Generic Midi Usb Driver

Yamaha Steinberg USB Driver 2.0.4 3.3 MB Release Notes (PDF). Important information on the installation! Yamaha Steinberg USB Driver 2.0.4 7.1 MB Release Notes (PDF) Supported Hardware CI1 / CI2 / CI2+ / UR12 / UR22 / UR22mkII / UR28M / UR242 / UR44 / UR824 / UR-RT2 / UR-RT4 UR22C / UR44C / UR816C / UR24C / AXR4U.

MIDI and USB MIDI Controller Keyboards – Under the Hood

What is MIDI?, Why do I get a delay when playing an instrument from my keyboard? What are MIDI CC messages?

If you are new to MIDI and computer music all of this may seem very daunting but do not despair, it's not as complex as it may seem. With MIDI as with almost everything else, basic knowledge is enough to get you going and expertise can evolve while you do what you enjoy the most, the creation, making and recording of music.

First things first, getting the system up and running.

A typical computer music setup consists of a PC or Mac computer, music software (some products are referred to as DAW's), a USB controller Keyboard such as Acorn Instruments Masterkey, a sound card and a speaker system.

• The keyboard is connected via USB to the computer.
• The computer runs the software.
• The keyboard controls the software.
• The software generates digital information representing the sound.
• The sound card converts the digital sound information in to analog signals.
• The analog signals activates the speakers and then generates the sound that you hear.

Getting a system up and running for the first time therefore involves installing software, updating operating systems and installing drivers. Thankfully the MIDI controller part of it is typically easy, particularly if you have bought a USB class compliant device such as the Acorn Instruments Masterkey. That a device is class compliant means that it complies with USB standards and therefore uses a generic USB driver implemented in the operating system. There is therefore no driver to install and a USB class driver is seen by the operating system when the device is connected via USB.

A USB class compliant controller keyboard can be plugged in to any windows computer from Windows XP and up or Mac OSX, without installing any driver.

Installing Software

Installing music creation software is no different than installing any other piece of software. Make sure your computer meets the recommended system requirements and make sure to check the manufacturer's website for latest updates. The most common type of software is called a DAW an abbreviation of Digital Audio Workstation. A typical DAW has the ability to record and play back multiple tracks of audio or MIDI, run plug-ins to add audio effects and virtual instruments (also called VI's) plus provide audio and MIDI editing facilities. The VI is a software plug-in or standalone software product which generates the sound triggered by the USB controller keyboard, when you hit the key. Without a VI the keyboard would not trigger sound in the computer system so its important to check that your DAW has some instrument plug-ins as standard. The Presonus Studio One Artist product that's included with Acorn Instruments Masterkey series comes with 3 different instruments as standard. If you are using another DAW, make sure to check that it already has VI's included and if not, check which ones are available for it.

DAW's as well as stand-alone instrument software work with a USB class compliant device so once you have plugged in your keyboard, installed the software, you have completed the first part.

The following is a list of some manufacturers of music creation and standalone instrument software:

www.ableton.com

Getting Sound

Sound cards come in many shapes, sizes and configurations. In fact, a modern computer will often come with a sound card build in for the purpose of playing back music or for use with Skype etc. A build-in sound card can be good enough in the beginning but there are several reasons why you may want to consider a separate option.

• Build in sound cards can have very high audio latency. Latency is the time it takes for the audio to travel from the software, through the operating system and the driver to the sound card before finally being played through the speakers and reaching your ears. If you hear sound delayed either when recording through an audio input or by playing a VI from your USB controller keyboard you are experiencing latency.
• Quality of sound. Because build-in sound cards are typically designed for communication and not music making, the quality can be very poor, and is at best, average.
• You may also want more options that the typical stereo in/stereo out configuration that are typical of build-in sound cards.

A sound card consist in its most basic form of an Analog-to-Digital converter (A/D) and a Digital-to-Analog converter (D/A). The A/D converts an audio signal from the analog domain to digital binary data which the DAW can work with.

The D/A does the reverse by converting digital binary data to an analog signal that can be amplified by the speaker system.

In essence, you use the A/D to record sound in to the computer and the A/D to play back the recorded sound or play back digital sound created by a VI. Whether you record or play back, its sensible to have as low a latency as possible (its not possible to eliminate latency entirely, only keep it below a noticeable level). A good sound card will therefore come with a custom sound card that optimizes the path from the software to the DA delivering latency performance below 10ms. When choosing a sound card, you may also want to consider what kind of input and output configuration you will need, how many mic pre amps as well as headphone sockets as well as of course the performance specifications. When installing the driver for your chosen sound card, always check for the latest version on the company's website. Often the drivers supplied with a product are not the latest, due to the lag time between driver updates and rolling in to production.

