Thanks Florian, and thanks for the great app!
I'll paste in the relevant text from your link above below, and I'll write a couple comments below that.
Quote from Tutorial:
1. Get and install a virtual MIDI driver
There are several virtual MIDI drivers available. I suggest one of the following drivers:
Sony Virtual MIDI Router for Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP
(check out this tutorial for installation on Windows XP)
Maple Virtual Midi Cable for Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista
LoopBe1 for Windows 2000/XP
MIDI Yoke for Windows NT/2000/XP
Hubi's Loopback device for Windows 95/98/ME
Install one of them. Follow the installation instructions provided by the respective author. After successful installation, you'll have a set of virtual MIDI devices.
Virtual MIDI port drivers allow MIDI data to be sent directly from Bome's Mouse Keyboard to the MIDI IN port of a MIDI enabled application. Normally, Bome's Mouse Keyboard will accept the direct input of a connected MIDI device, while outputing to the virtual port driver. It is also possible for Bome's Mouse Keyboard to accept input from one virtual MIDI port and output on different virtual port to allow Bome's Mouse Keyboard, e.g. to translate the MIDI communications between two software programs. Bome's Mouse Keyboard may NOT have the same virtual MIDI port driver specified for both input and output, as this will cause a MIDI loop.
Note: The next version of Bome's Mouse Keyboard will ship with built-in virtual MIDI support, so that you can select Bome's Mouse Keyboard directly as MIDI INPUT in, e.g., Reason.
My comments:
Very glad to hear your last note. Florian, that the next version will come with built-in Virtual MIDI support. When will that become available? That will be simpler, not to have to install a separate virtual MIDI cable app, but just to be able to install the virtual keyboard directly as a MIDI input app, without needing the separte virtual cable. Of course, it should work with different Os's, at least XP and Vista, perhaps Mac and Linux as well, if you have time to do that.
The last virtual keyboard app that I recall that used to do that was Cakewalk's Virtual Piano, which came free with Cakewalk DAW, and early versions of Sonar. But they never updated it to work with XP, so it faded away. All other virtual keyboard apps, including yours, required installation of a separate virtual midi cable app. So--it's nice to see that you will bring back the virtual midi keyboard that installs directly as a MIDI input app, without needing the extra cable app!
(Actually, I have just read about a new virtual MIDI keyboard, that also is supposed to install directly as a MIDI input driver-without needing a cable driver. It is called "Chirp", and its URL (I hope its OK to post it) is
http://www.tanageraudioworks.com/Products/Chirp/
A couple of problems I see with Chirp, however, without having tried it:
It costs $40, while all other virtual MIDI keyboards, including yours, have always been free. So, why would someone pay $40 for such an app, when others are available for free? It would have to be far superior to the freeware keyboards, and I don't know if it is. At the moment, they don't even have a trial version one can download. (Although they say they are working on one.) WIthout even being able to try it, I doubt many people will shell out those bucks, for a kind of app they can otherwise get for free.
Also, in looking at their PDF manual, it runs on an Adobe programming language called AIR, still in beta, which would be running on your computer all the time in the background, if you have "Chirp" installed. I don't think I like that idea.
Enough digression--back to the topic of virtual MIDI cables, which are necesary to use now, in order to use your product:
I have used the LoopBE1 for years with Bome's keyboard, and it seems to work pretty well.
I never heard of the Sony VMC before. Is that new? Who has used it? Is it a good one? How does it compare with the others? I never heard of Sony being involved in MIDI before, either with MIDI hardware or software, so I'm surprised they created this. Does anyone know about its origin--how did Sony come to create a virtual MIDI cable?
Has anyone done any comparison testing, in XP, between these different virtual MIDI cables, in terms of stability, compatibility, use of system resources, CPU, memory, etc.? Such a comparison would be interesting to read.
Thanks for the info.
