External HW: connect through USB or Midi?

    basvlk
    May 26 2012 | 12:18 am
    I have 8 hardware devices controlling my Macbook - 5 of these have both MIDI and USB ports so I have the choice to either use MIDI or USB.
    In my quest for offloading as much as possible off the CPU, I'm trying to have as many devices as possible just send midi into my setup (Unitor 8 midi patchbay into an RME FireFace) - like fader boxes and footcontrollers, latency is not too big an issue it's just for toggling FX and mixing, not for 'playing'
    My thinking was that all these USB drivers could take up quite a bit of CPU time - it may be a hangover (still) from the early USB devices which had lots of problems and could hijack resources. My question: is this worthwhile to pursue or am I chasing the wrong thing?
    • jamesson
      May 26 2012 | 2:40 am
      basvik: Easy to check, should be a mac equivalent for windows taskman
    • julynessi
      May 30 2012 | 9:51 am
      be-careful coz' premature optimize is the root of all evil
      If you just working with midi don't worried about cpu resource. you must careful to use any kind of "UI" objects and focus on managed the incoming data and how to use them.