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For those of you with a lot of synths

How do you control them all?

Do you use midi-thru, or a midi interface/patchbay?

I'm going to have 5 synths delivered today as a friend of mine is picking them up, so I'm considering if I should buy a midi interface to control them all?

I use a MOTU Midi Time Piece A/V. It works great. I can control any keyboard with a push of a button.

I have:
a midi patchbay
A midi thru box
Steinberg Midex for the atari (5 outs/3 ins)
Steinberg Midex for my pc/laptop (3 outs/1 in)


Nothing wrong with a bit of dasiy chaining via the thru ports...worked for many people for years.


MOTO time piece (8in/8 out) is one of my favourite interfaces....works very well.

quote:

Originally posted by FuzzyGreen I use a MOTU Midi Time Piece A/V. It works great. I can control any keyboard with a push of a button.

I'm a bit interested in this one, well actually the Motu MIDI EXPRESS XT.. Question, if you connect the midi interface with usb, can you get 8 different outs from the sequencer?

Would be nice if it was like that as I can make midi devices in cubase and choose separate outputs depending on synth

quote:

Originally posted by Drik I'm a bit interested in this one, well actually the Motu MIDI EXPRESS XT.. Question, if you connect the midi interface with usb, can you get 8 different outs from the sequencer? Would be nice if it was like that as I can make midi devices in cubase and choose separate outputs depending on synth

Yes, it shows up as 8 midi devices and I can select whatever I want to go to whatever I need.

Groovy, I'll have one of those then

Thanks mate!

Re: For those of you with a lot of synths

quote:

Originally posted by Drik How do you control them all? Do you use midi-thru, or a midi interface/patchbay?

Midi interface is the way to go. You can't seriously(although i think its possible) chain up five synths with midi-thru. First of all theres always that problem of just 16 midi channels which they have to share and secondly the bandwidth is not enough for that many synths when playing a full track.

It's also important to notice what type of midi-interface you are going to get. Serial port ones work with less latency issues(note: MIDI latency! nothing to do with audio), but usb intefaces can handle more bandwidth. Well, whatever the specs say it's fairly safe to say that usb-midi interfaces are the best at the moment. I run 8 devices with Midiman(m-audio nowdays)8x8/s usb-interface without problems.

Re: Re: For those of you with a lot of synths

quote:

Originally posted by -mk- Midi interface is the way to go. You can't seriously(although i think its possible) chain up five synths with midi-thru. First of all theres always that problem of just 16 midi channels which they have to share and secondly the bandwidth is not enough for that many synths when playing a full track.

It was done for years when Ataris and creator/notator/cubase were still king,cubase didnt even exist on the pc and had only just been introduced on the mac.

They only have one midi output- so you used to 'daisychain' them together.
it works well actually- although with longer chains you can start to get slight timing problems (fixable) or occasional drops outs/stuck notes.

Generally thoughit works well- I still do it (as an atari is still central to my studio)

5 synths chained would give you no problems

all my hardware synths have dedicated audio & midi in-/outputs so i can use them like any other VST with the cubase external hardware integration function. works very well and a lot more fun to use hardware this way as you don't have to record them.

Cool, I do hardware integration with my virus c and nordlead 3 that way, works great!

Speaking of which! Do you you know if there are any device maps made for JP-8000, Micro Q and Supernova?

I use:

2 x Emagic AMT|8 patchbays
1 Edirol UM-880
and
1 Edirol UM-550

I like Edirol because you can access your patches or make instant patches without a computer, however, AMT|8 is supposedly has a better timing (however, no actual data exist to prove this point and I don't notice much of a difference).

I never daisy chained my synths... simply coz I never needed to

Max daisy chain length is i think 17 feet. More 'thru's you use the more likely you are to start adding midi delay.
If you can afford it, use some sort of interface.

midi delay doesn't exist as long as your using decent hardware. I've just read that in the dutch music mag. Midi delay will only occur when using crappy hardware. It is way more likely some bits will drop along the line instead of causing a delay.

On the other hand a midi interface would be very usefull comparing it with the current setup of the topicstarter

Re: For those of you with a lot of synths

quote:

Originally posted by Drik How do you control them all? Do you use midi-thru, or a midi interface/patchbay? I'm going to have 5 synths delivered today as a friend of mine is picking them up, so I'm considering if I should buy a midi interface to control them all?

Wow 5 synths!! What you getting then?

Re: Re: For those of you with a lot of synths

quote:

Originally posted by Jason_R Wow 5 synths!! What you getting then?

Will be christmas day once I hook them in hehe
But of course I forgot to buy leads and midi cords
VirusC, Nordlead3, Supernova, JP-8000 and Micro-Q

Re: Re: Re: Re: For those of you with a lot of synths

quote:

Originally posted by dj_palm u won the fuckn lotery?

Hehe, I wish I'd be that lucky
I got three of the synths at a very good price preowned, I've bought the VirusC and Nordlead3 since earlier, but I did take a bankloan for this

I guess this is what I did instead of investing in a fancy car hehe.

Also got me Genelec 8040A monitors, mackie onyx 1220 mixer and a 20" wide apple screen.. so now I'm skint again

quote:

It was done for years when Ataris and creator/notator/cubase were still king,cubase didnt even exist on the pc and had only just been introduced on the mac. They only have one midi output- so you used to 'daisychain' them together. it works well actually- although with longer chains you can start to get slight timing problems (fixable) or occasional drops outs/stuck notes. Generally thoughit works well- I still do it (as an atari is still central to my studio) 5 synths chained would give you no problems

True. Ive daisy chained 3 devices with MIDI thru and not had any significant latency problems and notes not triggering properly. The longer the chain, the more exaccerbated the problem will be but yea.

You have an Atari though. Never used one myself but its reknowned for its rock solid MIDI. Dont know how it compares to MIDI clock as kept by your Audio Interface via a computer though (especially when you are eating resources).

Jag diggar din nya studio :P

Re: Re: Re: For those of you with a lot of synths

quote:

Originally posted by Freak They only have one midi output- so you used to 'daisychain' them together. it works well actually- although with longer chains you can start to get slight timing problems (fixable) or occasional drops outs/stuck notes. Generally thoughit works well- I still do it (as an atari is still central to my studio) 5 synths chained would give you no problems

Yes it's possible but it's not advisable. It might work well with five synths if you dont have much going on on your track and the instruments are not so time sensitive. However if you have 5 multitimbral synths hooked up to one midi you are destined to get in trouble when using many voices on them(or cc perhaps). I used to have 3 synths chained together, uQ-NordLead-KorgNx5r and it didn't quite work as tightly as i wanted.
You can always check your system with a program that sends out midi commands and calculates delays on the input(midi out is hooked up to midi in.. you can even stick your synths in between if you like). I can't remember what that one software was called right now, but i'll get back to that later... or someone can google it up.


Ok, I looked it up. The program is called Miditest.

I got me a Motu 8x8, seems the wisest thing to do considering I'll probably end up with more stuff anyways

quote:

Originally posted by Drik I got me a Motu 8x8, seems the wisest thing to do considering I'll probably end up with more stuff anyways

nice buy, you probably want to pick up the 828mkII and a Behringer ADA8000.

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