Here is a list of some manufacturers who offer sound cards for computer music products.

With the keyboard connected, software and sound card installed the last step is to connect a speaker system to the output of your sound card. With all that done, create an instrument track in your DAW, make sure a VI is selected, play the keyboard to make sure you are getting a signal by checking the mixer metering and then turn up the volume of you speaker system gradually. Your computer music system should now be alive.

Recording with a USB MIDI controller keyboard

With everything up and running, it's easy to record your performance in your DAW. Every DAW has transport similar to that of an old fashioned tape recorder (remember those) so simply press the usually red record button and start playing. When you stop the recorder, you should see your first part in the arrangement window. But what you have recorded is not sound. When you record with a USB controller keyboard such as Acorn Instruments Masterkey series, you record MIDI data rather than audio.

MIDI is an abbreviation of Musical Instrument Digital Interface and was conceived in the 1980's to allow electronic instruments to talk to each other. You can read more about it on the MIDI Manufacturers Association's website http://midi.org.

About MIDI

In its most basic form, MIDI simply sends data of movement. So when a key is hit on the Masterkey USB controller keyboard, Masterkey sends information such as which note was played, how long it was played for and at what velocity level (force). This data is then recorded by the DAW for further editing. If you open the MIDI edit window in your DAW following the recording of MIDI data you will see a grid window which is somewhat similar to how the old self-playing player pianos you see in westerns work. Paper would move from one roll to another at a steady tempo with cutouts in the paper telling the mechanics which note to play and for how long. Punch a few holes in the paper and more notes would play, whether desirable or not.

The MIDI editor works the same way but with the added convenience of modern software technology. You can move the note both in terms of time and note value, change its length and change the velocity it was played with. The flexibility of being able to perform detailed editing on a note by note basis is what makes MIDI attractive over say just recording the audio of an instrument to an audio track. You can even delete or insert notes just like you can add and delete letters in a word processor.

MIDI CC

But there is more to MIDI than note events. An event type called a MIDI Continuous Controller event (or MIDI CC) allows you to control parameters on the VI. The Acorn Instruments Masterkey USB controller keyboard series for example has two wheels labeled pitch bend and modulation. When you move the pitch bend wheel, you will increase or decrease the pitch of the note. Moving the modulation wheel will add modulation. These are standard parameters that all instruments respond to and each will be recorded by the DAW. Typically the editor will have a lane window which shows the curves of your movement once the data is recorded and you can use a pencil or line tools for editing.

Because of MIDI CC's its therefore possible to control parameters in your DAW and not just musical note data. You could for example control volume in your audio mixer, effects parameters or every single parameter in a VI for quicker and more tactile editing. On Acorn Instruments Masterkey series USB controller keyboards we added 4 MIDI CC pots and 1 fader for this purpose (as well as the pitch bend and modulation wheels). These are set to the standard MIDI CC values for controlling the following parameters:

Fader7Volume

C174Brightness (cut-off)

C271Timbre (Resonance)

C373Attack time

C472Release time

For a complete list of MIDI CC's, click here http://www.midi.org/techspecs/midi_chart-v2.pdf and check page 6. The entire pdf document is excellent reading for a more detailed insight to MIDI messages.

Many DAW's have the ability for a parameter to learn a MIDI CC. If yours doesn't, you may need to consult the software manual as there may be a software chart that shows which MIDI CC to program to control a particular parameter. MIDI CC's allow you to experience software products as if they were hardware but it also enhances your creative options by enabling you to edit your controller movements.

Starting with Windows 10, release 1703, a USB Audio 2.0 driver is shipped with Windows. It is designed to support the USB Audio 2.0 device class. The driver is a WaveRT audio port class miniport. For more information about the USB Audio 2.0 device class, see https://www.usb.org/documents?search=&type%5B0%5D=55&items_per_page=50.

The driver is named: usbaudio2.sys and the associated inf file is usbaudio2.inf.

The driver will identify in device manager as 'USB Audio Class 2 Device.' This name will be overwritten with a USB Product string, if it is available.

The driver is automatically enabled when a compatible device is attached to the system. However, if a third-party driver exists on the system or Windows Update, that driver will be installed and override the class driver.

Architecture

USBAudio.Sys fits within the wider architecture of Windows USB Audio as shown.

Related USB specifications

The following USB specifications define USB Audio and are referenced in this topic.

• USB-2 refers to the Universal Serial Bus Specification, Revision 2.0
• ADC-2 refers to the USB Device Class Definition for Audio Devices, Release 2.0.
• FMT-2 refers to the Audio Data Formats specification, Release 2.0.

The USB-IF is a special interest group that maintains the Official USB Specification, test specifications and tools.

