This or a 4X4 MIDI interface?

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guitz
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This or a 4X4 MIDI interface?

Post by guitz »

So I have , right now, two guitar pedals that have MIDI in/out jacks and may get a 3rd with MIDI in/out....I'd like to have full control of the pedals ie- saving/switching patches or presets, and syncing tempo.....I also want the pedals to be able to sync to Cakewalk Platinum so all pedals follow it's tempo and other control stuff set there, but also somehow use a MIDI footcontroller for them and later on, possibly DAW control....I'm thinking the easiest and inexpensive way to integrate all these to work together, is a 2X2 or 4X4 MIDI interface...would that work? Where I can push play in SONAR and have the pedals jump to the correct preset and/or tempo but still be able to use the footswitch to change presets and parameters as well?
 
Forgot to add, for switching other, non-MIDI pedals I currently have 1 Voodoo labs HEX loop switcher and plan on getting more as I can afford them and each one of those also has MIDI in/out. I know there is the 'daisy chain' method, but I think I have too much stuff and too complicated of a setup for that ...
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Rob
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Re: This or a 4X4 MIDI interface?

Post by Rob »

Daisy chaining might work, but really depends on how much MIDI data is going to be going back and forth between the devices. With your current setup, you should be able to test it out to see how well it performs. It's kinda hard for me to give you advise because I'm not clear on what hardware you are using.

Whatever you end up doing, you can always add a MIDI Expression to your setup to send patch changes to your other devices and/or control Sonar.

Regards,
Rob
guitz
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Re: This or a 4X4 MIDI interface?

Post by guitz »

Rob wrote:Daisy chaining might work, but really depends on how much MIDI data is going to be going back and forth between the devices. With your current setup, you should be able to test it out to see how well it performs. It's kinda hard for me to give you advise because I'm not clear on what hardware you are using.

Whatever you end up doing, you can always add a MIDI Expression to your setup to send patch changes to your other devices and/or control Sonar.

Regards,
Rob
Thanks for the reply!

The hardware I have with MIDI I/O is a Nemesis delay pedal , a BOSS Slicer pedal and possibly soon a Lexicon Vortex rack fx unit and a MIDI I/O on my Focusrite USB audio interface and MIDI I/O on the Voodoo labs Hex loop switcher, which each individual pedal MIDI or otherwise is or will be plugged into (the MIDI I/O on it, is just for daisy chaining one unit to the next and also will need to have a cable coming into it from a MIDI foot controller I plan on getting. It's a rack unit but has front panel switches and the MIDI integration on it, is ONLY for switching programmed groups of loops on or off, nothing else. As my list of pedals is growing and growing and preset groupings is very cool when you're working on the fly and like to change out groups of FX with a single (foot)switch. The Nemesis and BOSS slicer also have expression pedal inputs which I would like to use and a couple of other non-MIDI pedal with expression input (I'm looking into a Mission Audio multi-expression pedal box for that, so 1 expression pedal can control all three devices) ...I may be overthinking things here or overlooking the obvious, but...I figure that it would extremely cool to have total control over the pedals , especially for on-the-fly writing and jamming use by switching between saved presets with a MIDI footcontroller of some kind, and then also have the availability of all the pedals expression pedal parameters using a single , small expression pedal like the Hotone soul express that doubles as wah/volume and has a very small footprint...I think a MIDI expression pedal in combo with footswitches for changing patches etc would work too, but I haven't seen one with a small enough footprint for my very limited studio space. So, in addition I'm trying to figure out how to hook things up to where the MIDI floor controller/expression pedal can control all the pedals that have either MIDI or expression inputs but then also have my pc recording software, Cakewalk Platinum send out patch changes to saved songs, so that it loads any presets to the pedals so I can pick up working with the sounds of the pedals where I left off without having to redial or try to remember which saved preset I used for that particular song and also as importantly, when I start something new, have Cakewalk Platinum be the master time keeper for all the time based fx and have them all sync the delays/repeats at the same BPM.

Like I said, I may have overthought all this for what I'm trying to do , but I think a MIDI 4 in / 4 out junction box is the way to go but to be honest I'm not sure if I've overlooked something that would make that overkill...If SONAR , the recording software, is sending out MIDI data, I'm thinking I would need a junction box to allow for another input, the MIDI foot controller....



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Rob
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Re: This or a 4X4 MIDI interface?

Post by Rob »

The Nemesis has a through port, so it's daisy Chain friendly, but the Boss pedal is not. But assuming you put it at the end of the chain, then you're fine. The Lexicon also has IN / OUT so it'll work fine in the chain as well.

If I were you, I'd chain your gear together and see if it actually works. Certainly you would have no problem with the timecode and tempo stuff. The issue you're going to run into is with patch changes. If you can get your gear to respond to program changes on different channels, then you should have no problem sending a program change message down the chain target individual pieces of your gear.

As I've previously said, you don't need a MIDI Expression or a 4x4 interface to test that. You already have all the gear you need.

Regards,
Rob
guitz
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Re: This or a 4X4 MIDI interface?

Post by guitz »

Rob wrote:The Nemesis has a through port, so it's daisy Chain friendly, but the Boss pedal is not. But assuming you put it at the end of the chain, then you're fine. The Lexicon also has IN / OUT so it'll work fine in the chain as well.

If I were you, I'd chain your gear together and see if it actually works. Certainly you would have no problem with the timecode and tempo stuff. The issue you're going to run into is with patch changes. If you can get your gear to respond to program changes on different channels, then you should have no problem sending a program change message down the chain target individual pieces of your gear.

As I've previously said, you don't need a MIDI Expression or a 4x4 interface to test that. You already have all the gear you need.

Regards,
Rob
Ok thank you!
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Rob
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Re: This or a 4X4 MIDI interface?

Post by Rob »

Perhaps there's a good idea for a feature in your setup. It might be useful to have a feature that would allow the my devices to send out sets of program changes such that you could control a whole range of gear with a single pedal.

Regards,
Rob
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