Blokas Midihub

Good to see the new beta is getting some traction here!

Apart from “Virtual mappings” (the ability to manipulate incoming/ MH LFO-generated messages before using them to control other pipes’ properties) – which is the real eye-catcher – the now supercharged Dispatcher's Chord abilities allow Midihub to break up a chord in note-order for the first time, with major creative implications.

I think the new Inversion property in Harmonizerwill quickly catch the imagination too – it goes way beyond the musical definition meaning of 3/4/5 inversions: they’re just a subset of MH’s -16 ~ +16 range.

Love to see a video or three from some folk with content creation chops in the coming weeks

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LFOs can now output 14-bit values (MSB produced at CC id set in params, LSB at CC id + 32).

That’s what I’m talking about! Man, I love this little box. Fantastic update

LFOs… …14-bit

Yeah. being a lover of seriously slow LFOs, I immediately wanted the option to have Rate to be for LSB!!





btw, with virtual mappings LFOs can now modulate themselves:

for example


(the ‘bitty’ sections in the troughs are where the phase and depth almost get stuck on repeat with these particular scalings!)

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I use this box simply to send midi out of my computer and control hardware. I know it can do way more than this of course. Just haven’t wrapped my head around it.

Have an esq1 sending as my midi controller and also receiving as a sound source. To prevent midi loop back I send the esq into my interface midi in and send midi back into it from the midi hub. I also sequence it sometimes with my digis and I end up plugging the midi cable into it from them, which is pretty cave man like when I have this great box.

So yeah, I need to actually learn this thing.

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I also barely scratch the surface of its potential. Nonetheless, it is absolutely essential to my studio.

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And that is absolutely cool, isn’t it?

As a router/filter/remapper it’s seriously easy and powerful to stop stuff you don’t want…
…route stuff where you do…
and ‘translate’ between gear
(within a week of getting Midihub, I realised I could resurrect an old Korg D1600 as a 16 slider MIDI controller when I didn’t have enough CCs to hand!)

I think the convenience side of new Virtual Mappings might get some folk taking that next step of e.g. “I wanna change between these (say 4) options/routings just by turning one knob” by making it a lot easier.
(I’ve got a short series of “v-m techniques” patches ready to drop when 1.14 goes beyond beta)

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Oh great. I definitely see how I could use this a lot more once I can visualize things. I got it when they had a big sale a year or two ago and it’s really amazing just as a midi routing hub.

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Hey maybe check out the Step-by-Step series?

Given you’ve used MH for a while, the early episodes may be no use to you (although the one on Monitoring might have some stuff you haven’t noticed), but the last one goes through building a patch which does a bit more.
Could be interesting

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I remember that Blokas every year had a Black Friday deal. But see nothing this year. Did I miss it?

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Dunno mate, I might’ve missed it too.

I’m really interested in their audio interface for rasp pi to use it as a effects computer

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Just had need to set up the Midihub to sent notes from one channel to 1-8 for simultaneous slice triggering on all tracks on the Octatrack, so I can quickly choose what point to start playing from in 8 stems of a song I’m remixing while maintaining sync. I’ve mentioned many times now but it really is totally invaluable to me because of exactly this kind of thing.

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Check Pisound, PatchboxOS and MODEP here

MODEP might be where you’re going. Judging from the forum there’s a lot of stuff going on there.

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The Midihub is one of those tools I feel almost every setup could benefit from. It’s totally amazing even without this update.

The new chord modes on the dispatcher are going to be absolutely incredible to work with and the surpluss channel is such a beautiful idea to make for some creative live playing scenarios. I tried to hack together a setup where the six notes on the Nord Drum 3P were set by a keyboard chord but the wrap around on the old dispatcher makes this really difficult. Going to try this out on the Nord Drum tonight if I can get it working. If I can it’ll suddenly make it even more powerful for melodic stuff as you can just hit a chord every time you want to remap the notes.

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Exacly modep is that I’m after :slight_smile: Been stalking their forums for the past weeks as well but haven’t registered yet. Over the weekend I was planning to give it a good read their forums and the capabilities.

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Yeah, I’m interested in a report. I do not have the time to try it ATM.

I’m always wondering why this little magic box isn’t far more popular.

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This new chord dispatcher works like a dream. Posted instructions in the Nord Drum 3P thread Nord Drum 3 & 3P - #508 by FilipNest

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Blokas’ Giedrius has just confirmed that some aspect of this is on the cards

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Thanks for mentioning that. I’m a very happy Midihub user, but didn’t know they made a rpi audio interface!

Renoise runs on ARM (pi included), so I think that will make for a great small music workstation build. I’m also imagining a few ideas for running it headless and making the pi into an instrument or FX box.

Blokas rocks.

Yeah, I’ve not really got to grips with it yet. (I must get a couple of 1xstereo ~> 2xmono cables to make best use of it)

I don’t speak native Linux, but if you’re confident with builds you might want to check out their PatchboxOS

You may give the image a try even if you don’t have a Pisound sound card yet

…to see whether Renoise plays nicely.

Some very knowledgable and helpful people on that forum.

PS. I read that Pisound works with the new rPi too.




EDIT: you might want to check out the MODEP/LV2 plugins. It’s linked here (jtemple & Blokas’ pranciskus seem to be the main driving forces in converting/plugins for Pisound/Patchbox/MODEP)

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