Chaining MIDI through/merge/split/I/O limitations?

The Lounge General Discussion
#1

good day - I’m about to reconsider my midi connections and as hardly any device I own have midi through, I 'd need to either buy either a midi router or start stacking midi through devices (1 in, 4 out).

I have 3 midi sources and a heap of synths and pedals I’d like to talk to each other. some in both directions. I currently own the old original iConnect midi (2in, 2 out) which is great but doesn’t have enough ports and doesn’t allow for any filtering.

here my question: what’s the limitation of midi through boxes? can i daisy chain them with the signal coming from one of the out ports of my iConnect? can i just pig out with chains of mergers and throughs till i connect everything or am I running into latency issues, a too weak signal… ?
hopefully someone can chime in who knows and help me out here

(I consider buying an iConnect 4, but even then I would still need at least on through box, so asking the above first)

thanks!

edit: could I even chain up my old iConnect with the new iConnect4?

#2

I’d check this out…
https://www.iconnectivity.com/products/midi/mio10

-10x10 5-pin MIDI ports
-USB-MIDI Host port supports up to 10 USB MIDI Class-Compliant devices (using a standard USB hub)
-Works with up to two computers at the same time (Or use it stand-alone.)
-Ethernet Network MIDI - use with wired and wireless MIDI networks
-routing, merging, remapping, and filtering

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#3

yes, thank you. probably the most sensible solution.
I was hoping to not spend that much dosh and have something that takes up less space. so hence my initial question if I could just daisy chain 2 50buxx devices (midi solutions throughbox) and my existing router instead and then maybe not connect everything.

I’m just curious what the limitations of a midi signal would be and if I reach the point of too many devices chained up quickly

#4

Yeah I can’t answer that, I’m sure others will chime in, but it’s really nice to plug everything in one time and never have to rewire cables for routing or draw diagrams and stuff to figure out signal flow…

#5

I’m already trying to figure out if I could mount this underneath my desk somehow =)
think it’s what I should be doing instead of expanding on that rats nest that’s already tangling everything up and needs replugging all the time. thanks for the link

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#6

I’ve got the 4+ and it just makes so much sense not to have to re cable things all the time, if you want a different routing you just click on the editor, save presets if you want. Plus the filtering and remapping and all that really comes in handy…

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#7

some older pro devices that are substantially cheaper than new are mentioned in this thread, another way to get access to a programmable MIDI patchbay for merging/thrus on presets too

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#8

MIDI thru ports work by creating an “electrical copy” of the data seen by the MIDI IN port. So any single thru box is not going to introduce much, if any latency. I bet you could daisy chain about two or three thru boxes befoe running into issues? IIRC MIDI thru chaining can handle about that much in general.

But if you have complex MIDI needs, I recommend thorroughly researching the offerings. There are cheap 8 thru boxes available for example, from kenton, ericasynths, miditech… google/thomann etc is your friend.

Whereas MIDI thru is a simple process that requires zero signal processing, MIDI merge on the other hand is not nearly as trivial. So I cannot really give you any insight there. Maybe someone else can chime in regarding this?

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#9

Yep, older midi patchbays work perfectly for this type of thing, cheap too

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