MIDIMAN= HORRIBLE, UNPROFESSIONAL.. Read

[BIGMOZ21]

I would just like to inform everyone of my horror story with midiman. This is the only way I can inform people about midiman. I purchased a USB midisport 8x8, for 350 dollars. Midiman "claims" to have support for XP for this product. I downloaded their drivers (latest update), hooked up the unit and attempted to install the driver... I followed all their instructions, and unfortunately came up with "DEVICE CAN NOT START, ERROR CODE 10." Anyway, I call up the tech support line, which is a 626 area code... They put me on hold for 15 minutes, pick up my call, and hang up on me by accident... THis occurs TWO times. Im paying for this phone call, because these guys dont know how to work their phone systems properly... Anyway, onto the product. I finally reach a guy at tech support and he leads me through uninstalling, and reinstalling the driver.... which I told him I previously did three times He leads me through it again, through safe mode, and I follow all his instructions. After following all his directions, I recieve the same error. He tells me to go under device manager, and check which IRQ my usb ports are installed under. They are on 19, and 23. He informs me that these are virtual IRQ's (which I know), and that I have to change them, so its DELL's fault, that the MIDISPORT doesnt function properly. Unfortunately, there is no way of changing these IRQ's in XP. This technician should have known that, but he obviously, would like to just peddle off the responsibility of his companies, non working product, to DELL. During our whole conversation, I can hear Trance music blaring in the background. Meanwhile this guy has the nerve to sing ALONG WITH THE TRANCE, as hes talking to me. Midiman offers no warning of these issues, and they have not offered me any support. I have emailed them several times with this problem, and their technicians issues, and they have not even bothered to amuse me with a reply. Its amazing that they are so quick to take your money, and only trully offer decent drivers for an obsolete OS like W98SE... or ME. I want everyone to know of MIDIMAN's character, and how they treat their customers. Since they allready have our money, why offer any support? You cant return the product unless its "physically" defective...

Any suggestions?

[brokenrecords]

I know how ya feel, I had the EXACT same problem, I called them and hung on hold for about 30 minutes about 5 times. I finally got through to the same tech (Im sure, he sounded like he was high) and told him my problem.. He told me I was doing everything right and that it "should" work.
Well, it didnt..
Then, I emailed them and they sent me exactly the same thing thats in the read me file off the XP driver download.

I went through heck for 7 days wasting about 25 hours of my time, which I value at about $50 per hour.

I never did get my 8X8 to work with USB.

I finally resolved the problem MYSELF by downloading the BETA XP driver that I found on their site and luckily, it had a driver for serial port...
I figured what the hey, might as well try it, and lo and behold, it worked.

I can tell you that I will never EVER buy anything made by MIDIMAN again.

Boycott them!l

[Boom]

Get a PCI soundcard with built in midi. USB is shit for audio and midi.

[transatlantic]

Originally posted by Boom
Get a PCI soundcard with built in midi. USB is shit for audio and midi.

You might be right on the audio, but USB does work well for MIDI. Emagic's interfaces are fantastic. My MT4 is about the least troublesome piece of gear I have. (Mac)

[tkumpis]

Yo, mohammad, just wait until you buy your amt8. That should work a lot better. Your right about midiman. They have one of the worst tech departments ever. I've never had to deal with them, only because I'm still using 98se. I'm going to get the amt8 as well.

[IsildursBane]

I had a heck of a time getting my 1x1 to work. It didn't work right until after I inadvertantly deleted all of my motherboard drivers.

-Dan.

[4midori]

I have a Midisport 4X4 USB box that works great. But my M-Audio Delta 66 (M-Audio and Midiman are the same company) doesn't work right. I get pops in my audio with the simplest of recordings (1 mono track, no MIDI, nothing else running, no FX). At first I thought it was a Sonar problem, but after much troubleshooting, it still seems to be the card that doesn't work right.

I called tech support, and after 1/2 hour on hold on my dime, I reached a reasonably helpful tech support guy. He advised me to try a few things, and then I discovered this with further research:

A note to Windows 2000 users: many PCs are setup using a HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) called APCI. This results in Windows using "virtual IRQs". The result of this type of HAL is that some devices get assigned the same IRQ, and they don't play well together. If you have certain audio problems that cannot be resolved any other way, you may have to REINSTALL your operating system and try again. See this link http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=47
for more info. If you reinstall your OS, backup EVERYTHING, including your IE favorites, before doing this.