Audio formats

The driver supports the formats listed below. An alternate setting which specifies another format defined in FMT-2, or an unknown format, will be ignored.

Type I formats (FMT-2 2.3.1):

• PCM Format with 8..32 bits per sample (FMT20 2.3.1.7.1)
• PCM8 Format (FMT-2 2.3.1.7.2)
• IEEE_FLOAT Format (FMT-2 2.3.1.7.3)

Type III formats (FMT-2 2.3.3 and A.2.3):

• IEC61937_AC-3
• IEC61937_MPEG-2_AAC_ADTS
• IEC61937_DTS-I
• IEC61937_DTS-II
• IEC61937_DTS-III
• TYPE_III_WMA

Feature descriptions

This section describes the features of the of the USB Audio 2.0 driver.

Audio function topology

The driver supports all entity types defined in ADC-2 3.13.

Each Terminal Entity must have a valid clock connection in compatible USB Audio 2.0 hardware. The clock path may optionally include Clock Multiplier and Clock Selector units and must end in a Clock Source Entity.

The driver supports one single clock source only. If a device implements multiple clock source entities and a clock selector, then the driver will use the clock source that is selected by default and will not modify the clock selector's position.

A Processing Unit (ADC-2 3.13.9) with more than one input pin is not supported.

An Extension Unit (ADC-2 3.13.10) with more than one input pin is not supported.

Cyclic paths in the topology are not allowed.

Audio streaming

The driver supports the following endpoint synchronization types (USB-2 5.12.4.1):

• Asynchronous IN and OUT
• Synchronous IN and OUT
• Adaptive IN and OUT

For the asynchronous OUT case the driver supports explicit feedback only. A feedback endpoint must be implemented in the respective alternate setting of the AS interface. The driver does not support implicit feedback.

There is currently limited support for devices using a shared clock for multiple endpoints.

For the Adaptive IN case the driver does not support a feedforward endpoint. If such an endpoint is present in the alternate setting, it will be ignored. The driver handles the Adaptive IN stream in the same way as an Asynchronous IN stream.

The size of isochronous packets created by the device must be within the limits specified in FMT-2.0 section 2.3.1.1. This means that the deviation of actual packet size from nominal size must not exceed +/- one audio slot (audio slot = channel count samples).

Descriptors

An audio function must implement exactly one AudioControl Interface Descriptor (ADC-2 4.7) and one or more AudioStreaming Interface Descriptors (ADC-2 4.9). A function with an audio control interface but no streaming interface is not supported.

The driver supports all descriptor types defined in ADC20, section 4. The following subsections provide comments on some specific descriptor types.

Class-Specific AS interface descriptor

For details on this specification, refer to ADC-2 4.9.2.

An AS interface descriptor must start with alternate setting zero with no endpoint (no bandwidth consumption) and further alternate settings must be specified in ascending order in compatible USB Audio 2.0 hardware.

An alternate setting with a format that is not supported by the driver will be ignored.

Each non-zero alternate setting must specify an isochronous data endpoint, and optionally a feedback endpoint. A non-zero alternate setting without any endpoint is not supported.

The bTerminalLink field must refer to a Terminal Entity in the topology and its value must be identical in all alternate settings of an AS interface.

The bFormatType field in the AS interface descriptor must be identical to bFormatType specified in the Format Type Descriptor (FMT-2 2.3.1.6).

For Type I formats, exactly one bit must be set to one in the bmFormats field of the AS interface descriptor. Otherwise, the format will be ignored by the driver.

To save bus bandwidth, one AS interface can implement multiple alternate settings with the same format (in terms of bNrChannels and AS Format Type Descriptor) but different wMaxPacketSize values in the isochronous data endpoint descriptor. For a given sample rate, the driver selects the alternate setting with the smallest wMaxPacketSize that can fulfill the data rate requirements.

Type I format type descriptor

Midi Usb Driver Download

For details on this specification, refer to FMT-2 2.3.1.6.

The following restrictions apply:

Class-Specific AS isochronous audio data endpoint descriptor

For details on this specification, refer to ADC-2 4.10.1.2.

The MaxPacketsOnly flag in the bmAttributes field is not supported and will be ignored.

The fields bmControls, bLockDelayUnits and wLockDelay will be ignored.

Class requests and interrupt data messages

The driver supports a subset of the control requests defined in ADC-2, section 5.2, and supports interrupt data messages (ADC-2 6.1) for some controls. The following table shows the subset that is implemented in the driver.

Additional information on the controls and requests is available in the following subsections.

Clock source entity

For details on this specification, refer to ADC-2 5.2.5.1.

At a minimum, a Clock Source Entity must implement Sampling Frequency Control GET RANGE and GET CUR requests (ADC-2 5.2.5.1.1) in compatible USB Audio 2.0 hardware.

