As the designer of Plexus, I hope no one minds my take. I really haven’t described my thought process anywhere yet, so I might as well do it here for the first time.
Since Plexus doesn’t use computer software to configure, and the UI is based on a 4x4 grid matrix only, there is no way it can achieve the sheer amount of filtering options available in boxes with a software option or screen to program (Midihub, Event Processor, MRCC etc.). If you want to filter and modify messages six ways to Sunday, like scaling data, inverting data, changing a message using a scalpel, Plexus is not the tool for that.
But that wasn’t my goal. My primary “want” was having that 4x4 matrix UI that’s easy to use in real-time to change routes, splits and merges. I also wanted it to be small AND square. Of course, it was also the idea from the start that it would perform USB Hosting to help separate from the computer. Because of this and the size I was aiming for, I decided on it being 3x3 DIN and USB as #4. The USB Host and the USB Device ports are actually coupled together as I/O #4, with the user being able to decide in Global Setting whether to make either of them Bi-Directional, Rx Only or Tx Only.
I knew I was going to add filters for each output (so it’s like 4 filter boxes). The filtering that is in Plexus are like the hammers, saws, mills and drills of the building world, not the CNC machine. It can fulfill a whole lot of day-to-day needs, but its not going to do anything too exotic.
When I was asking potential users and testers what else I should do, I was clued into Poly Chaining. I realized that this was a perfect add, because that’s a good task for the inputs instead of the outputs. So each input has its own Poly Chain engine which compliments the output’s Filtering engines nicely.
I loaded this with enough memory to stores 128 Presets. That’s every route, filter and poly chain settings stuffed into a preset. The filtering options themselves are pretty massive when you multiple most of them x16 (MIDI Channels) and then x4 (Outputs).
All-in-all, there are reasons to want Plexus and reasons to want Midihub (and others). I still use the Event Processor in my setup dedicated to a specific task that I’ve owned for years. Had it not been for the Event Processor doing what I needed and coming along first, I probably would own a Midihub myself.