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jean
Joined: 05 Jan 2008
Posts: 489
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 Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 7:54 pm Post subject: PSP MIDI cable |
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For the "what could I connect to my PSP today?"-serie, i managed to connect a standard MIDI device to my PSP-Phat and capture midi messages. This is quite simple, because if you don't count the physical layer (that involves current-loop and optoisolators) and non standard bitrate (31.25 Kbps) MIDI is nothing but a 8N1 serial connection. The whole software thing is built around the SIO-Driver i wrote basing on psplink sources (with the addition of the software FIFO as stated in http://forums.ps2dev.org/viewtopic.php?t=9593 ) and a midi interpreter library built from scratch following specifications in an old MIDI document by Bob McQueer ("The USENET MIDI Primer"). Sources will come, but please, for the moment don't ask me "how can i integrate it with my synth??" because the sound synthesis part is very strong, believe me. Even if you have coded your own synthesis software, i'm quite sure its latency cannot reach the low values required for realtime performing. I'm working on a ME based, low latency synth, when i'll get something useful i'll let you know.
cable schematics:
[SORRY, link not working anymore]
if you wanna try yourself, here's a Proof of concept program (sorry, 150 only):
[SORRY, link not working anymore]
NEW: video on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dN_RP0IBAg
Last edited by jean on Wed Jan 28, 2009 11:55 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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J.F.
Joined: 22 Feb 2004
Posts: 2906
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| Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 4:39 am Post subject: |
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| Pretty cool. I've still got my old MIDI keyboard. Haven't used it in quite a while - not since I was experimenting with MIDI on Mac emulators. |
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Wally
Joined: 26 Sep 2005
Posts: 672
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| Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 9:29 am Post subject: |
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| J.F. wrote: | | Pretty cool. I've still got my old MIDI keyboard. Haven't used it in quite a while - not since I was experimenting with MIDI on Mac emulators. |
!!! does that mean its coming :D |
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J.F.
Joined: 22 Feb 2004
Posts: 2906
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| Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 4:13 pm Post subject: |
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| Wally4000 wrote: | | J.F. wrote: | | Pretty cool. I've still got my old MIDI keyboard. Haven't used it in quite a while - not since I was experimenting with MIDI on Mac emulators. |
!!! does that mean its coming :D |
Not yet... please be patient. :) What I was referring to where the Amiga and PC Mac emulators of the mid to late 90's. People wished to use MIDI, since only two platforms ever did any decent MIDI software - the Mac and the Atari ST. People wished to use software such as Cubase with the emulation. |
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indstr
Joined: 07 Feb 2008
Posts: 13
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| Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2008 5:00 am Post subject: |
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this is fascinating! has anybody has any good experience getting tracking software working on any emulators on PSP? after hours of turmoil, i eventually got octamed to work on PSPUAE, but the performance was so slow, and the sound so bad, that it was practically unusable.
i have failed so far in my attempts to get scream tracker or impulse tracker working in dosbox, but it's been about 6 months since i tried, there are newer versions, and my ir keyboard should be coming in the mail this week, so it should help me be able to tweak things faster
i'm excited! i just hope i can eventually get a usable one working. tracking on the go has always been a dream of mine, and it's a shame that nobody has ported a REAL music writing app to PSP yet (pspseq and all the others seem like toys to me) |
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J.F.
Joined: 22 Feb 2004
Posts: 2906
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| Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2008 8:34 am Post subject: |
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| indstr wrote: | this is fascinating! has anybody has any good experience getting tracking software working on any emulators on PSP? after hours of turmoil, i eventually got octamed to work on PSPUAE, but the performance was so slow, and the sound so bad, that it was practically unusable.
i have failed so far in my attempts to get scream tracker or impulse tracker working in dosbox, but it's been about 6 months since i tried, there are newer versions, and my ir keyboard should be coming in the mail this week, so it should help me be able to tweak things faster
i'm excited! i just hope i can eventually get a usable one working. tracking on the go has always been a dream of mine, and it's a shame that nobody has ported a REAL music writing app to PSP yet (pspseq and all the others seem like toys to me) |
The Amiga requires some horsepower and/or tricks to emulate at a decent speed on the PSP. I do plan to put some effort into making it run well. I'm hoping that eventually I can get it to run A1200/CD32 software decently. That's about the best you can hope for on the PSP.
