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For those of you with a lot of synths
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| 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? |
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| FuzzyGreen |
| I use a MOTU Midi Time Piece A/V. It works great. I can control any keyboard with a push of a button. |
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| Freak |
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. |
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| Drik |
| 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 :) |
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| FuzzyGreen |
| 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. |
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| Drik |
Groovy, I'll have one of those then :)
Thanks mate! |
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| -mk- |
| quote: | Originally posted by Drik
How do you control them all?
Do you use midi-thru, or a midi interface/patchbay?
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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. |
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| Freak |
| 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.
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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 |
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| thecYrus |
| 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. |
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| Drik |
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? |
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| aNYthing |
I use:
2 x Emagic AMT|8 patchbays
1 Edirol UM-880
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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 :D |
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| skot_e |
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. |
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