USB Adapter mode + Roland TD-20 = Evil midi dropout hell

Orvillain

Power User
Today I tried the Axe FX II as an audio interface with a Mac Mini. Worked fine. I also tried it as a midi interface at the same time with a Roland TD-20. Performance was utterly terrible. Midi notes coming from the e-kit would often not get through into the software, latency was very spiky, low for some notes and very high for others... and generally the kit was unplayable. I swapped it out for an M-Audio Midisport 2x2, and everything was okay.

Anyone else experienced this? Seems if you wanted to use the Axe as the hub of your home recording setup, using an external midi source to send midi into your DAW, it would kind of fail. Many of our customers are doing this with BFD2 and BFD3, so it would be cool if Cliff or Matt could chime in!

It seemed like perhaps the Axe was bottle-necking on the amount of midi data it was sending out, or throttling the stream somewhere along the line. *shrug*
 
Did you have the latest usb driver from the forums? im not sure theyre official yet but theyre great, also make sure you set the axe audio settings to low latency and 64bit sample rate
 
"Cliff: "The Axe-Fx II is not designed to be a general-purpose MIDI I/O. It can handle most things but not large sysex dumps."
 
"Cliff: "The Axe-Fx II is not designed to be a general-purpose MIDI I/O. It can handle most things but not large sysex dumps."

That was in the context of a completely different situation and is not really relevant to this. I am not doing sysex dumps. I am just sending midi notes, CC's, and PC's through the Axe. This is supported for midi foot pedals, so why not for an electronic drumkit. The Axe is doing something odd and I would prefer if a head honcho got involved, or if at least someone else out there could confirm my observation. It's entirely possible it is some setting. Please don't derail with unrelated info.

Rotoholic: Axe USB buffer is at 64. The ASIO buffers are at 64. I'm using the driver from the downloads area, didn't know if there were newer ones or not.
 
come on head honchos. these regular forum types just won't do.

how about just: "Cliff: "The Axe-Fx II is not designed to be a general-purpose MIDI I/O."

a TON of info is sent with electronic drums. i was just about to setup my td-30 and test this for you, but i'm not a head honcho so oh well.
 
I posted some days ago about the same question regarding midi and axe FX, and i had no answer .
I suppose that the axe FX can not replace a cheap USB midi interface, and/or that nobody really knows how it works or gave it a try.
Or it would be clearly said that it works.

Without information i need and i can find nowhere, i must unfortunately suppose that it is risky to use the axe FX as a midi interface to make other thing as using fractal bot
(For example, sending of small sysex messages from a midi editor soft to a midi device through the axe FX as interface)

I discussed shortly per chat with Chris .
If He doesn't know how it could work, who could know :ambivalence:
 
come on head honchos. these regular forum types just won't do.

how about just: "Cliff: "The Axe-Fx II is not designed to be a general-purpose MIDI I/O."

a TON of info is sent with electronic drums. i was just about to setup my td-30 and test this for you, but i'm not a head honcho so oh well.

Don't be a twat mate.
 
a TON of info is sent with electronic drums..

You've got midi note messages, program changes, and hihat control changes which are usually 7-bit. I would've thought a unit as high-end as the Axe FX II could handle this level of stream. Personally... I think there is a bug; either in my setup or in the Axe itself.
 
I just set my TD30 midi out to axe-fx II XL midi in, I went USB MIDI out to EZ drummer 2. No problems here. Windows 8.1 x64

Do you have a MFC footpedal plugged into the ethercon or FASlink?
Are you using Axe-edit?
What os on the Mac?
what app are you listening with?
 
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Third line down in the WIKI link that yek posted above:

Cliff: "MIDI Thru is a "soft" thru. It the delay is problematic for you then you need to change the order of things or use a MIDI splitter."
 
I just set my TD30 midi out to axe-fx II XL midi in, I went USB MIDI out to EZ drummer 2. No problems here. Windows 8.1 x64

Do you have a MFC footpedal plugged into the ethercon or FASlink?
Are you using Axe-edit?
What os on the Mac?
what app are you listening with?

Thanks Sean!

No MFC. No Axe-Edit. It was OSX Mavericks 10.9.4 and Presonus Studio One 2.

I wonder if it's better on Windows than it is on OSX?
 
Third line down in the WIKI link that yek posted above:

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The problem is it isn't a constant delay. It varies, which says to me that rather than it being a fixed buffer of delay - which is what I would expect with a soft thru, which can be corrected for during editing - rather than that... this seems like the datastream gets jammed at various points.
 
The problem is it isn't a constant delay. It varies, which says to me that rather than it being a fixed buffer of delay - which is what I would expect with a soft thru, which can be corrected for during editing - rather than that... this seems like the datastream gets jammed at various points.
I'm not familiar with the inner workings of the Axe, but if I were to hazard a guess, I'd guess that the MIDI Thru function is a low-priority routine, and takes a back seat whenever cycles are needed by sound-processing routines. That might account for the varying delay.
 
The USB Adapter feature was added for simple USB-to-MIDI functionality, specifically firmware updates for the MFC-101. It is a low priority task since audio processing is the Axe-Fx's primary usage. Latency is not guaranteed. It is not intended as anything more than a no-frills, simple MIDI adapter for non-critical tasks.
 
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