Help Using PC with my OT driven MIDI Rig

I’ve been using the OT as the centre of my hardware-only setup for 6 months now and every works great. I love it, and up until now haven’t felt the need to hook up a PC.

However, I want to start using Cubase again to incorporate some VST instruments and have been trying unsuccessfully to incorporate the PC into my setup. Are there any MIDI gurus that can help?

I’ll try to describe my setup…

Currently I have the OT running the show with the MIDI Out going into a MIDI thru box. This then drives several MIDI chains of hardware synths and drum machines.

I have one of the MIDI Thru’s outs running to the Bass Station 2’s MIDI In so I can sequence it from the OT. Then the BS2’s MIDI Out goes into the OT’s MIDI In so I can use it as a controller keyboard (it will play whatever MIDI channel the currently selected OT track is set to including it’s own channel).

This all works like a dream. I love this setup! The problems start when I try and add my computers USB-MIDI interface (an Alesis IO4, which is a great bit of kit by the way!).

I can attach one of the MIDI Thru’s outs to the MIDI interface. This lets me use the OT or BS2 keyboard to play/sequence VST instruments. Works well.

But I’m not sure how/where to attach the MIDI interfaces’ MIDI Out so that I can sequence my gear using either the OT or Cubase (or both), as well as use Cubase as the MIDI master.

I have a couple of MIDI Thru and MIDI Merge boxes laying around so have tried a few combinations but I can never get it working totally right. Either Cubase will start/stop/sync my synths and drum machines but not my OT, or it will sync with the OT but not my synths. Or I end up with MIDI feedback.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

EDIT: A picture says a thousand words :wink:
http://www.x0xclones.com/images/midisetuphelp.jpg

Cheers,

Alex

HI, I have zero knowledge of cubase or its workings. I too have also just added my OT to my live setup (sad story) and my head still hurts from chaining all my gear together. I have yet to add it to my pc for use with my DAW but I would suggest that you use the usb port for this and skip the midi/usb interfaces for pc. at present all my equipment is wired for live or pc and each have separate usb connections. this allows me to port each instrument to a certain channel and lets me tweak them separately as I would with any vst.

I hope this helps

Hi, thanks for your suggestion. However the OT USB port does not receive or transmit MIDI data, hence the need for a USB-MIDI interface from a PC.


this should get you there.

i’m a lousy sketch artist so i’ll walk you through it:

PC connected to a usb/midi interface via USB and then fed to a midi merge box. output from midi merge box goes to the OT. midi from OT goes to your midi through box, the one with multiple outs.
outs from the midi thru box handle your synths and drummachines and your bassstation. and the bassstn sends midi to another input of the midi merge box mentioned in the very beginning.

if it were up to me, i’d totally omit the midi through box in favour of daisy-chaining my devices and use of midi filtering. (of course this is a viable option as long as your gear has midi thru and midi filtering capabilities)

Hey thanks for the drawing, I’ll give it a go right now and report back :slight_smile:

I’m considering buying Reason 7 (I think it’s probably the best DAW for external stuff now- Presonus StudioLive might be better, but I have to read up on that some more…) because Ableton STILL cannot sync with a hardware setup without awful jitter and spotty transport control (and no, I do not want to buy a $600 module to fix it…).

Looking at your drawing again I’ve tried this already. Just double checked and the problem with that routing is that Cubase can only play the channel of the currently selected OT track.

The only way to allow Cubase to play any channel regardless of which track/channel the OT is set to is if you take MIDI Thru out of the OT instead of MIDI Out. Problem there is that you can’t sequence anything from the OT as its data won’t go anywhere!

Any other ideas?

I wonder if I could merge OT’s MIDI Out and MIDI Thru to solve this, anyone done this before?

These issues are so frequent- such that people pay $2,000 for a Cirklon. I’m on the waiting list, and every day I try to come up with reasons why I should pass when my time comes, and I can’t:

There doesn’t appear to be any other company that is interested in creating a modern MIDI sequencer with 3+ OUTs (or even, more than one). So when I think about how simple MIDI setups will be with the flexibility of an OT and a Cirklon, it just makes sense. Still doesn’t make Albeton work as a MIDI master…

Okay, the merge on the OTs midi out/thru did the trick. All sorted now thanks for your help!