The Sampling Frequency Control GET RANGE request returns a list of subranges (ADC-2 5.2.1). Each subrange describes a discrete frequency, or a frequency range. A discrete sampling frequency must be expressed by setting MIN and MAX fields to the respective frequency and RES to zero. Individual subranges must not overlap. If a subrange overlaps a previous one, it will be ignored by the driver.

A Clock Source Entity which implements one single fixed frequency only does not need to implement Sampling Frequency Control SET CUR. It implements GET CUR which returns the fixed frequency, and it implements GET RANGE which reports one single discrete frequency.

Clock selector entity

For details on this specification, refer to ADC-2 5.2.5.2

The USB Audio 2.0 driver does not support clock selection. The driver uses the Clock Source Entity which is selected by default and never issues a Clock Selector Control SET CUR request. The Clock Selector Control GET CUR request (ADC-2 5.2.5.2.1) must be implemented in compatible USB Audio 2.0 hardware.

Feature unit

For details on this specification, refer to ADC-2 5.2.5.7.

The driver supports one single volume range only. If the Volume Control GET RANGE request returns more than one range, then subsequent ranges will be ignored.

The volume interval expressed by the MIN and MAX fields should be an integer multiple of the step size specified in the RES field.

If a feature unit implements single channel controls as well as a master control for Mute or Volume, then the driver uses the single channel controls and ignores the master control.

Generic Midi Usb Driver Download

Additional Information for OEM and IHVs

OEMs and IHVs should test their existing and new devices against the supplied in-box driver.

There is not any specific partner customization that is associated with the in-box USB Audio 2.0 driver.

This INF file entry (provided in a update to Windows Release 1703), is used to identify that the in-box driver is a generic device driver.

The in-box driver registers for the following compatible IDs with usbaudio2.inf.

See the USB audio 2.0 specification for subclass types.

USB Audio 2.0 Devices with MIDI (subclass 0x03 above) will enumerate the MIDI function as a separate multi-function device with usbaudio.sys (USB Audio 1.0 driver) loaded.

The USB Audio 1.0 class driver registers this compatible ID with wdma_usb.inf.

And has these exclusions:

An arbitrary number of channels (greater than eight) are not supported in shared mode due to a limitation of the Windows audio stack.

IHV USB Audio 2.0 drivers and updates

For IHV provided third party driver USB Audio 2.0 drivers, those drivers will continue to be preferred for their devices over our in-box driver unless they update their driver to explicitly override this behavior and use the in-box driver.

Audio Jack Registry Descriptions

Starting in Windows 10 release 1703, IHVs that create USB Audio Class 2.0 devices having one or more jacks have the capability to describe these jacks to the in-box Audio Class 2.0 driver. The in-box driver uses the supplied jack information when handling the KSPROPERTY_JACK_DESCRIPTION for this device.

Jack information is stored in the registry in the device instance key (HW key).

The following describes the audio jack information settings in the registry:

= terminal ID (As defined in the descriptor)

= Jack number (1 ~ n).

Convention for and is:

• Base 10 (8, 9, 10 rather than 8, 9, a)
• No leading zeros
• n is 1-based (first jack is jack 1 rather than jack 0)

For example:

T1_NrJacks, T1_J2_ChannelMapping, T1_J2_ConnectorType

For additional audio jack information, see KSJACK_DESCRIPTION structure.

These registry values can be set in various ways:

• By using custom INFs which wrap the in-box INF for the purpose to set these values.

• Directly by the h/w device via a Microsoft OS Descriptors for USB devices (see example below). For more information about creating these descriptors, see Microsoft OS Descriptors for USB Devices.

Microsoft OS Descriptors for USB Example

The following Microsoft OS Descriptors for USB example contains the channel mapping and color for one jack. The example is for a non-composite device with single feature descriptor.

The IHV vendor should extend it to contain any other information for the jack description.

Troubleshooting

If the driver does not start, the system event log should be checked. The driver logs events which indicate the reason for the failure. Similarly, audio logs can be manually collected following the steps described in this blog entry. If the failure may indicate a driver problem, please report it using the Feedback Hub described below, and include the logs.

For information on how to read logs for the USB Audio 2.0 class driver using supplemental TMF files, see this blog entry. For general information on working with TMF files, see Displaying a Trace Log with a TMF File.

For information on 'Audio services not responding' error and USB audio device does not work in Windows 10 version 1703 see, USB Audio Not Playing

Feedback Hub

If you run into a problem with this driver, collect audio logs and then follow steps outlined in this blog entry to bring it to our attention via the Feedback Hub.

Driver development

This USB Audio 2.0 class driver was developed by Thesycon and is supported by Microsoft.

See also