USB MIDI to 5 pin DIN MIDI converter (Korg MicroKEY with hardware sampler)

[gorgorsan]

Hi, I got myself a compact USB only MicroKEY mk2 61 controller but for practical reasons would like to use it with my hardware sampler Roland MV8800 as well. Obviously cable adapters alone will not work as it has to be a box which provides USB power to MicroKey as well. Anyone knows where to purchase such MIDI converter? A basic budget solution with only one USB MIDI IN to one 5 pin MIDI OUT is all I need.

Thanks

[pljones]

You want to go from a USB (mini or micro) B socket to a MIDI In socket.

All the USB MIDI converters I've seen are USB A to MIDI.

So you need something like an OTG cable but that would need an intelligent device at one end to drive it (and I doubt the MicroKEY is built to support OTG).

So you're left needing USB B to host USB A, host MIDI Out to MIDI In.

Now you're not going to get that cheaply -- Kenton Electronics have one: http://www.kentonuk.com/products/items/ ... host.shtml

[whyterabbyt]

Hi, I got myself a compact USB only MicroKEY mk2 61 controller but for practical reasons would like to use it with my hardware sampler Roland MV8800 as well. Obviously cable adapters alone will not work as it has to be a box which provides USB power to MicroKey as well. Anyone knows where to purchase such MIDI converter? A basic budget solution with only one USB MIDI IN to one 5 pin MIDI OUT is all I need.

Thanks

Your problem here is that the Microkey will be expecting to talk to something 'smart' which is capable of acting as a USB host and extracting MIDI information from the information it gets over USB. Generally, your computer would be that USB host. The sampler on the other hand only expects to talk 'dumb midi'.

In other words you need more than a cable adaptor; you need something capable of acting the same way a PC does with regard to MIDI.

However, there are two slightly different ways a USB device can 'wrap up' MIDI information when it sends it to a host. One is to use the 'standard' method of encoding it. Because its a standard, any USB host should know how to cope with it and unwrap the MIDI again. Devices like those are properly 'plug and play' and dont need proprietary device drivers. They're 'Class Compliant'.
However some manufacturers wrap up that information their own way, and the only way it can be unwrapped is with a custom device driver on the host.

If a MIDI USB device is Class Compliant, it'll be possible to use it with standalone 'host' boxes like the Kenton MIDI USB host, and, I think ,the iConnectMIDI boxes that also spit out 'dumb MIDI' over 5-pin.
If a MIDI USB device is not Class Compliant, though, you're almost certainly stuck with needing whatever PC or Mac the manufacturer have written drivers for.

Since the MicroKey range appears to work with an iOS device, that's a pretty good indicator that its probably Class Compliant. However Im afraid you cant extend that and assume that that'll be the case for every USB MIDI device.