MIDI to USB Cable: The Ultimate Custom Guide

The MIDI-USB cable is the fastest and most direct way to get a MIDI instrument (such as a keyboard or piano) to use with your computer.

However, the MIDI-USB adapter market is crawling using low-cost, mediocre interfaces that may display garbled and distorted information in a few days or weeks, eventually leading to failure.

If you have been struggling to find an affordable, high-quality interface device or cable to meet your needs, then customizing your product may be the best option.

This article outlines the basics of the MIDI protocol, the importance of MIDI for the USB interface, and, most importantly, how long it takes to build a MIDI-USB cable from scratch.

Musical Instrument Digital Interface, or MIDI, is a standard protocol for digital instruments, synthesizers, and computers to communicate with each other. While its initial purpose was to allow a keyboard to play notes generated by another keyboard, it was quickly adopted for PC use.

Instead of representing musical sounds directly using analog waves like a tape recorder, MIDI transmits information about how music is produced, which includes the beginning of a note, its length, pitch, volume and other attributes.

The sound waves generated are those already contained in a wavetable in the receiving device or sound card. Because MIDI files only represent player information, they take up considerably less space than formats that have the actual sound.

MIDI to USB interfaces

As mentioned earlier, a typical MIDI connection is made through a standard five-pin DIN plug. Some newer keyboards have USB Type B MIDI ports, which means a standard USB cable will suffice for your computer interfacing needs.

Other DAW setups are equipped with soundcards that have MIDI ports, and therefore only require a 5-pin to 5-pin MIDI cable.

If you’re looking to connect a keyboard without a USB port to a computing device that doesn’t have MIDI ports, however, you will need a MIDI to USB cable.

MIDI is a single-direction communication protocol, which means a single MIDI plug can either transmit or receive data. Most off-the-shelf MIDI to USB cable, therefore, have two MIDI jacks – In and Out – connecting to an instrument’s Out and In MIDI ports respectively.

Of course, a setup with more than one instrument will require an interface with enough MIDI ports to support all the devices. An 8-port interface or MIDI snake, for instance, is ideal for users that have several external sound modules, keyboards and control surfaces to connect.

Why Would You Need A MIDI-USB Cable?

We may have already established that a MIDI interface is required to connect a keyboard to a computer via USB, but although that is the most common use of these devices, it’s not the only one.

For starters, you might have a sound module whose output you would like to use in your current composition. A MIDI-USB cable will enable you to send note information to and from your computer. That means you can post parts of your balance back and forth within your keyboard, equipment, and module.