Ableton Forum

I have downloaded and tried both Live 4.1 and Live 5 demos and they both have this issue.

I have a simple Yamaha DGX-205 keyboard I will be using as an input device, and it has a USB MIDI port with the latest drivers.

Any program I've tried in the past (Tracktion2 demo and 2 soft synths I own) work great. There is no interface problem between my MIDI keyboard and the software.

Except with Live. No matter how hard I try, I cannot get my USB keyboard to fire MIDI notes inside Live. I can see the "YAMAHA USB IN 0-1" listed in the INPUT section of MIDI/SYNC preferences, and it is lit, but it will not work.

In the Live 5 demo, it says the following "The device YAMAHA USB IN 0-1 could not be activated, it may be in use by another application, try rescanning etc.."

Well, the funny thing is, upon closing Live and trying Tracktion2 demo, it works perfectly fine.

Am I missing something? Or is there a known isseue with this? Please help, I really would liike to check out and play with live!

Thanks in advance for any help.

Hi Dreadlocke

Do you mean fire midi notes in a midi track or start a clip via midi?

If you mean in a midi track, have you got the track's input armed and the Midi From dropdown set to your controller?

Is the little green light flashing in the top right corner next to the D when you press a key?

i'm having the same issue except i'm using os x and an oxygen 8. i posted about it in another thread.

i can see the oxygen in the MIDI set up screen and the other MIDI device in the set up screen work fine (BCF2000). Just not the Oxygen.
i DO get the MIDI indicator to light up on rare occasions (usually after hot plugging the Oxygen a few times) but then it stops working and... no indicator activity. its very spotty and i think thats the most frustrating part. even if i get MIDI activity with the oxygen, i still can't get it to the point where it will play sound. all i need to do is drag an instrument to the track and it will stop working. i should note that its NOT seeing MIDI messages from the Oxygen at all in Live, since it won't allow Rewired Reason to trigger notes either.

same as the post above however, if i shut down Live and start up Reason or Garageband or Protools, the Oxygen works fine.

still having the issue. no midi using the oxygen in live5. been that way since launch. any suggestions?

dreadlocke,
on which computer platform and operating system do you use Live?


helixx,
does the Oxygen behave the same when you physically unplug other USB-devices like the BCF2000 and the M-Box?


regards,
Alex

yes, i've tried using just the oxygen with no other usb devices installed. i'm going to try some stuff tonight and see if i can replicate this behaviour with prolonged use with other apps like reason, live4 or garageband. if i can do so, it might end up being a oxygen issue. i'll let you know what my tests yield.

OK UPDATE :

I delete my "Preferences.cfg file in my C:\Documents&Settings\User\Application data\Abelton\Live4.1" folder and BAM ! my MIDI keyboard works perfect.

As soon as I restart my computer however, it stops working again.

What could possibly be being written to my preferences file to prevernt my MIDI keyboard from working after a restart??

This is literally driving me insane.

i was thinking preferences.cfg issues but i had the same spotty results with it. the problem is so targetted to my main midi controller that i have to lean towards either something that live is seeing and not liking or that my midi controller is flipping out. the fact that i had my midi crap out last night in live 4 made me think it could be the Oxygen.

to cover the bases, i just ordered a Korg Kontrol49 (woohoo) today and if that doesn't work.... well i'll be pissed. i'll keep you all posted.

helixx wrote:i was thinking preferences.cfg issues but i had the same spotty results with it. the problem is so targetted to my main midi controller that i have to lean towards either something that live is seeing and not liking or that my midi controller is flipping out. the fact that i had my midi crap out last night in live 4 made me think it could be the Oxygen.

to cover the bases, i just ordered a Korg Kontrol49 (woohoo) today and if that doesn't work.... well i'll be pissed. i'll keep you all posted.

Hey Helixx,
I find your problem with oxygen 8 very strange...
Did you check the latest drivers?
http://www.midiman.com/index.php?do=support.drivers
I say that coz i had pb with my echo indigo dj sound card which were fixed by installing the latest drivers... so you'd better check this!
Another idea: can you try your oxygen 8 on another PC (friend...) with the Live demo just to see if it works?

Cheers

There's a new driver for Oxygen 8 and OSX Tiger compatibiity since yesterday!!!!!!

Oddly, it was my USB cable. Thanks for the help.

UPDATE: I'll check out those drivers tonight but in the meantime i replaced the Oxygen with a Korg Kontrol49 and ran for several hours last night with no problems whatsoever.

so it had to be either hardware related (oxygen or usb cable like dreadlocke had) or the drivers (which i had updated a few weeks ago when this problem surfaced but didn't know they had a new version out.

i'll grab the new tiger drivers tonight and see how it goes but i suspect its a hardware issue with the oxygen. if not, well.... now i have TWO keyboards. weeeeeee

btw, the kontrol49 is a really nice piece of kit, so far.

thanks a ton for all of the ideas and feedback.

did they post and then retract these drivers? i went there just now and there's no 10.4.2 drivers and this message:

"Apple 10.4.x Notice:

We are currently verifying compatibility of our hardware with Apple's new Tiger operating system. No device manufacturer can predict the compatibility of their hardware with a new OS until the final version has been released. We value your time and user experience, and want to ensure that our Tiger drivers are as robust as possible before providing them for download. We thank you for your patience while we verify these drivers, and we will post them shortly."

the latest drivers are from 2003~!