Im in the same dilema. I’m going to back to making use of some hardware in the studio and it looks like there are very choices on the market for a solid reliable 8x8 MIDI interface that supports Windows 7 / 64bit…
The ESI should be avoided because it’s class compliant and doesn’t have dedicated drivers. The drivers in Windows ain’t that great. Dedicated drivers are needed for better performance - especially if you’re using 8 synths at once. The generic windows midi driver has 3 problems: no multi client capability, corrupted SysEx transfers when large blocks are transferred, 1 mS latency between each event when they are sent over multiple ports. Using an 8 port box with many synths hooked up - that’s a totally unacceptable amount of latency.
Motu - I hear mixed results (some negative like you mentioned).
Another contender is the Roland UM-3G. This is a 3x3 unit, but 3 units can be chained together. I’ve had a hard time getting reports on these - limited info was that it worked well. However, this unit will not have multiclient functionality when Cubase is using it (had Sweetwater test this out for me).
I’m in the same boat as you. Hanging on th XP because I don’t know where to go with midi. Really sad state of affairs. I would pay a good chunk of money for something solid to replace my two midex8s.
The info you read about MOTU drivers being unusable is hogwash. I have both audio (3 1224’s on a 424 card) and midi (2 Midi Express 128’s) and have found MOTU’s drivers to work fine. In fact, I replaced my Midex’s with the Midi Express 128’s way back when Vista was first released as a beta. I’ve used both 32bit and 64bit drivers with the same happy result.
Take what you read on the net with a grain of salt. A great majority of problems reported are by those who do not know how to deal with proper setup, configuring drivers, and other technical issues. I happen to be a musician with technical savvy and have NEVER had a problem with any of the audio interfaces, midi interfaces, various operating systems (yes even Millenium worked great for me!) I’ve ever used over the last 20 years
One small caveat. The only hiccup I have on occassion is that the Midi Express 128’s will sometimes not be recognized when coming back from a power saving mode. This is a fairly common problem for USB type devices. I just unplug, then replug the USB plug.
I have a MOTU Microlite and the drivers have been bad both on Windows XP )64bit) and Windows 7 (64bit). Often the driver doesn’t load properly on boot-up and the solution is to unplug and re-plug. MOTU’s response? “Glad to see that the issue is solved”.
So MOTU may be flawless for some people. In my experience the drivers are cr*p.
The Microlite problem may be USB/Chipset related. I’ve worked on a few computers over the years that have similar problems with ANY USB device. Some combinations just don’t handle USB on boot very well, they only work as expected when inserted after the OS has booted.
As noted above, even my system has that same problem occassionally coming out of power save mode. (I know, it’s a DAW, but I leave my computer on all the time for quick access and change to power settings when I’m tracking)
Only for the records… ESI has own drivers released with multclient support. Eventually interesting for users always searching for a Midi interface and reading about the missing multi-client support. This isn’t true anymore.