Midi Digi - The Digital Midi Site

video game remix music

2008-09-04T14:17:00.004-04:00

Here's a few different remix songs I've done on some of my favorite memorable video game themes available as demonstrations of what people can do with a digital audio workstation home studio they done with FL Studio along with some helpful VST programs.

castlevania_combo_mix.mp3

castlevania_bloody_tears_t.mp3

river_city_ransom_-_statux.mp3

river_city_ransom_-_fightx.mp3

metal_gear_outside_3_remix.mp3

Marvel_Super_Heroes_Vs._Sx.mp3

Underclocking the E7200

2008-08-22T01:01:00.002-04:00

After reading a article over at Tom's Hardware titled Athlon Vs. Atom: Duel of The Energy Savers I decided to see how far I could under clock my E7200 on my P43 motherboard. I manged to drop it down to a meager 911MHz at 1.120v from it's default clock speed of 2.53GHz that's quiet the drop a 64% underclock in fact on the reverse side the same processor will overclock to 3.7GHz at 1.3v resulting in a 32% overclock. It's quite the versatile cpu it seems.

AltTab Mouse Shortcut

2008-08-19T21:21:00.002-04:00

Alt Tab Mouse Shortcut is simple program that allows you to alt+tab with your mouse how it works is you press and hold the left mouse button then you right click to the application you wish to switch to and when you release the left mouse button it automatically switches to the program you've selected. It's a very convent program worth checking into if you switch programs a lot..

Minimalism and performance

2008-08-19T21:16:00.000-04:00

If your like me and you just want pure performance and/or minimalism then I strongly suggest you take a look at bbLeanless. So what exactly is bbLeanless? Well it's trimmed down version of bbLean which is a minimalistic build of blackbox. So what's blackbox? Well blackbox is a minimalistic shell replacement to the windows explorer.exe gui. You might be wondering why you'd want to bother replacing the normal windows shell and it boils down to two reason essentially. The first reason would be for the look and feel of windows perhaps you want something different looking and feeling than how windows natively works. The second reason is performance and windows default explore.exe shell is a bit of a resource hog by changing over to a more minimalistic shell you can save cpu and ram requirements which in turn can then be used for more important things such as the programs your trying to run. Now audio workstations can be resource hogs and more available system memory and cpu cycles matter especially if your trying to prolong the life of a computer. Minimalistic shell replacements make perfect sense for audio workstations it might just give you that extra bit of juice you need to run that very demanding VSTI soft synth of yours or a extra VST pluggin effector or make your program feel more responsive in general.

Physx gets integrated into leading engine

2008-08-19T15:47:00.000-04:00

Nvidia gains further support

EMERGENT HAS announced plans to further partner with Nvidia on the company's Gamebryo development platform.

In an announcement which can be seen as a sizeable win for Nvidia, Emergent will integrate Physx technology into all upcoming versions of the 'industry-leading' Gamebryo.

The next release of Emergent's Gamebryo, is scheduled for this Autumn and thus will ship with the Nvidia Physx engine directly integrated into the platform.

Gamebryo has been optimised for development on the Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Wii and PC .

It was most recently selected as the development platform for the console titles Civilization Revolution by Firaxis and Splatterhouse by BottleRocket.

Gamebryo is also being used by EA-Mythic for its upcoming game, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning as well as Divinity 2: Ego Draconis from Larian Studios.

Emergent has stated that to date, Gamebryo has been used in more than 200 shipped games titles ranging from massively multiplayer online games, high-end retail games across multiple genres, and casual games.

It makes sense for Gamebryo to use Physx as an underpinning technology - Physx can work across all major gaming platforms, including the above consoles, and the PC, and can be accelerated by both the CPU and any CUDA general purpose parallel computing processor - and obviously Nvidia's own Geforce GPUs

By Dean Pullen: at
http://www.theinquirer.net/

Nvidia drivers for OpenGL 3.0

2008-08-17T02:50:00.001-04:00

NVIDIA has released a new set of beta drivers for developers with support for the OpenGL 3.0 API and GLSL 1.30 shading language.

Just two days after the Khronos Group officially released the OpenGL 3.0 specifications, NVIDIA has deployed its first round of beta drivers (version 177.89) with support for the new API. By default, the new features are disabled and must be activated using NVIDIA’s NVemulate utility. In order to activate OpenGL 3.0 and GLSL 1.30 functionality, you must be using a GeForce 8 series or higher or one of several Quadro FX cards. Cards from both desktop and notebook lines are supported.

