keyboard (sometimes a wind controller, or a pad; haven't tried programmed instructions). It's just the one device at a time. I need to monitor the playing in real time using headphones, which is where the problem is (more below).

No mics, zoom recordings, etc. required. I just need the one midi device in, and the headphone out to hear it.

Here's my best effort describing the exact problem:
Monitoring the playing via headphone usually works fine with most plugins and instruments; however, with some instruments, the sound is corrupt (pops n' clicks, notes drop out, buzzing, etc.). This occurs especially when recording multiple notes on a midi keyboard using specific instrument plugins on a PT track(that is, the problem is reproduced when those conditions are repeated -- it seems to be a direct result of those conditions, and not something like a loose cable, the symptoms of which would occur randomly regardless of plugin/input device).

What's been done:

- usual online search/research, nothing returned about the plugins (or how to ts a specific plugin). I started to see a pattern forming around asio4all and general buffer recommendations, but nothing specific to this problem.

- I reviewed the host drivers and settings; firmware settings

- reviewed the system/application event logs during the window that PT was running and the window that the problem occurred; no clues (i.e., no drive errors, overruns, etc.). Although i did see SANDRA trying to call home...

- reviewed the PT logs; interesting but no clues.

- watched procexp while starting PT and while duplicating the problem, other than a nice chuck of RAM, very little resource is used, and there are certainly no conflicts. ASIO4ALL does top the running cpu request list / cycles occasionally, but it's still < 1%.

- Went back online, then checked ASIO4ALL buffer size; it's at 1024. Tried to change it to 2048 per reco, and it saves the request to be set to 2048, but still won't go higher (small blue bos stays at 1024; big one is on 2048).

- Couldn't find anything online about troubleshooting a particular plugin, or isolating it in debug as a dll.
Maybe come back to this at some point.

- Read about trying an external audio interface with a dedicated manufacturer's driver, at which point I stopped the debug efforts and started looking for that as a possible solution.

Although the ASIO interface might not be related to the problem, at this point the idea of spending a few hundred dollars instead of continuing down the rabbit hole is very appealing. I'm not sure what an audio interface might do with a midi device signal, but i don't really care as long as it works. Maybe the devices don't even need to be jacked into the interface -- maybe they can still connect straight to the host -- the requirement is to resolve the output sound corruption.

Considering the requirement (1 midi in, 1 headphone out) , RME offerings look wonderful, and like way more than what's needed.
I still need to look at Motu. I spoke with a sales engineer who recommended Arturia Audiofuse, so I'll look there too (?).

Maybe with this additional information something else will fall out?
Again I really appreciate your time and help. Thank you.

[Darryl Ramm]

Mmmm...

You are using ASIO4ALL have you tried using WASAPI Windows Audio devices just to see if that makes a difference?

An i9 10900K should be able to deliver impressive VI performance. Post a Sisoft Sandra report here for your PC, folks here are good at looking at them and spotting potential issues.

If you are running into reproducible problems when using the same VI I would suspect that VI and would look for reported problems or post that question on DUC or the VI vendors web site etc. You mentioned you have looked which is great, but what exact plugins are causing problems?

Again, the very last thing I would worry about here is the MIDI interface. You should be able to use just about anything, and be able to use any MIDI interface with any Audio interface.

You will have significant latency at 1024 sample HW buffer size, 2048 is going to be really awful.

If you are running multiple VI instruments make sure to try freezing all the the other instrument and audio tracks.

I'm always suspicious of VIs. But you are correct that it might well be the audio interface and that's hard to exclude without just trying but first how hard have you really troubleshot this?

Before you do anything else you should try basic troubleshooting and make sure you have done all systems optimizations, regardless of how inconvenient for now. See under "Help us Help You" up the top of every DUC web page. One early thing to make sure of is to *not* have ignore errors checked in the playback engine settings and leave it like that for all other troubleshooting. You want Pro Tools to throw errors and not produce clicks etc. and you want the exact errors in case they help. And then if you get specific errors look and ask online about those errors happening with those exact VIs. Make sure you start by trashing prefs and continue to trash prefs as you try other things. Make sure you are trashing the new style plugin cache locations, delete each file in "C:\Users\Public\Pro Tools\AAXPlugInCache".

If you are getting Pro Tools AAE CPU errors make sure to try the Windows CPU affinity optimizations described int he standard troubleshooting doc, and see e.g. https://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=411952

Follow any systems optimization guides from the VI vendors.

I've never seen an Artruria audio interface and probably would not go for something so new. And I have no idea how good their ASIO drivers are. It takes years for vendors to develop really high quality drivers. Many smaller companies outsource their driver development I'd be careful.

Do you know somebody who you can borrow an interface from to test with?

If you want a ASIO interface with just top quality ASIO drivers and stable low latency performance then it's hard to go past RME. But you pay more for that quality, a nice small portable RME Babyface Pro FS is ~$1k. You can often find them used for lower prices (like Sweetwater is selling one now). The Babyface FS does have MIDI I/O but again I doubt that is going to be the factor here, but still maybe you want that convenience. More importantly to me at least is RME now has headphone cross-feed support (crossfeed is something I use just about anytime I'm working on headphones but usually do that in my Grace headphone amp/monitor controller) and it has really nice hardware monitoring in TotalMix, but that won't help you at all recording MIDI though a VI. But look over Motu and Focusrite for lower cost options.

[smurfyou]

If you are using devices that use USB MIDI then you won't need to connect the MIDI DIN ports on any interface. The USB MIDI connection is very unlikely to be the source of your problem.

99.9% sure your issue is using the onboard audio with ASIO4ALL. Get a cheap interface that supports Windows. MOTU, Focusrite, Presonus, Tascam, Roland I think, something from a reputable brand. RME is way overkill for what you need. Plenty of 2 in 2 out bus powered devices to choose from. Just make sure they explicitly support Windows. Even better if you can find out which driver type(s) they provide.

[albee1952]

Indeed, most any name brand interface will be a big improvement over ASIO4ALL. As for midi, you may find an interface with a midi input(5 pin DIN) connection and you can use that for 1 of your controllers. You can also use controllers that connect via USB, either directy to the PC, or connect several to a USB hub. In all these scenarios, the key to success is going to be proper configuration within Pro Tools. This is done in Setup>Midi>Midi studio(not in Peripherals). each controller needs to be added as a new "instrument" and name them as you like. Brand and model are not a required setting. What IS crucial, is the Input Path setting for each controller. Anything that connects via midi cable to the interface would simply be set to the interface's midi input. Anything connected via USB will need to have the proper Input Path selected from the dropdown menu(assuming you have installed a proper driver for that controller). As an example, my Akai Advance 61(connected via USB) uses the input path named Akai Advance 61 on USB[Emulated].(why [Emluated]? I don't know, but it always works). Lastly, set each controller to its own midi channel or channels so you can use more than 1 at a time.(by showing "Instrument" under View>Mix window>(check Instruments). This adds a row of boxes across the top of the MIX window(empty for non-Midi and Instrument tracks). In this box, select which controller and midi channel you wish to use on that track.