MIDI into Cubase LE

Right, this has been my task for today and I have had some success!

I have an old Roland PMA-5 which I bought in about 1994/5. I have used it a great deal over the years and still find it incredibly useful for jotting down ideas when the inspiration takes me.

My MIDI use in the studio is minimal and I need to address this.

I bought a while ago a ESI ROM I/O Midi adapter.  I never really used it properly when I was using XP and since I upgraded to Windows 7 I haven't used it at all. I was sceptical of finding the drivers for it, but I did at http://download.esi-audio.com/?w=esi&p=23&g=0&l=en which was a result. I installed them without any hassle.

Once connected the trick was to get the PMA-5 and Cubase talking to each other. I connected the USB end into the PC and the 'Input' lead into the MIDI Out on the PMA-5. Checked that the swicth on the side was set to MIDI and turned it on.

I created a new MIDI project in cubase and set up the receiving and transmission channels. I needed to Change the Transport->Sync Setup dialog to match the new settings, but there were no real problems.

I had trouble recording at first until I found that if you have Sync turned on in the transport bar, it won't record.

I created a Master temp track and set up the  MIDI Update on the PMA-5 to be MIDI. I also plugged in the Output1 lead from the PC into the Input on the unit.

I hit record and away it went sweet as a nut.

Now all I need to do is have some inspiration :-)