Wednesday 14 April 2010

ebay USB MIDI Interface on Ubuntu Linux (1a86:752d)

I recently bought a USB MIDI interface off ebay. It was just a generic, pretty cheap made-in-china kind of model, with a red, orange and green light. It lit up red when I plugged it into my (Linux) computer, but showed up in lsusb as "Unknown" device:
root@theta:~# lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 005 Device 003: ID 0461:0010 Primax Electronics, Ltd
Bus 005 Device 002: ID 045e:0040 Microsoft Corp. Wheel Mouse Optical
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 046d:09b8 Logitech, Inc.
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 008 Device 004: ID 1a86:752d Unknown
Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Turns out, even though it's listed as an unknown device, it still worked as a MIDI input. I just started up JACK Audio Server, Rosegarden, and ZynAddSubFx for an organ simulation. Then i plugged in the MIDI In and Out ports to my keyboard, hooked up the connections in JACK and it all worked!

Being USB of course, there was some delay, and for some peculiar reason no keys below Middle C would work for me. But it works well on Sibelius!

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