Synthesia doesn't see my Kross 2 keyboard

Trouble with Synthesia, your keyboard, or adapter? Think you found a bug?
When describing problems, always mention your OS and game version (shown at the bottom of the title screen).

If your keyboard has USB or MIDI ports, there is a tremendously high chance (>99%) it will work with Synthesia. See what you'll need on the keyboards page.
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lusescru
Posts: 6

Post by lusescru »

Kross 2 works fine with everything else I run (E.g. Ableton, Melodics, Cakewalk/Sonar) but doesn't show up in Synthesia. Korg driver is up to date and shows connected keyboard properly.

Tried the trick from the "General" area of the forum:

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1. Hold your Shift key while launching Synthesia (to open the configuration window).
2. Find the "Midi.UseWinRTMidi" entry in the Setting drop-down box.
3. Remove the check mark from the "Value" box.

That should be it. After you close the configuration window and launch Synthesia normally, let me know if your Kross shows up in the list. Thanks!
===

no success. It was already un checked. Tried it checked, still no luck.

Working around the problem for now using my Rubix and old school MIDI cables, but would like to get this working natively with the Kross 2 USB as it works with all my other music software.

Any suggestions would be appreciated! Thanks in advance.
lusescru
Posts: 6

Post by lusescru »

Sorry, other info, Windows 10, latest version of Synthesia, 10.8
Nicholas
Posts: 13170

Post by Nicholas »

lusescru wrote: 06-30-22 11:01 amno success. It was already un checked. Tried it checked, still no luck.
Sorry for the confusion with that old advice. There was a brief period around the time that post was written where we'd switched to using the new Windows 10 MIDI stuff by default before we'd learned that it wasn't (and today, still isn't) ready for prime time. Future updates corrected the problem and disabled it by default, falling back to the 30+ year old MMAPI stuff from Windows 3.1, which still seems to work pretty well. :)
lusescru wrote: 06-30-22 11:01 am... but would like to get this working natively with the Kross 2 USB as it works with all my other music software.
It's very curious that Synthesia is the only one having trouble. Under the hood, we use a pretty standard MIDI implementation in the app, so the usual test for "if it works in other apps it should work in Synthesia" has been the case pretty much forever.

You wouldn't happen to have any of those other apps still open in the background while Synthesia is running? Is there any chance of a "device already being used by X" conflict? One nice way to completely rule out that sort of thing is to restart your computer and then run Synthesia as the first app afterward. That will usually clean up any strange states anything has gotten itself into.

And it's really not showing up in either of the "Music Input" or "Music Output" lists on the Settings screen at all? That's also a strange situation because those lists are populated directly from asking Windows for the list of what it detects as MIDI devices.
lusescru
Posts: 6

Post by lusescru »

I've written a lot of MIDI software over the past 4 decades, MS has always been useless.

Nope, nothing else running, though detection to list devices works with Kross in Abelton, however, Melodics doesn't list it.

Instead with Melodics, they didn't explain why, you set it up selecting the "computer keyboard" interface, but hit keys on the Kross, then Melodics lists it in the devices.

Abelton and Cakewalk see it natively in the device list.

I had problems with the > 10 devices in the Windows MIDI tables and Korg software, the Kross would not be found. I scrubbed them from the registry and that solved the issues. There are a number of videos on YouTube walking through this "solution" as it requires deleting registry entries.

I think the device is now in position 3 or 4 now, and it solved that issue. So don't know other that it is a common problem with Korg equipment for some reason. I had similar problems with my X50.

Any other suggestions?
Nicholas
Posts: 13170

Post by Nicholas »

How strange. With the other sorts of problems you mentioned, I'm starting to wonder if it's a problem specific to that machine? If you try the Kross 2 with Synthesia on some other computer, does it show up in the list on the Settings screen?
lusescru
Posts: 6

Post by lusescru »

So it appears to be a similar problem that I had with my Korg X50. The Korg driver causes problems with some software. Well, with the X50 it pretty didn't work with everything :) when the Korg driver was installed.

