Will M-Audio ever support midisport in Catalina?

[Liber8]

TLDR: CAUTION with the Roland driver! I installed it and it crashed my laptop.

Appreciating this thread -- I've been trying to figure out why my older Midisport is not working after not having used it in a few years...then I borrowed an Uno, and that still didn't work. Now I know why!

Hopefully the suggestion to install the Roland driver works for some folks, but also be warned: I tried that route last night and ended up with an unbootable laptop. I was able to get it running again by reinstalling Catalina from Recovery Mode, but not until I spent a number of frustrating hours yesterday and today trying to back up my recent stuff using the command line (Terminal) from Recovery just in case I lost everything and had to revert to a Time Machine backup that's a few weeks old. Would rather have just spent the money on a new interface rather than waste all that time...and still have to buy a new interface.

Moral of the story: if you try the Roland driver, be sure to do a full backup of your Mac right before.

I have a Midisport Uno which is not supported according to the M-audio website.
I downloaded drivers from Roland (UM-ONE MK2 DRIVER VER.1.0.3 FOR MACOS 10.15) and now it works perfect in OSX Catalina 10.15.7.

https://www.roland.com/global/products/um-one_mk2/downloads/

Perhaps this solution also works for you?

[leighsmith]

I've now released an open source driver https://sourceforge.net/projects/midisport-macos/files/ for the MIDISPORT boxes that run as 64 bit drivers on MacOS 10.14 (Mojave) and 10.15 (Catalina). Hope this helps folks create.

[Liber8]

Thanks so much for this driver!!! It brought my Midiman back to life. And did not kill my OS! (Though I did do a full backup before trying this time .) Not amazing that you're having to do the software work that M-Audio refuses to do...but thank you!!

I've now released an open source driver https://sourceforge.net/projects/midisport-macos/files/ for the MIDISPORT boxes that run as 64 bit drivers on MacOS 10.14 (Mojave) and 10.15 (Catalina). Hope this helps folks create.

[Tomás Mulcahy]

Hi all,

I’m a little bewildered by the loss of functionality of the humble M-Audio midisport 2x2 in Catalina.

Long shot, but try uninstalling the driver? I just set up new machine with a clean install of Mojave, I did not install the driver and my M-Audio MIDISport 4x4 works just fine. Which I did not expect.

[Matt Houghton]

Disclaimer: I've not yet tried this, so can't be sure how legit it is, but...

There appears to be an open source MIDISport driver on Github that supports the 1x1, 2x2, 4x4 and 8x8 on Mojave and Catalina. If anyone tried it and meets with success (or not!), please report back here!

[Tomás Mulcahy]

Wow, great find. Claims that they wrote the original driver. Scary Terminal stuff, but I will try it if I go to Catalina.

Edit: And I think now I actually did install the M Audio driver on my Mojave machine

[leighsmith]

Wow, great find. Claims that they wrote the original driver. Scary Terminal stuff, but I will try it if I go to Catalina.

Edit: And I think now I actually did install the M Audio driver on my Mojave machine

The M-Audio driver will work with Mojave, as Mojave still supports 32 bit drivers, although if any other MIDI drivers are 64 bit, they are prevented from running, i.e some of the Roland drivers. The whole exercise of revamping 20 year old code to compile and run as 64 bit drivers was to be able to run on Catalina (which no longer supports 32 bit drivers), and eventually Big Sur.

There is no longer a need to run any commands in Terminal to install. Just download the .pkg file from the sourceforge.net link on the GitHub README page and double click it. I am preparing support for the non-MIDISPORT devices that use the same driver, such as the Oxygen 8 keyboard, Quattro etc. Please contact me if you have one of these boxes/keyboards as I will need some testers.

[Tomás Mulcahy]

Amazing! Thank you.

[Matt Houghton]

Wow, great find. Claims that they wrote the original driver. Scary Terminal stuff, but I will try it if I go to Catalina.

Edit: And I think now I actually did install the M Audio driver on my Mojave machine

The M-Audio driver will work with Mojave, as Mojave still supports 32 bit drivers, although if any other MIDI drivers are 64 bit, they are prevented from running, i.e some of the Roland drivers. The whole exercise of revamping 20 year old code to compile and run as 64 bit drivers was to be able to run on Catalina (which no longer supports 32 bit drivers), and eventually Big Sur.

There is no longer a need to run any commands in Terminal to install. Just download the .pkg file from the sourceforge.net link on the GitHub README page and double click it. I am preparing support for the non-MIDISPORT devices that use the same driver, such as the Oxygen 8 keyboard, Quattro etc. Please contact me if you have one of these boxes/keyboards as I will need some testers.

[leighsmith]

So just to be even more clear: the open source driver I released, which compiles as a 64 bit driver, will work for Mojave, Catalina, and eventually (although I've yet to compile and test it), Big Sur.

