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

___________________
E-Mortal/Fredrik Johansson www.emortal.se
www.myspace.com/fredrikemortal
Upcoming/Latest releases:
Jan Johnston - Let the world fall apart (E:mortal remix) - Metallic Recordings
Headstrong ft. Tiff Lacey - The Truth (E:mortal remix) - SOLA
E:mortal - Lost Planet - Ministry of Sound & BTR, E:mortal ft. Tiff Lacey - Tell me - SOLA
E:mortal ft. Tiff Lacey - Footprints - SOLA, E:mortal ft. Tiff Lacey - Coming Home - SOLA
E:mortal ft. Vicky Fee - Say What You Feel - SOLA, E:mortal - Days On End - BTR
Headstrong ft. Kirsty Hawkshaw - In in Your Eyes (E:mortal remix)- SOLA

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!

___________________
E-Mortal/Fredrik Johansson www.emortal.se
www.myspace.com/fredrikemortal
Upcoming/Latest releases:
Jan Johnston - Let the world fall apart (E:mortal remix) - Metallic Recordings
Headstrong ft. Tiff Lacey - The Truth (E:mortal remix) - SOLA
E:mortal - Lost Planet - Ministry of Sound & BTR, E:mortal ft. Tiff Lacey - Tell me - SOLA
E:mortal ft. Tiff Lacey - Footprints - SOLA, E:mortal ft. Tiff Lacey - Coming Home - SOLA
E:mortal ft. Vicky Fee - Say What You Feel - SOLA, E:mortal - Days On End - BTR
Headstrong ft. Kirsty Hawkshaw - In in Your Eyes (E:mortal remix)- SOLA

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.

___________________
-
Matti Kotala
-mk-
www.mkdr.net

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?

___________________
E-Mortal/Fredrik Johansson www.emortal.se
www.myspace.com/fredrikemortal
Upcoming/Latest releases:
Jan Johnston - Let the world fall apart (E:mortal remix) - Metallic Recordings
Headstrong ft. Tiff Lacey - The Truth (E:mortal remix) - SOLA
E:mortal - Lost Planet - Ministry of Sound & BTR, E:mortal ft. Tiff Lacey - Tell me - SOLA
E:mortal ft. Tiff Lacey - Footprints - SOLA, E:mortal ft. Tiff Lacey - Coming Home - SOLA
E:mortal ft. Vicky Fee - Say What You Feel - SOLA, E:mortal - Days On End - BTR
Headstrong ft. Kirsty Hawkshaw - In in Your Eyes (E:mortal remix)- SOLA

Last edited by Drik on May-16-2006 at 15:27

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.