I was laying on my couch thinking that I’d be great a device like that, where you can connect several usb-audio sources and treat them like in a regular mixer.
Obviusly a computer “can” do it, but I was thinking more in a mixer format with eq’s and hands-on control per channel.
Does it exists?
I only know the Roland MX-1 that takes 4 usb inputs, but only works with Roland gear.
I didn’t know that the Roland one exists. It’s sad that it’s only for Roland Devices.
A usb-audio mixer for elektron boxes would be amazing.
New Metric Halo IOs have something called a Satellite Computer Port (SCP) to which you can connect a computer or iOS device. Just one, but if you have multiple IOs daisy chained together then you could theoretically connect multiple USB devices to your system.
USB audio is so undemanding that you could press any old computer into service with a USB hub or two.
An old Mac laptop would be a good choice, as Macs tend to last a long while—and as far as I can tell from reading about it—they do a better job of aggregating various USB audio devices.
Or with an old Mac mini, you could run it without a monitor, and tuck it under the desk.
A question: Even with a dedicated USB mixer box, would you still have latency induced by aggregating the connected devices?
I would assume a typical 1ms polling of usb to grab the audio over usb, and probably 1ms to do the job inside the mixer and outputing the signal on a DAC.
From my memory, usb provide bandwidth but there is some latency, not a lot, but still.
…i suggested something like that to elektron years ago…
call it the “myx” i said, make it ur ob hw hub…but…hmmmmmpf…
xone 96 has two audio interfaces with usb, so you could connect 2x laptop to it. But its not a host, just 2x audio interface.
But you’d need a daw like software to control panning, eq’s and volumes of each track, and a controller if I want the tactile experience.
It’s the same as using it in my regular computer, but i’m trying to avoid that.
It is hard to learn to program it? What language it use?
I use Python for a living hahaha
Maybe its a good time to learn C++ also.
Thanks!
I think some of the iConnectivity interfaces have a multiple host mode, and can be used standalone. Not sure how many devices they support at once though, but it may be worth a look.
iConnectivity host is midi only.
Audio is on the device ports only, it’s also discontinued(iConnectMIDI4+).
Easiest solution is an Intel NUC or other mini pc and VoiceMeeter Banana/Potato.
https://vb-audio.com/Voicemeeter/banana.htm
A Raspberry Pi should be quick enough to handle a couple devices, but I don’t know of any software like VoiceMeeter.
The newer iConnectivity 4c has to usb-c ports to connect audio devices, but from what I read in the manual it’s only PC/ios/android, devices.
A computer is clearly the best option here. A Pi is a simple and cheap option but will require some configuration.
Overwitch works on a Raspberry Pi 4 so probably a couple of Overbridge devices could be used and mixed in JACK.
It’s also possible to use USB audio compliant devices the same way with zita-a2j and zita-j2a.
The Akai MPCs can do that. I don’t know how many USB devices you can connect but you also should be able to apply the onboard effects (which are not too bad actually) to every input.
Just one, and only at 44khz. (So no Elektrons unfortunately as they are 48khz).
Raspberry Pi runs a full Linux OS, so you can run almost any language on it. No need to learn C++ unless you want to
This topic really confuses me for a number of reasons (although the how discussion is interesting):
-why?
-is it so any synth can just have a single cable to the mixer? Can it do midi as well please?
-how would it deal with multichannel usb or usb out - there’d basically have to be a sort of patchbay between the usb inputs and the mixer channels?
-how would it handle synths that need usb drivers?
-how would it handle different sample/bit rates
-how much of the device personality would you lose skipping the devices analogue output? Although a moot point where you would use the usb out anyway.
Those are usb-c hosts, not audio devices.
You can’t connect an audio interface to the iConnect devices.