The M-Audio released driver (modified from my original code) was released as a 32 bit driver, and hence will run on Mojave as the last release. So if you are on Mojave, you can remove the M-Audio driver and replace it with the open source 64 bit version and when you upgrade to Catalina, the driver will continue to work.

Upgrading to the 64 bit driver while still on Mojave may be beneficial also, as 32 bit device drivers prevent 64 bit drivers from being loaded, and some of Roland's recent MIDI drivers (the one shipped for the SY-1000 USB) are 64 bit only, and hence clash against the M-Audio 32 bit driver, and refuse to load.

[benny cha cha]

Hi Leigh, thanks so much for doing this. Any advice on getting a MidiSport 2X4 to work in Catalina with your drivers?

thanks much

ben

[leighsmith]

Hi Leigh, thanks so much for doing this. Any advice on getting a MidiSport 2X4 to work in Catalina with your drivers?

thanks much

ben

As originally written, there is an assumption in the driver that the number of inputs and output are identical. In principle, it's not too hard to support the unequal number of inputs and outputs, I just haven't had a chance to diagnose and test with such a beast. It will take a bit of sleuthing. I see you are in Brooklyn, as am I, so while I might be able to get things going remotely, worst case, we could meet (COVID safe) and diagnose the behaviour.

Have you tested with the existing v1.1.0 driver? I'm not sure of the USB identifiers of those 2 x 4 models? Can you (or anyone else) post the results of running System Information.app, selecting "USB" under "Hardware", then look for a device in the device tree, possibly labelled "Composite Device" with a Vendor ID of "0x0763 (M-Audio)", and posting the Product ID and other displayed information?

That will definitely help get those devices supported!

[benny cha cha]

Hi Leigh, thanks so much for doing this. Any advice on getting a MidiSport 2X4 to work in Catalina with your drivers?

thanks much

ben

As originally written, there is an assumption in the driver that the number of inputs and output are identical. In principle, it's not too hard to support the unequal number of inputs and outputs, I just haven't had a chance to diagnose and test with such a beast. It will take a bit of sleuthing. I see you are in Brooklyn, as am I, so while I might be able to get things going remotely, worst case, we could meet (COVID safe) and diagnose the behaviour.

Have you tested with the existing v1.1.0 driver? I'm not sure of the USB identifiers of those 2 x 4 models? Can you (or anyone else) post the results of running System Information.app, selecting "USB" under "Hardware", then look for a device in the device tree, possibly labelled "Composite Device" with a Vendor ID of "0x0763 (M-Audio)", and posting the Product ID and other displayed information?

That will definitely help get those devices supported!

Thanks, Leigh. I installed the 1.1 just now and the firmware app doesn't show up. the computer is seeing the hardware. (i will uninstall and try again.)

here is the info from the system info:

Composite Device:

Product ID: 0x1041
Vendor ID: 0x0763 (M-Audio)
Version: 1.00
Speed: Up to 12 Mb/s
Location ID: 0x14224200 / 11
Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA): 198
Extra Operating Current (mA): 0

Would be cool to get this working. i'd be happy to meet up and lend the box to you if necessary.

best
b

[leighsmith]

Thanks, Leigh. I installed the 1.1 just now and the firmware app doesn't show up. the computer is seeing the hardware. (i will uninstall and try again.)

here is the info from the system info:

Composite Device:

Product ID: 0x1041
Vendor ID: 0x0763 (M-Audio)
Version: 1.00
Speed: Up to 12 Mb/s
Location ID: 0x14224200 / 11
Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA): 198
Extra Operating Current (mA): 0

Would be cool to get this working. i'd be happy to meet up and lend the box to you if necessary.

best
b

Thanks! That tells me a lot, firstly, that the 2 x 4 is a distinct device, and hence will likely need it's own firmware different from the 4 x 4, and secondly, that it's not a device that has firmware that is available to be retrieved from M-Audio's dmg file

So it'll take me a bit more sleuthing to figure out the specs and how M-Audio supported that device. It's not out of the realm of possibility that the firmware doesn't actually need downloading, in that, it would behave similar to an 8x8/S. I'll dig in a bit, and then perhaps contact me via my website https://www.leighsmith.com and we can set up a meet up, or I'll send you a diagnostic version of the driver.

[leighsmith]

One question for clarification: *Without* the driver installed, when you plugged in the 2x4, did you see the USB LED pulse, or are all the LEDs unlit? Since you mention the firmware downloader isn't downloading, I assume you deduce that from the lack of pulsing USB LED?

[benny cha cha]

One question for clarification: *Without* the driver installed, when you plugged in the 2x4, did you see the USB LED pulse, or are all the LEDs unlit? Since you mention the firmware downloader isn't downloading, I assume you deduce that from the lack of pulsing USB LED?

