Customer Reviews

USB Midi Cable Lead Adaptor for Musical Keyboard to PC Laptop XP Vista Mac

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I will confess to being a bit dubious about this product at first. There are an awful lot of very expensive midi converters on the market; surely there must be a reason for this? Seemingly not. Plugged it straight into the piano at one end (little midi lights come on to tell me I got it right, which is handy as it is a common error to get the midi cables the wrong way round), plug it into the PC at the other (more little lights to guide you) and my PC (windows 7, if that helps anyone) wakes up and goes "ooh, looks like we need some drivers". So off it romped, found some drivers, and we were away. All without intervention from me.

My music composition software (Sonar) spotted the device straight away and that was that. No noticeable latency (any there might be can be squarely attributed to my sound card) and it's been working reliably ever since. Bingo.

NB since I wrote this review I've replaced my sound card, and this confirmed that this product was not the source of the latency. 6 Months on, its still working well.

I wanted a cable to connect my Yamaha to my mac (10.6.2, iLife 09), so I could use it in GarageBand. I'm very happy to report that this one did exactly what I wanted it to, and worked flawlessly, negating the need to buy the expensive Yamaha cable.

ALthough the title of the product does not include windows in the compatibility list. The Amzon technical specifications include compatibility with Windows 7. I bought the product on this basis.

Unfortunately I have to report that the product does not work with Windows 7 so if you have a recent computer with this operating system I would not recommend this product.

If you google USB to MIDI cables and windows 7 you will find that this is a common problem with these cables, something must have changed in Windows 7 that prevents the cable to work properly.

I have contacted the manufacturer, asking for a Windows 7 driver. If unavailable I will return the cable to Amazon.

Hope this helps.

This product appears to be identical to the LogiLink Adapter USB to Midi In-Out.
As that product had mixed reviews, I did wonder what the differences might be with the more expensive items and if it would work at all.

Thankfully, when I used this product to connect my old Casio CZ1 to my laptop it worked fine first time. It was nice not to have to instal drivers for this USB device. There was no problem with ordinary recording, playback, note timing, pitch bend, modulation wheel, etc.

Excellent value for money.

Received this promptly from my supplier 'Digiflex' and I'm happy with the service I got from them.

I glanced at the manufacturer's instructions briefly (and they are, it must be said, very tiny, brief instructions) , plugged the lead in, watched Windows XP go through the motions of recognising it, waited for the 'your new hardware is ready to use' message and then found that neither my sequencer nor Windows XP had this lead selectable for MIDI input or output. As far as they were concerned, the midi input/output did not exist, although other existing alternatives such as the MPU401 type MIDI in/out on my old soundcard were still being offered.

Upon re-reading the instructions I realised that the first described step was to plug the MIDI IN and OUT into a midi device and it turns out that this IS important. The chip inside the bulb in the middle of the lead seems to be a multifunctional USB audio/MIDI device and if it doesn't have a live MIDI device plugged into it on the MIDI side when you first plug it into your computer, the MIDI interface part of the lead may not be recognised by the install process.

To get out of this I had to system restore back to a recent restore point (one saved prior to my attempted installation of the lead) and this time I made sure the MIDI cables were plugged into my synth and the synth was turned on FIRST. Then, when the lead was plugged into the USB port of the computer, roughly the same 'new hardware found' messages came up, but after the 'your new hardware is now ready to use' message I found that I could now select 'USB Audio Device' for MIDI input and output.

Tested briefly with Quartz AudioMaster Freeware and this unit seems to work OK with that.

Plug & play at its best: it just works! Mind you, MIDI isn't the most user-friendly interface in the world (IMO anyway) so it can be a bit hard to tell at first. However once I'd worked out how to drive my software (the freeware version of Acid Express 7, which handles audio and MIDI) everything started to work well.

I'm very pleased with both Digiflex's service, and the product.

Had bad experience previously with a USB-Midi cable that the PC refused to recognise despite installing the provided drivers. This one worked perfectly without any setup whatsoever. XP recognised it instantly as a "USB MIDI device" and simply selecting "USB midi" in the midi setup of the numerous software packages that I have and it works fine. No hesitation in recommending this.

Fantastic - paid more before for similar products for work, but wanted one for home computer - so quick and easy to use with no problems.

Wanted a Midi cable but didnt want to pay the high prices others were charging. Was concerned what the quality of a low cost product would be like but when it arrived it is just the job ! Exactly what i needed and worked as expected. If you buy it, plug it in and it doesnt work, then you probaly have the "Midi in" cable pluged in instead of the "midi out". Although it is written in the connector I have stuck a ittle bit of green tap on the out cable so i instantly recognise it. I have a Mac and it work perfectly straight out of the box. All in all a worthy buy.

Worked absolutely Brilliantly. No messing around with installing connections. Just plugged in and play. Simple lead, simple instructions and does exactly what it should. I connected a Roland Juno D into Pro Tools 8 on an iMac Snow Leopard. Worked straight away.