Anyway, I emailed M-Audio/Midiman, with more ?s, and they ignored my message. I am calling tomorrow to try to get the card replaced, but am unsure of warranty because I bought it used, and their site has no obvious info on warranties. I think the card worked fine for the previous owner, but it is temperamental, and that's why it doesn't work on my PC.

I am less than thrilled with the company and will likely avoid their products as well. A product may do real well when reviewed by Keyboard or other magazine, but in real use on varying operating systems that the company says it supports, they don't work right. I've spent perhaps 10-15 hours of my own troubleshooting this crap. I am inclined to go with USB-based audio. It is my understanding that the main limitation is how many audio tracks you can record at once. Since I am not recording in a live situation, only keys, voice and guitar, I can handle the limitation.

Alternately, I may get an Echo MIA, as they responded thoroughly and quickly to my email query last week.

Beware M-Audio and Midiman products!

[x5dr]

I wouldn't get down on them too much. If they would have come out and said..."You need to delete everything on your system, go into bios and change things, reinstall windows on a clean fdisked hard drive and then reinstall each driver for every device and all of your software"...what would you say?

[Country Junkie]

I had similar problems getting cakewalk to go on my new/used laptop. I called cakewalk twice to no avail. I ended up giving up and installing cakewalk on my pos pc(pentiumII) and it's been running great. I'm really bummed because now when I gig, I have to drag full pc around intead of a nice portable laptop.
Oh well.

[wetwareinterface]

if you buy a pc and the hardware is not set up properly by the company you bought it from dont blame someone else when they tell you the truth.

if you are using virtual irq's or your hardware is sharing an irq you can forget it right there. no amount of tech support can help you if your usb port is using an irq higher than 15 or sharing one with another built in device on the mobo call your comp manufacturer and complain that they set it up wrong. win xp goes a long way to try to resolve conflicts with shared resources but it cant work a miracle. neither can tech support. dell was at fault on your system problem not midiman. call dell tech support and tell them they need to send out their tech to deal with your resource conflict as per your service agreement with them. remember the one year on-site support. call dell and tell them to honor their contract because your p.c was misconfigured at the factory an you have a resource conflict preventing you from using your usb ports with any hardware you choose to use that would otherwise be 100% compatible.

[Country Junkie]

Wetface,
Good points, I will call toshiba and ask them to figure out
my problem.

[db909]

Odd, I have always found them to be pretty helpful. Just like any other area in life and in retail, sometimes you get helpful people, sometimes you dont. A good strategy to use is to develop a close relationship with a salesmen at the store where you buy stuff. As a salesmen, when i call a company on behalf of a customer for tech support, they usually have someone really good call me or the customer back pretty fast. One phonecall to the right person at a company from a salesmen they already know can go a really long way in helping you!

[4midori]

Since my last post, I've gotten my Midiman Delta66 to work, but it was a huge hassle. I do not recommend their audio cards.

[brzilian]

Originally posted by 4midori
Since my last post, I've gotten my Midiman Delta66 to work, but it was a huge hassle. I do not recommend their audio cards.

I've been using their products for over a year with no problems on 2 systems - an older PII-400 and now a P4-2.26. I have the Midisport USB 2x2 and the Audiophile 2496 and HIGHLY recommend M-Audio products.

Just because you ran into problems doesn't mean other people will. That's too bad it didn't work out for you but IMO there are worse companies to deal with. At least M-Audio did not leave their customers that use XP hanging without drivers for a year like Aardvark did...

[4midori]

I'm many use M-Audio/Midiman products without problems. But when a company ignores emails, that is unacceptable.

[LC]

See this sort of thing is why I buy my audio gear at a small store that specialises in studio equipment. It may be more expensive than buying online, but if I have a problem.. I go into the store, where they of course still know my face if not my name, and I get me some premium support. And if they don't know... they'll contact someone for you who does.

[Porkchop]

Nothing worse than bad tech support to turn you off of a company. maybe these guys are day dreaming all day long about being rock/rap stars...

We do our due dilligence, read the manuals, spend hours tracking down bits of info from here and there and the one time when you REALLY need tech support you get trance music and an attitude. these people shoud be parking lot attendants, not tech support engineers.

