Kontakt doesn't respond to Akai USB MIDI Keyboard

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Cosmo Lee

Kontakt doesn't respond to Akai USB MIDI Keyboard

Post by Cosmo Lee »

Ubuntu 10.4, Wine 1.1.42, Native Instruments Kontakt 4, Akai MPK88

I've installed Kontakt (sampled musical instruments). Sound is working OK with the OSS driver, but the program doesn't respond to the USB keyboard. :-
( The keyboard shows up in `winecfg` under "Audio", OSS, MIDI In/Out devices.

I checked the MIDI options for the Kontakt program and it DOES show the Akai keyboard - so the program knows the keyboard exists. I've got it set so that
device "Midi 1" is set to "Port A". I've also tried setting to ports b,c,d, but no luck.

I don't have jack or ASIO running yet as I want to troubleshoot one thing at a time.

Is there something additional that needs to be done for USB MIDI keyboards to work under Wine?

TIA,
Cosmo
jordan johnston

Kontakt doesn't respond to Akai USB MIDI Keyboard

Post by jordan johnston »

On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 5:09 PM, Cosmo Lee <[email protected]> wrote:
Ubuntu 10.4, Wine 1.1.42, Native Instruments Kontakt 4, Akai MPK88

I've installed Kontakt (sampled musical instruments).  Sound is working OK with the OSS driver, but the program doesn't respond to the USB keyboard. :-
( The keyboard shows up in `winecfg` under "Audio", OSS, MIDI In/Out devices.
Why aren't you using ALSA???? you will want to expose Kontakt/wine to
the alsa driver,
snd-usb-audio. This driver is plug and play with the AKAI MPK. I own the MPK49.
OSS is sort of a dying driver, ALSA/Jack is what you will want.
Also, i am not sure if OSS even would implement midi for our devices....
I checked the MIDI options for the Kontakt program and it DOES show the Akai keyboard - so the program knows the keyboard exists.  I've got it set so that
device "Midi 1" is set to "Port A".  I've also tried setting to ports b,c,d, but no luck.

I don't have jack or ASIO running yet as I want to troubleshoot one thing at a time.
You will want to get both Jack running, probably jack2 (1.9.5) and the
Latest WineASIO code
compiled and installed. Kontakt works great in linux.
Is there something additional that needs to be done for USB MIDI keyboards to work under Wine?
Nope, just use alsa, and select it in winecfg as your audio driver.
from there everything
should work perfect. The usb midi will work fine, just make sure your
keyboard is plugged in before you open your wine app, otherwise it may
not show up. In the end you will want to use jack for audio apps like
this, just so you know!

I use All of my Native Instruments plugins under Linux.

jordan
Cosmo Lee

Kontakt doesn't respond to Akai USB MIDI Keyboard

Post by Cosmo Lee »

Jordan:

Thanks much for your reply! I actually tried using ALSA, but I couldn't get it to work. But since you wrote that you got it working, I went back and
started rooting around in winecfg and playing with it some more. It turns out the problem was that the bit setting in the "DirectSound" pane was on 8
by default. I set it to 16 and bam, Kontakt worked! (I wonder why it would work w/ OSS @ 8 bits but not ALSA...)

I also played with the sample rate. Sound with Kontakt seems to work with winecfg set to either 22050 (the default) or 44100. I notice that within
Kontakt itself, it is set for a sample rate of 44100. Kontakt works either if winecfg is set to 22050 or 44100. Is there a reason to prefer one over
the other? I don't know much about these things, my guess would be that they should match - the winecfg rate & the Kontakt rate - but Kontakt seems to
run the same either way.

I know that Jack and WineASIO are things I should use eventually, but I wanted to troubleshoot as simply as possible and get one thing to work at a
time. OK, WineASIO and JACK next...

I see there's also a Jack audio driver under winecfg. Why isn't that the one to use instead of ALSA if you're running Jack?? Although, I noticed that
the Jack driver doesn't have any MIDI devices show up - only "wave in" and "wave out" devices.

I'm just getting into this Linux Audio stuff, since you seem to know something about these things, is there a resource(s) for things Linux Audio that
you can recommend?


Thanks a bunch,
Cosmo


On Wed Aug 18 21:09 , jordan johnston sent:
On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 5:09 PM, Cosmo Lee [email protected]> wrote:
Ubuntu 10.4, Wine 1.1.42, Native Instruments Kontakt 4, Akai MPK88

I've installed Kontakt (sampled musical instruments).  Sound is working OK with the OSS driver, but the program doesn't respond to the USB
keyboard. :-
( The keyboard shows up in `winecfg` under "Audio", OSS, MIDI In/Out devices.
Why aren't you using ALSA???? you will want to expose Kontakt/wine to
the alsa driver,
snd-usb-audio. This driver is plug and play with the AKAI MPK. I own the MPK49.
OSS is sort of a dying driver, ALSA/Jack is what you will want.
Also, i am not sure if OSS even would implement midi for our devices....
I checked the MIDI options for the Kontakt program and it DOES show the Akai keyboard - so the program knows the keyboard exists.  I've got it set so
that
device "Midi 1" is set to "Port A".  I've also tried setting to ports b,c,d, but no luck.

I don't have jack or ASIO running yet as I want to troubleshoot one thing at a time.
You will want to get both Jack running, probably jack2 (1.9.5) and the
Latest WineASIO code
compiled and installed. Kontakt works great in linux.
Is there something additional that needs to be done for USB MIDI keyboards to work under Wine?
Nope, just use alsa, and select it in winecfg as your audio driver.
from there everything
should work perfect. The usb midi will work fine, just make sure your
keyboard is plugged in before you open your wine app, otherwise it may
not show up. In the end you will want to use jack for audio apps like
this, just so you know!

I use All of my Native Instruments plugins under Linux.

jordan
jordan johnston

Kontakt doesn't respond to Akai USB MIDI Keyboard

Post by jordan johnston »

hi Cosmo,

I will explain a few things quickly, that might help your
understanding a little.

OSS - is the old sound drivers for linux

ALSA - is the newer implementation, and default linux-audio drivers.

Jack - is the low-latency driver. It is cross-platform. On linux, you
will either run OSS or ALSA as Jack's backend.
While on a Mac, you would use "core audio" for the backend. So that
being said, You will still require ALSA for jack to work. As ALSA is
communicating with your hardware and provides alsa-midi, as well.

Jack is like ASIO and REWIRE in windows. (sort of) it also can provide midi

As far as sound quality goes, you will want to use 44100, as that is
CD quality. 22100 is fairly low-quality, don't use that. there is
your answer!

As far as recommended reading, there is a ton of it. First, i would
ask what Linux Distro do you use?
what are you trying to accomplish, ie: a DAW, or a "live type environment", etc.

If you can get back to me on this, however, this strays big-time from
the wine-dev list, so i would ask
you to just send ME a message, rather than having it posted on this list.
But yes, i will take a look through my bookmarks, i am sure there is
some goodies in there for you.
get back to me, and i will have a look.

jordan
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