USB MIDI vs Computer Performance?

hrn

New member
Hi,
Some short questions: Will an USB MIDI interface lower the performance of my hard disk recording system? I've read something about that the USB port is scanned each millisecond.

For example: Will the Unitor8 (com port connection availability) be better than the MT4 (USB only) for my audio system?

I use Logic Audio. Is it possible to run the Unitor8 or the MT4 smoothly with a Steinberg system like Nuendo or Cubase?

Performance of the MIDI system?

Hans,
www.hagen.nu
 
As to whether or not a signal coming in via USB would degrade your HDD performance.... no. The only time your hard drive is going to labor is if it is extensively fragmented and this is easily fixed.

As to which is best, USB vs. a COM port, throughput ranks like this (slowest to fastest)...

COM (serial port) SLOW SLOW SLOW
LPT (parallel port) SLOW
USB (SO SO)
PCI (FAST)

Do not know if Firewire is faster than PCI. It is much faster than USB, but then it's not as widely implemented either. Anybody?

As long as you are in the digital domain and you're not suffering buffer overflow and dropping bits, everything should coexist fine.

No idea where you want to go with the MIDI comment.
 
PCI is much faster than Firewire:

USB - 12Mbits/sec
Firewire - 400Mbits/sec
PCI - 128 to 512Mbytes/sec

This really has no bearing on MIDI performance since MIDI itself is a fairly anchient Serial protocoll that only works at 38.4k/sec.

USB device performance will only cause problems with digital audio since 12Mbits/sec is not enough for multitrack 24bit audio recording.
 
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