As to music software, Milky Tracker was ported to the PSP. You might try that out some time. It's probably the best native tracker format software you'll find. |
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indstr
Joined: 07 Feb 2008
Posts: 13
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| Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2008 2:07 pm Post subject: |
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| J.F. wrote: |
As to music software, Milky Tracker was ported to the PSP. You might try that out some time. It's probably the best native tracker format software you'll find. |
no, it wasn't. he only ported the player. about a year ago, i went on the milkytracker forums and begged him to port the tracker (actually even offered money) and he flatout refused because he said the PSP didn't have a good enough input interface. i told him about IR keyboard support but he didn't seem to care :-\
milkytracker is a great program, and if it was on PSP, i wouldn't be messing around with trying to get something working on dosbox or atari ST or whatever the hell i can get to work |
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J.F.
Joined: 22 Feb 2004
Posts: 2906
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| Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2008 5:10 pm Post subject: |
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| indstr wrote: | | J.F. wrote: |
As to music software, Milky Tracker was ported to the PSP. You might try that out some time. It's probably the best native tracker format software you'll find. |
no, it wasn't. he only ported the player. about a year ago, i went on the milkytracker forums and begged him to port the tracker (actually even offered money) and he flatout refused because he said the PSP didn't have a good enough input interface. i told him about IR keyboard support but he didn't seem to care :-\
milkytracker is a great program, and if it was on PSP, i wouldn't be messing around with trying to get something working on dosbox or atari ST or whatever the hell i can get to work |
Ah, I thought the two were one. :) Sorry about that. Yeah, he should make a version that uses the ir keyboard. That would be the best. |
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jean
Joined: 05 Jan 2008
Posts: 489
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| Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2008 9:10 pm Post subject: |
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| Slow down! Emulation is a good thing itself, and so it is the wonderful PSP connectivity, but I don't think the marriage between these two things will take us that far... I think that only a native PSP application can bring us enough power to use PSP as a real MIDI instrument. I'm working on it, and even RCON (developer of pspRythm) told me he is experimenting something... |
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indstr
Joined: 07 Feb 2008
Posts: 13
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| Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 12:31 am Post subject: |
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| jean wrote: | | Slow down! Emulation is a good thing itself, and so it is the wonderful PSP connectivity, but I don't think the marriage between these two things will take us that far... I think that only a native PSP application can bring us enough power to use PSP as a real MIDI instrument. I'm working on it, and even RCON (developer of pspRythm) told me he is experimenting something... |
you may be right, but i'm still determined to get a tracker working even if it's just with the IR keyboard |
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plankton
Joined: 10 Jan 2006
Posts: 12
Location: USA
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| Posted: Sat Feb 09, 2008 3:20 am Post subject: |
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| indstr wrote: | this is fascinating! has anybody has any good experience getting tracking software working on any emulators on PSP? after hours of turmoil, i eventually got octamed to work on PSPUAE, but the performance was so slow, and the sound so bad, that it was practically unusable.
i have failed so far in my attempts to get scream tracker or impulse tracker working in dosbox, but it's been about 6 months since i tried, there are newer versions, and my ir keyboard should be coming in the mail this week, so it should help me be able to tweak things faster
i'm excited! i just hope i can eventually get a usable one working. tracking on the go has always been a dream of mine, and it's a shame that nobody has ported a REAL music writing app to PSP yet (pspseq and all the others seem like toys to me) |
hi, i'm the author of PSPSeq - i'm honestly curious to know how it seems like a toy to you. i know some of the functionality isn't as polished as it could be but i think the combination of traditional and unique synths & fx + wav playback with granular-ish capabilities + my own additions to traditional step sequencing + a lot of flexibility in BPM and swing settings makes it more than a toy. what was the last version you used and what features did you feel like were missing? i'd really like an honest response as i'm making some plans for version 3.00 and want it to be as useful an app as possible. thanks for the feedback. |
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indstr
Joined: 07 Feb 2008
Posts: 13
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| Posted: Sat Feb 09, 2008 3:34 am Post subject: |
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| plankton wrote: |
hi, i'm the author of PSPSeq - i'm honestly curious to know how it seems like a toy to you. i know some of the functionality isn't as polished as it could be but i think the combination of traditional and unique synths & fx + wav playback with granular-ish capabilities + my own additions to traditional step sequencing + a lot of flexibility in BPM and swing settings makes it more than a toy. what was the last version you used and what features did you feel like were missing? i'd really like an honest response as i'm making some plans for version 3.00 and want it to be as useful an app as possible. thanks for the feedback. |
my statement wasn't fair. to be honest, i haven't tried PSPSeq yet. I was thinking more along the lines of 2 years ago when I tried PSPkick and PSPrhythm.