Lots of complaints on the internet relating to this.

Synthesia is the only software I've come across that doesn't work when the Korg driver is installed for the Kross 2. All other music software I've tested with (Ableton, Sonar Professional, Bandcamp Cakewalk, Melodics) all see the Kross 2 fine with the Korg driver installed.

I tried the keyboard on a Windows 7 laptop I've got, and it has the Korg driver, Synthesia doesn't see it.

I tried it on a Windows 10 laptop I've got, no Korg driver installed and Synthesia does see it. The Korg Kross 2 gets setup with a generic Microsoft MIDI driver.

I got rid of the Korg driver when I was using my X50 as pretty much everything worked without it and Korg didn't support audio USB on the X50.

The problem with removing the driver for my Kross 2 is that I loose USB audio capability with the keyboard in Abelton and can't use the Korg editor.

Anyway, I'll probably just stick with the old fashioned MIDI cables into my audio/midi interface as I like having the USB audio capability.

Bye for now,
Nicholas
Posts: 13170

Post by Nicholas »

Well, that is unfortunate. I'm sorry you're stuck with the workaround.

For similar reasons, I think I've been giving the advice to not install the official Yamaha USB-MIDI driver for something like 10 years now. You'd expect the device manufacturers would have been able to solve this problem by now, but having seen how often the OS platform shifts under the feet of software developers, I suppose I can't blame them as much anymore. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are constantly breaking things for everyone and I could see how it would be hard to keep up.
lusescru
Posts: 6

Post by lusescru »

Well respectfully, I disagree :). I've done a ton of MIDI development in Windows and written device drivers as well.

I appreciate the difficulties and Microsoft breaking their stuff.

However, the vast majority of manufactures, don't have any problem. I use lots of different stuff, Roland, IK Multimedia, Native Instruments, MOTU as examples, and have never had any issues with their audio/MIDI drivers.

In fact, I've got Roland drivers written in the early '00s for their EDIROL interfaces that I'm still using (though it required an "adjustment" to the installation to get Windows 11 to allow it). Same MIDI driver working for close to 20 years, pretty impressive.

It can and is being done quite successfully. Sadly, folks like Korg, seem to carry the problem forever. I was hoping updating to a newer model of their synth would work out, but they are still hosting the same problems and ignoring the massive number of complaints for over a decade now.

Korg is unique in what they do? I can't see how that can be.... Their developers want to blame Microsoft, rightly so, however, they don't want to take the next step and see how to work around it. Because obviously it can work properly, other manufactures are fully able to do so.

I had a similar issue with a Canbus driver I developed for a customer, Microsoft was kind enough to bust their serial API in WIndows 8. But, I was able to find a way to work around it and provide a solid solution for my customer.

Sometimes you have to go that extra step and work around the problems that the manufacture throws at you instead of throwing your hands up in the air and blaming it all on someone else. I've had to do this many, many times in my career, particularly with Windows software I've developed.
Nicholas
Posts: 13170

Post by Nicholas »

lusescru wrote: 07-24-22 12:39 pmSometimes you have to go that extra step and work around the problems that the manufacture throws at you instead of throwing your hands up in the air and blaming it all on someone else.
We can both agree on this part. :D

I don't have much experience on the driver-development side of things, but something like a double-digit percentage of my time is spent just chasing down newly-broken platform things. :grimace:
lusescru
Posts: 6

Post by lusescru »

Hi, long time, no chat, probably a good thing :)

Just wanted to provide you with an update that Korg has FINALLY fixed their driver. They got so silly, they had actually put out a version with a "work around" that allowed you to delete entries to get their driver to work, pretty silly.

But they finally got their act together and understand the silly restrictions Microsoft put into their MIDI environment and I've had success on a couple of machines with it, so it doesn't look like an accident. Tested on Windows 10 and 11, using Korg X50 and Kross 2, all good.

Hope this is of use to you, have a great day!
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