But I think M-audio makes good products and tries to keep ahead of the "driver" curve. My experience was much better than yours with the same products (didn't need tech support, so this is probably why)

[Jacobe]

Actually, it seems that all the problems that you've had (And I as well with my audiophile...)are not that much about m-audio. I have never pumped into a big scale company(midiman, microsoft, roland...), which has a good tech support. They all suck. Only the little ones can really serve you...

These problems you've had seem to be much more about windows, and microsoft, than m-audio. The system for example set's it's own IRQ:s the way it wants, and you can do nothing to change that.... Unless you uninstall ACPI (wich is possible, but I don't recommend... Messed up everything else, but I finally got my soundcard to work...)

If only linux had some good music software, I would change immediately.

[mofo]

damn! you people are stoooooooooooooooooopid!!!!!!!!

midiman is NOT shite. mine works just fine, thank you.

here's how to get your hardware working.........
1st - the bios is where irq settings are done, the OS is secondary.

1 - turn off all unused irq using hardware.
turn off - serial ports
turn off - parallel port
this frees up 2 irq's and if you have a motherboard that has
on-board sound, modem, etc ....... turn that shit off.

super tweak example:
the ide bus uses irq 14 & 15, if you only have 1 hd & 1 cd,
then put them both on the primary channel & turn off the secondary.
this will free up one of these irq's.

2 - put the cards in indepdent irq slots
that's right, some card slots share an irq with another slot
or with usb. RTFManual for your motherboard and put your cards
in independent slots. the bios assignments are displayed at boot time.
if you change stuff & still don't have seperate irq's then keep
tweaking until you do.

the classic example of moron card installation is using
the pci slot adjacent to the agp slot. these 2 are shared
in almost all motherboards.

most motherboards have only 4 indepent slots, so you CANNOT
have more than 4 cards in your pc if you want it to work right.
better motherboards have 5 independent slots.

some older cards take up more than one irq. throw it away and
buy a new one.

did you buy a dell, compaq, hp, etc?
you probably have no motherboard manual.
experimentation is your only method for determining irq assignments

what's the best pc? the pc IS THE MOTHERBOARD.
buy an asus, abit or other great brand. read the manual before you buy it.
that's what the internet is for.

feeling smug because your dell, or other brand name, is asus?
don't. these are special "made for" dell motherboards that usually
aren't fit to kiss the butt of the full product.
you know, just like those "made for" gibson kramer guitars.
you bought shit. shutup and lump it.

[zelmobeaty]

This is the kind of story that keeps me from upgrading from my Audigy card. It works fine for midi and recording. I think I'll leave well enough alone.

[gagnon]

Holy Krumonly! People! I can't believe all the complicated stuff I'm reading in here. Simplify your lives and get a Macintosh!

[4midori]

mofo,

I think you're missing the point here. Most users do not have the time or ability to reconfigure their PC for a soundcard setup. Nor do they have the interest in building a PC from scratch. While some systems like Compaq are proprietary and limited, I've found my Dell system to be well designed.

The point of the complaints against MIDIMAN is poor support and products that require extensive reconfiguration of one's PC.

Even though I'm a techie, I just want to make music, not spend 15 hours screwing with my PC (which I had to do to get my Delta 66 to work).

Zelmobeaty: I hear you. Sometimes its easier to make to with limitations when you know everything works than to switch to something untried and poorly supported.

On a positive note, I emailed the folks that make the Darla and Layla stuff, and I got a well-phrased reply within 24 hours. So they may a better company to buy a soundcard from.

MIDIMAN makes some good products, but after my experience I am wary of buying from them.

[Igel]

So I guess I shouldn't hold my breath on getting a reply to the question I emailed tech support about using 2 Delta44s in one machine, huh? :-|

[4midori]

I suggest you call them, and be assertive.

The software audio panel controls suggest that more than one card can be used at once.

[audiotracker]

Perhaps the company wasn't ignoring e-mails...Perhaps they have 100-1000 e-mails a day that they have to respond to..and they haven't got to yours yet....That's why boards like these were created. So people can do some RESEARCH and find their own solutions because tech support hasn't responded to them within what they believe to be a reasonable amount of time. I've used my Audiophile on every Windows operating system...with NO problems. But I've learned from experience not to expect miracles from "tech support"...from ANY company.