The drivers are available for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows XP and Windows Vista and will integrate into the standard ForceWare driver releases following the SIGGRAPH 2008 conference as part of NVIDIA’s Big Bang II.

How RAM works on a dual-GPU card

2008-08-16T21:02:00.000-04:00

Current dual-gpu cards work by using load balancing between two gpu cores on a video card. The current designs on these dual-gpu cards don't have shared memory so each gpu core uses the required amount of vram per gpu core to render and load balance two scenes together seamlessly. Shared memory wouldn't actually give you any more ram, but rather better management of how the gpu core's could handle the provided available on board ram.

With a shared memory dual-gpu you could do more things with the same amount of on board ram essentially. For example card with 1GB shared vram and 1 gpu core could be using 256vram for one application while the other core was using 768vram for another application. Now with a 2x512MB even though the card has 1GB worth of total ram on board your restricted to 512MB per core so that same situation wouldn't be possible. Shared memory is more economical and flexible, but more complex to design which is likely the leading contributing factor as to why it isn't yet used in dual gpu cards. I hope that helps answer your question.

Biostar TP43D2-A7 6.x Review

2008-08-12T01:54:00.023-04:00

I recently bought a Biostar TP43D2-A7 6.x motherboard it's based on one of Intel's latest chip sets the P43 which is a derivative of the P45. The difference between the two is mostly just a lower fsb wall on the P43 and lack of crossfire support, but neither of which is a noteworthy deal to a lot of users as even a lot of casual and modest overclockers will find the Biostar TP43D2-A7 a suitable overclocking board thanks to it's solid capacitors and bargain entry price point. It's fully PCI-E 2.0 compliant which if your like me who came from a SRock 4CoreDual-VSTA you'll find handy as your new 8800GT and other newer PCI-E 2.0 video cards are future compatible for the motherboard hopefully adding to it's long term longevity if you plan on keeping it awhile and/or reusing it. It also has on board1000Mbps lan and on board 6 channel audio. It supports 4×240pin ddr2 1066 up to 8GB of memory total. It supports the latest 45nm Intel wolfdale & penryn processors. It has 6 on board sata connections and 6 USB 2.0 connections. 2 PCI Express x1 slots and 3 pci slots.

Now that I've told you a bit about the board and it's features time to share my experiences with the board well I've had it for a good solid two months and haven't had any hiccups related to the board itself yet it's a rock solid motherboard and excellent performer. I'm sure what you really want to know is the how well does it overclock? Well I've managed to overclock my E7200 to 3.7GHz rock stable at 1.3V on semi stock air cooling so not bad at all I'd say. The reason I say it's semi stock cooling is it's a Intel stock cooler, but from a previous Intel 65nm E4300 C2D processor which was about double the mass size of the newer E7200 stock coolers Intel bundles and has a copper center opposed to a aluminum one. Now the Intel stock cooler on the E4300 was pretty respectable for a bundled cooler, but certainly can't compare to a higher quality after market cooler in the cooling department. It's my belief that with a good aftermarket cooler 3.8GHz stable with a E7200 on the TP43D2-A7 might be possible since I'm able to post into windows at 3.8GHz with the (semi stock) Intel cooler. Also for anyone curious the my FSB wall for the board was 420FSB beyond that and I'm unable to post, but hey 420FSB for a board this cheap yet so feature packed is very respectable if you ask me and more than I need for overclocking anyway. There's a nice variety of overclocking options inside the bios as well as other bios options much better than my previous motherboard bios provided. If you have some high quality ram you'll be able to tighten up the timings on them very nicely if they can handle it of course. The on board audio sounds good for it's intended use, but it's certainly no E-MU1212M if you want a top a quality soundcard audio interface that's the thing to go with believe me. For regular usage though th on board audio is just fine in fact I didn't even bother switching my E-MU1212M over even though I probably should since it's defiantly a high quality product being a after market audio interface soundcard. Well anyways I wouldn't buy the TP43D2-A7 motherboard though unless you want a rock solid feature packed motherboard with positive reviews at a bargain price point expect these boards to be flying off the shelfves once more word gets out about them.

Grab it now while supplies last!

Computer tech

2008-08-11T23:30:00.003-04:00

So recently I got a new motherboard cpu ram and video card so essentially a new computer and so figured I'd blog about it and let people know what I've thought about the new rig. The E7200 CPU itself felt much beefier than the allready fast C2D E4300 I upgraded from on top of that it overclocks phenomonally can push 3.7GHz with ease on air and pretty nominmal 1.3v voltage. The motherboard was a big upgrade and just bargin price for the quality of the product TP43D2-A7 it overclocks like a champ for it's cheap price point and is rather feature packed. For the ram upgrade I went from 2GB ddr800 to 4GB ddr1066 and it was a good solid improvement a lot more ram so less pagefiling plus either higher bandwidth and/or much tighter ram timings either way a win situation. Last of course was the video card went from a Geforce 6800 w/128mb ram 256bit to 8800GT 1GB ram 256bit and it was a massive ginormous step up the card is a beast by comparison.