I thought that the firmware downloader was supposed to launch upon device detection. I took no launch to mean no device found. The light is pulsing right now.

I will uninstall the driver and see what happens.

[leighsmith]

The firmware downloader daemon will download the firmware, but only if it sees a device that matches a list of product ids, and the product Id you posted earlier 0x1041, isn't in that list in v1.1.0 of the driver. I did a bit of sleuthing, and it seems the 2x4 is like the 8x8 and it has true firmware (i.e. it's actually stored in a ROM in the device, not downloaded like the 1x1, 2x2 & 4x4, which makes those less than firmware, err, flaccidware? ). So I should have a version available to test very soon.

[leighsmith]

I will uninstall the driver and see what happens.

Ok v1.2.0 of the driver is now available at https://sourceforge.net/projects/midisport-macos/, which should work with the MIDISPORT 2x4. BTW, can I confirm that the ports on your 2x4 are labelled numerically (1-2, 1-4) and not alphabetically (A-B, A-D)?

Let me know how you fare?

[poetica1985]

I will uninstall the driver and see what happens.

Ok v1.2.0 of the driver is now available at https://sourceforge.net/projects/midisport-macos/, which should work with the MIDISPORT 2x4. BTW, can I confirm that the ports on your 2x4 are labelled numerically (1-2, 1-4) and not alphabetically (A-B, A-D)?

Let me know how you fare?

Hi Leigh I’d messaged you on your Sourceforge page but figured you might not check that anymore.

I’m having trouble trying to connect an M-Audio Ozone midi controller as the driver is 32bit - any suggestions? I’ve tried using a midi 5 pin lead but no joy. Would a usb-b to usb-c cable work, do you think? I’m tearing my hair out trying ro get it to work on my Macbook Pro 2019

[leighsmith]

I responded privately to your message, but for information for other readers, repeating here, I've opened an issue ticket https://github.com/leighsmith/midisport-macos/issues/18 on the project's GitHub page to add support for the Ozone.

The technical issues are outlined there, but briefly: Indeed the firmware for the Ozone is installed by the MIDISPORT installer to the disk, but there is some work necessary to have that firmware then transferred to the Ozone (it uses a different protocol, DFU, than that used by the MIDISPORTs, it seems), and there is some work to investigate which protocol such DFU devices use, either the same non-standard protocol the MIDISPORTs use, the USB MIDI class compliant spec, or some other non-standard protocol.

[poetica1985]

I responded privately to your message, but for information for other readers, repeating here, I've opened an issue ticket https://github.com/leighsmith/midisport-macos/issues/18 on the project's GitHub page to add support for the Ozone.

The technical issues are outlined there, but briefly: Indeed the firmware for the Ozone is installed by the MIDISPORT installer to the disk, but there is some work necessary to have that firmware then transferred to the Ozone (it uses a different protocol, DFU, than that used by the MIDISPORTs, it seems), and there is some work to investigate which protocol such DFU devices use, either the same non-standard protocol the MIDISPORTs use, the USB MIDI class compliant spec, or some other non-standard protocol.

Thanks so much Leigh, you’ve given me a bit of hope! I will follow your advice!

[poetica1985]

I responded privately to your message, but for information for other readers, repeating here, I've opened an issue ticket https://github.com/leighsmith/midisport-macos/issues/18 on the project's GitHub page to add support for the Ozone.

The technical issues are outlined there, but briefly: Indeed the firmware for the Ozone is installed by the MIDISPORT installer to the disk, but there is some work necessary to have that firmware then transferred to the Ozone (it uses a different protocol, DFU, than that used by the MIDISPORTs, it seems), and there is some work to investigate which protocol such DFU devices use, either the same non-standard protocol the MIDISPORTs use, the USB MIDI class compliant spec, or some other non-standard protocol.

Thanks so much Leigh, you’ve given me a bit of hope! I will follow your advice!

So I’d got as far as trying to install the firmware downloader but a message came up saying this installer is not suitable for this operating system...I’m currently running Catalina

[Fredo Frito]

I've now released an open source driver https://sourceforge.net/projects/midisport-macos/files/ for the MIDISPORT boxes that run as 64 bit drivers on MacOS 10.14 (Mojave) and 10.15 (Catalina). Hope this helps folks create.

Hi, I've installed last version of the driver and it works flawlessly on Catalina. I was about to give my MidiSport 2x2 away. Thanks!!!

[Tomás Mulcahy]

Hi Leigh, is there a way we can thank you for this? Like buy you a coffee or something?

[Axelmidi]

Thanks a lot Leigh! Works without problems with my M-Audio MIDISPORT 1x1 on 10.15.7 Catalina. Would buy you a coffee, too!