How to MIDI passthrough

[FlavioB]

Hi there.
I'm using an M-Audio 2x2 interface and quite an amount of physical synths.
Now the fact is: I'd like to use one of my keyboards to act as "master keyboard" and play the sounds of any synth just by setting the corresponding MIDI channel. This should happen while Reaper is playing my tracks and acting as master MIDI clock. Actually this is not working: my M-Audio interface only lets me choose between "MIDI Thru" (in which case my master keyboard on MIDI IN A is able to use sounds from the devices on MIDI OUT ports) or "USB/Merge" (which actually does somehow exclude my master keyboard from the MIDI chain).

I tried to solve this issue by creating a new empty MIDI track and setting the MIDI output device to be one of the MIDI ports of the interface and selecting as MIDI input "all channels"... no success!

How do I correctly need to set up my MIDI interfaces/routing?

Thanks for any help and regards,
F.

[XITE-1/4LIVE]

For a solution that is customized and guaranteed to work at a gig or for recording check these guys out.
Don't let anyone talk you into daisy chaining as that is as bad as USB MIDI.

www.midisolutions.com

[FlavioB]

Hi there... OK, I have quite a feeling that "merge" is the hot word here... but: in fact my M-Audio interface has a working mode which indeed is called "USB/Merge", so why shouldn't I be able to merge my MIDI data from my MIDI master keyboard with the MIDI data coming from my Reaper?

F.

[FlavioB]

I managed to get it to work as I want to: the trick is to select the correct MIDI IN and MIDI OUT for the relevant MIDI Track... but this is not everything! You need to arm the track for recording and enable "Record Monitoring" which is represented by a tiny little speaker icon in the track in the mixer part.

Regards,
F.

[joelsampson]

If you have a lot of hardware MIDI gear, you might look into a MOTU 8x8 MIDI Interface. I have one and it works great with Reaper and makes MIDI management much easier.

[FlavioB]

Originally Posted by joelsampson

If you have a lot of hardware MIDI gear, you might look into a MOTU 8x8 MIDI Interface. I have one and it works great with Reaper and makes MIDI management much easier.

Hi Joel, thanks for your reply.
I will have to get rid of my Midisport interface, which seems to really be unstable.
I will look for a MOTU, maybe 8x8 is too much for now, but I don't know. I got like half a dozen hardware MIDI devices for now...

Regards,
Flavio.

[Mink99]

There is also an esi m8u 8 Port midi Interface , which works as well as the small motus but is liess expensive.

If you want to have a Deluxe Setup check for an additional midi Patchbay like here : http://www.vintagesynth.com/forum/vi...p?f=19&t=75524

If you have half a dozen (6) midi synths , a 8x8 interface is no overkill, it is "sufficient" . Please do not try chaining, you will end up with hours of chasing midi delays, lost messages and non working sysex.

[bitkahuna]

reaper noob here.
have OLD synth gear (emu proteus, yamaha dx7 keyboard, etc., and a roland ediroll usb midi interface 1 in, 2 out).

all i want to do is record sequences and loop some, etc.

every package i try seems to try to do 'everything' and is complex.

so i have:
dx7 midi out going to ediroll in
ediroll usb connected to pc
ediroll midi out connected to proteus

all i wanted to be able to do is 'play' the proteus and record sequences.

a couple of hours after installing, i got it working.

to play 'thru':
- select Options/Preferences, then Audio/MIDI Devices, make sure your midi interfaces are enabled
- create a track
- click record icon on track to make it red, then another 'IN FX' box appears on track controls. i still have no idea what the other "in" does.
- click IN FX control, select Input: Midi > <interface> > All channels
at this point, if i hit keys on the synth, there's lights on the ediroll and on the track screen, but no sound.
(think we're done? oh no)
- at the bottom (on my screen layout at least) it shows a master mixer control and a mixer control for the track. i just learned something else, because i'd made the tiny controls and fonts on my screen bigger, it HID the critical 'Route' control on track 1, which i'd previously needed to get thru to work.
- click route button for track 1 and change MIDI Hardware Output setting to your midi output device!

NOW when i hit keys it plays the proteus.
but wait, there's more.

when i first got this to work there was about a 1/2 second delay between hitting a synth key and it playing on the proteus! of course at first i thought must be slow usb/midi or something, but no, i'd had this same gear working fine with the equally convoluted (and older) anvil studio.

so what was the issue? turns out i had to replace the drivers being (un)used for digital audio on windows with something called ASIO (i downloaded ASIO4All). after installing those an restarting reaper and doing all of the above, i can play my old synths without delay.

piece of cake...