Deckadance review

2008-02-24T18:24:00.008-05:00

Deckadance Pros:

Created by the makers of FL Studio Image Line
Asio support
Solid layout easy navigation and intuitive for both novices and experienced users alike
Midi capable
Time coded CD and vinyl support
Built in relooper, sampler, and VST midi host
Can be interfaced with other software as a VSTI or runs as a stand alone program
All the input and output options you should need
Supports mp3, wave, and ogg file formats

Deckadance Cons:

Could use more vinyl emulation functions
Not completely midi assignable
Lacks a few things competing products offer, but makes up for it in other ways

Bang for buck rating: A

Akai MPD16 Review

2008-02-24T14:58:00.007-05:00

Akai MPD16 Pros:

Midi out
USB powered
Optional 9V DC power adapter
PS/2 mouse/keyboard adapter usable as well w/midi cable as USB work around to BSOD
Nicer feeling pads than on the Pad Kontrol, Trigger Finger, or Axiom
16 pads and extra bank option to expand to 32 pads
Velocity sensitive pads with 16 levels of velocity
Fader
Price
Build quality
Size advantage over other pad options

Akai MPD16 Cons:

BSOD if using the USB on certain computers appears to be a USB2.0 related
Good pads, but still not quite MPC quality better than the competitions though
MPD24,MPD32, and MPK49 in some ways are better options

Bang for buck rating: A

EKS XP5 Review

2008-02-24T02:40:00.006-05:00

EKS XP5 Pros:

Price per unit
Touch sensitive jog wheels really sensitive
Built in audio interface
USB 2.0
Lots of buttons
Nice layout
Size

EKS XP5 Cons:

Case flexes in spots when buttons are pressed
Cheap stiff clicky buttons
Price per pair
Pair takes up two USB slots
No built in or bundled mixer
No midi I/O
Relatively small jog wheel size
No jog wheel adjustments
Inconsistency on jog wheel build quality one wobbled a bit the other felt kinda stiff

Bang for buck rating: C-

MPC 2500 vs SCRATCHING

2008-02-24T01:47:00.005-05:00

From the folks over at DJmag JFB on turntable & mixer and Ed Solo on mpc in a jam battle of skill showcasing of sorts it's re-fresh-ing to say the least this is what musics all about. I'd be glad to see more of this kind of thing in the future they both showcased talent in different ways this is the direction I'd like to see modern day DJing head in rather than bickering over Midi vs CD vs Vinyl why choose when they can coexist each have strengths and weaknesses ultimately things are headed in a more digital direction so why resist it why not embrace the advantages of it.

Beringer BCD2000 review

2008-02-23T20:57:00.013-05:00

BCD2000 Pros:

Sound quality for listening plenty suitable to non audiophiles

ASIO compliant down to 4ms latency depending on load

Solid built

A lot of buttons and sliders which feel good for non pro equipment

Nearly unmatchable bang for the buck

BCD2000 Cons:

Wallwart

USB bandwidth hungry

Noisy headphone preamp

Possibly noisy mic preamp (didn't test, but relatively safe assumption)

cramped layout particularly around the jogs

small non touch sensitive jogs

Bang for buck rating: A-

What is Midi Digi?

2008-02-23T18:51:00.002-05:00

So this is my first blog here and you might be wondering what Midi Digi means or represents and ultimately what's to come in the future. Well Midi Digi like the page header illustrates basically stands for digital midi. So with that out of the way onto the next topic of discussion whats to come?

Well quite simply I plan to help give people insight on equipment and software from as many different angles as I can provide. I've been building computers and using music software for a few years now. I've learned a variety of things in that amount of time and hopefully I might help people avoid some pitfalls I've stumbled across along the way.

Right now I have a basic home studio a digital audio workstation, a midi pad, keyboard midi controller, mics, and some various other pieces of gear and a DJ controller on the way the Vestax VCI-100. It's mostly budget orientated equipment as my pockets aren't deep enough to afford most of that high end stuff just yet, but someday if things go well hopefully I'll be able. I'll cover where I started what I've learned and hopefully what the future is going to bring as well as current things happening.