i have a friend who loves PSPSeq and uses it for serious projects
me personally though, i need something that outputs in a module format that i can take to my computer to work on later, that means a tracker that is either .mod, .xm, .s3m, .it, etc. i want to get the basics of a song down, chord progression, rhythm, while i'm on the go and have free time at work, and then take it home, put it in Renoise, and polish it up to make it sound great. working on the PSP only, with its limitations, and no options to "clean the song up later", makes it seem like a waste of time to me
so... no offense to your program, i am sure it is nice, it's just not what i need right now.
thanks for posting though, it is a sure sign of a good developer if he is willing to listen to feedback of users :) |
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plankton
Joined: 10 Jan 2006
Posts: 12
Location: USA
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| Posted: Sat Feb 09, 2008 6:47 am Post subject: |
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| indstr wrote: | my statement wasn't fair. to be honest, i haven't tried PSPSeq yet. I was thinking more along the lines of 2 years ago when I tried PSPkick and PSPrhythm.
i have a friend who loves PSPSeq and uses it for serious projects |
gotcha. well if you take the time to give PSPSeq a try i'm sure you'll find it a lot different than PSPKick and PSPRhythm. they primarily focused on wav file playback and i focused on interesting synthesis methods.
can you provide me a link to your friend's music made with PSPSeq? curious to see if i know the person or not.
| indstr wrote: | | me personally though, i need something that outputs in a module format that i can take to my computer to work on later, that means a tracker that is either .mod, .xm, .s3m, .it, etc. i want to get the basics of a song down, chord progression, rhythm, while i'm on the go and have free time at work, and then take it home, put it in Renoise, and polish it up to make it sound great. working on the PSP only, with its limitations, and no options to "clean the song up later", makes it seem like a waste of time to me |
gotcha. a few people have asked for this but it's really not that interesting to me. i'd rather spend the time to make PSPSeq more full-featured so you won't even need to use those trackers. plus i'm not sure enough commonalities could be shared between the 2 apps for it to even make sense. my feeling is people write some interesting music on gameboys and they're like 10% of what can be done on a PSP (though of course the soundchip gives them their own sound and that's the big draw) so it seems possible to be completely self-contained.
| indstr wrote: | | thanks for posting though, it is a sure sign of a good developer if he is willing to listen to feedback of users :) |
only way i learn. ;) |
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indstr
Joined: 07 Feb 2008
Posts: 13
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plankton
Joined: 10 Jan 2006
Posts: 12
Location: USA
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| Posted: Sat Feb 09, 2008 12:32 pm Post subject: |
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heh yeah i chat with him pretty often and have heard these tracks. first time i heard them i was totally floored - i didn't even know PSPSeq could make music that good. :)
the thing he really likes about the program is that the FM synths are pretty flexible and programmable step by step so you can make some mad evolving sounds with it. he's also going to be starting up a PSP netlabel of sorts and i think those tracks are going to be his first contribution to it. my only fear is that he's setting the bar too high and everyone else is going to be afraid to contribute. ;)
i have some mp3s on my webpage that others have made that show some of the other sounds possible with the program. honestly none of them are as sonically impressive as these but they should give you an idea of the variety of synthesis possibilities.
http://dspmusic.org/psp/ |
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M-.-n
Joined: 28 Jan 2009
Posts: 2
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| Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2009 11:04 pm Post subject: |
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Hi, I'm highjacking the thread because I just ported LittleGPTracker to PSP:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwyAKfB_IYQ
and it has the ability to do MIDI out, i.e. sequence midi synth from the PSP. I'd be interested to know more about the api you used (all links seems dead) and if the serial of the PSP can do 31.25 Kbps properly - you youtube vid seems to imply that.
Would be great !
Thanks
Marc |
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jean
Joined: 05 Jan 2008
Posts: 489
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| Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2009 11:56 pm Post subject: |
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| Sorry, i no longer own the domain the links pointed to....just sent you a PM with my mail...i'll send you all i have about PSP MIDI...check your inbox!! |
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M-.-n
Joined: 28 Jan 2009
Posts: 2
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| Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2009 12:02 am Post subject: |
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| thanks ! |
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