NEWS
January 9th  2004
NEW  VERSION  DIRECTMUSIC  DRIVER  
 There is a new version of the DirectMusic driver out. Registered users can download a free update patch here.
October 31th  2003
DIRECTMUSIC  DRIVER  RELEASED
 It has been announced in this same place but finally it is there.

The Midi Translator DirectMusic Driver was released today. Registered users of the Midi Translator  WDM Driver received an email notifying them of the special upgrade offerings. If you are a registered user of the WDM driver and you did not receive the mailing, please contact me and I will send it to you.



 The DirectMusic driver will replace the WDM driver. The WDM driver will from now on only be available by special request. If for some reason you prefer the WDM driver to the DirectMusic driver you will still be able to order the WDM driver.



 The new DirectMusic driver is fully backwards compatible with the WDM driver. No functionality is lost, only new features are added. Technically speaking the DirectMusic driver is even still a WDM driver. To avoid confusion and to keep the old and the new driver apart I use these names to refer to them.
October 18th  2003
INSTALLER  FOR  DEMO  DRIVER
 I added an installer program to the demo driver, making it a lot easier to install (and uninstall). I am removing part of the installation manual from the web-site. It's not needed anymore.
October 12th  2003
BUGFIX  FOR  DEMO  DRIVER
 I discovered a fairly serious bug in the demo driver when running on Windows XP. If you open an input when the driver is active, the system will freeze when it receives input after the time-limit has passed.
As I do my development on Windows 2000 and the bug does not occur on that OS, it managed to escape my attention all this time. I have put a new version of the demo up that fixes the problem.


 This bug applies only to the demo driver and happens only on Windows XP. The full version drivers don't suffer from it.
Features of the new DirectMusic driver version 3.1
  • Fixes problems with large system exclusive messages in DirectMusic enabled applications
  • Optimizations reducing CPU load by 30-40 percent.
  • Registered users can download a free update patch here.
    Features of the new DirectMusic driver
  • Uses DirectMusic technology for faster hardware access
  • Multi-client capability
  • Easy renaming of individual inputs and outputs with PortNamer utility
  • New installer application makes installing and uninstalling the driver a breeze
  • Read more about DirectMusic and the new driver here.
    What is a Midi Translator?

     The Midi Translator PC is a MIDI interface that connects to the parallel port of your PC. It was first released by Opcode in 1996. It came with a driver for Windows 95 that also works on Windows 98. Since then no new drivers have been released for this device. Until now.

    Why would you need a WDM driver?

     You need a WDM driver if you want to work with Windows 2000 or Windows XP. WDM stands for Windows Driver Model which is the standard for drivers for these operating systems.



     There are not many MIDI interfaces that connect to the parallel port for which WDM drivers have been developed. Most MIDI interfaces produced nowadays connect to your PC via USB. I personally think that USB in its present form is not particularily suited for connecting such realtime devices. The main reason lies in the WDM driver model itself. The WDM model is a layered model. Messages from and to a device have to pass through these layers. The more layers the slower the communication between device and system will be.



     A developer writing a device driver for a USB device will not write the various layers himself. Many of the layers in the communication are part of the operating system. The Windows operating system was never designed for real time operations. It was designed mainly for business applications. USB was designed for connecting printers and scanners and the like. A printer doesn't mind waiting for half a second. For a MIDI interface such a delay is disastrous.



     Interfacing through the parallel port is much more straightforward. The operating system provides for in-between layers but they can be easily bypassed. This way a driver can talk straight to the hardware and thus provide faster handling of MIDI data.