Midi direct in & midi through A/D vs. all midi through a midi box

[megadude]

Hi all,

Long story short, my music computer of 13 years has finally died, and I am getting a new one in a few weeks. I have not kept up with a lot of the technological advances in the interim, and I tried googling and searching this forum for my question, and have failed to find the relevant answers, though that this quite likely my fault. I appreciate any advice.

I have purchased a brand new IMac with 64 GB ram and other goodies, and I plan to run the latest logic on it. Previously, I had logic Pro 8 with a motu 8pre (circa 2008) interface that had a midi in/thru/out port, that interfaced with the old computer with firewire 800. I ran a korg o1/wfd through it as a midi controller. I also have a roland td6 that I directly plugged into the computer via a midi/usb cable. I'm trying to see what I need/should do now. I would like to continue to use the roldand td6 as a midi drum controller and the korg as a midi keyboard. Given this, here are my questions, grouped into two sets:

1. What A/D interface should I use for my new computer? Can I still use my old motu with a firewire to USB-3 or thunderbolt cable adapter or is this a bad idea? If I should get a new one, I would welcome recommendations. For practical purposes, will I notice the difference between thunderbolt and usb-c? Kinda crunching numbers, it seems like I shouldn't, given that I won't be recording 9 musicians at the same time at incredibly high fidelity, or daisy chaining a bunch of devices. But again, I haven't been keeping up.

2. Are there disadvantages to having both a midi controller directly plugged into the computer + a separate one going through an A/D interface (or a midi interface)? Specifically, will this create syncing problems, or latency problems? I kinda feel like there were sync problems with my old setup, but it might also have been that drumming is crappier than I thought it was. If I should run both the drums and the keyboard through the same midi box, are there recommendations you can offer?

Thank you everyone who reads this and comments on this. Although I am sad at the death of my old and faithful machine, I am excited about the new possibilities. And it is nice to be back at KVR!

[BertKoor]

Welcome back.

Meanwhile firewire has died. Yes, surprisingly there are adapters! But you need a hand full:
https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/produc ... interfaces
So I'm not too sure you want that.

So USB interfaces rule. Imho it does not matter whether you combine audio & midi in one interface, or use separate interfaces for both.

[megadude]

Thank you!! So I'd be dchaining at least two adaptors, and from reading online it looks like people are occasionally finding this doesn't work.... darn.

Does it matter if there are two separate routes in which midi information goes to the computer, e.g., drums in via usb directly plugged in and keyboard in via a separate interface which then goes into the computer? I'm worried that about midi sync issues, but I don't know whether that is something to worry about.

(Also I need to do research on whether I can use/there is a midi-to-usb-c cable that cab go straight from either my td6 or o1w/fd to the computer.... I'm worried the hardware won't support it, but I guess I don't see why that would be.)

[BertKoor]

Hardware midi is relatively slow: a thousand note on/off messages per second is the maximum that MIDI over 5-pin DIN can transfer.

USB2 can handle 480 kilobytes per second. With three bytes per message, it's mostly doing nothing.

Plug as many USB midi devices as you want into a single USB hub. No problem (usually)
But my personal preference would be one interface with two or three midi ports, if only to minimise the number of boxes & cables, although technically multiple is no problem.

[megadude]

Thank you for your advice! It sounds like there is no real advantage to going from the hardware to a midi box to the computer, as opposed to just from the hardware to the computer direct via USB.