Wish Global function to route midi through to midi out

N

Neill00

Inspired
I send midi from the Bandhelper app on my ipad to both my Axe FX III and my TC Helicon Voice Live Rack. I also control some on/off effects blocks on the Voice Live Rack by sending midi from the Axe FX III when I step on a footswitch on the FC-6. This means the Voice Live Rack needs to receive midi from the ipad and the Axe FX III. The flow of midi is from ipad to Axe FX III then to Voice Live Rack. As it is now I had to get a midi merger device plug both midi out (to send commands from the AF3 to the VLR) and midi through (to send commands from the iPad to the VLR) then from the out of the device to the Voice Live Rack. If the midi in commands from the iPad to the Axe FX III could be routed to the midi out, I would just need a single midi cable from the Axe FX III to the Voice Live Rack. I would like to clean up the mess in the back of my rack but I also can’t imagine I‘ll be the only person who wants to control other devices in this way. This would save them having to figure out other solutions like I had to.
 
+1

I also have to send midi PC to my IPad (because I’m choosing to use scene midi) - the OnSong app then sends the commands back to my Axe, which sends it ‘thru’ to my Roland GR55 on midi Ch.2 - it works, but it’s an extra place for something to go wrong.
 
Not to throw cold water on your wish, but as far as I know this is physically not possible without hardware changes as the midi thru is hardwired from midi in.
 
unix-guy said:
Not to throw cold water on your wish, but as far as I know this is physically not possible without hardware changes as the midi thru is hardwired from midi in.
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Lots of gear I have owned had a 'soft out/thru' that echoed the MIDI in data and merged it with the other out data. The better ones made it a choice....
 
Right! merged midi. Essentially achieving the same goal. I want the midi data coming from my ipad and the midi data generated by the Axe FX III to appear at the midi out of the Axe FX III at least an option to turn that on or off as some may not want that. If I turn on the soft through on the Band Helper app on the ipad it creates a loop and screws things up. The midi merger box works really well but as I said eluded to above, trying to secure it in the back of the rack and all the extra midi cables makes it less than elegant as a solution.
 
unix-guy said:
As far as I remember reading, the midi stuff is offloaded elsewhere... Not sure, though.
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Wait… the FX3 has MIDI thru already. What the OP wants is to merge MIDI over USB into the actual MIDI stream from the FX3 and @Admin M@ says that's not possible and not in this generation of hardware, so it sounds like it's a hardware limitation, not something that can be fixed in trivial software.

Possibly they could write it but that's why I mentioned the CPU. I think a busy CPU could screw up that MIDI processing and take down any other MIDI devices by blocking/queuing the command stream. Cliff and Matt would know best, and since it's been mentioned at least twice before, I doubt it's trivial and probably not doable in software.
 
I guess maybe I should explain my own situation before upvoting in case there's a way to accomplish what I want already... So a simplified version of what I have:

I have a sound module connected to the THRU of my AxeFX. I have a midi expression pedal connected to the IN of the AxeFX.

For one preset I want the pedal CC to go to the sound module, so it would end up being sent out via the THRU. I also want the AxeFX to send a PC to the sound module on scene change, which would require the sound module to also be connected to the OUT. But... there's only one IN on the sound module.

This could all kind of be solved if there was a way I could tell AxeFX to forward the expression pedal data to the OUT on a per-preset (or scene) basis. Looking through the documentation I couldn't find any obvious way to do that though, but I would be happy if proven wrong. I've had devices in the past where there was a single MIDI output that acted as both an OUT and a THRU (but was really a 'merge') and could be configured as OUT+THRU or OUT-only
 
Splatmandeux said:
I guess maybe I should explain my own situation before upvoting in case there's a way to accomplish what I want already... So a simplified version of what I have:

I have a sound module connected to the THRU of my AxeFX. I have a midi expression pedal connected to the IN of the AxeFX.

For one preset I want the pedal CC to go to the sound module, so it would end up being sent out via the THRU. I also want the AxeFX to send a PC to the sound module on scene change, which would require the sound module to also be connected to the OUT. But... there's only one IN on the sound module.

This could all kind of be solved if there was a way I could tell AxeFX to forward the expression pedal data to the OUT on a per-preset (or scene) basis. Looking through the documentation I couldn't find any obvious way to do that though, but I would be happy if proven wrong. I've had devices in the past where there was a single MIDI output that acted as both an OUT and a THRU (but was really a 'merge') and could be configured as OUT+THRU or OUT-only
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The Wiki's MIDI page might help, or at least provide additional insight.
 
Greg Ferguson said:
Wait… the FX3 has MIDI thru already. What the OP wants is to merge MIDI over USB into the actual MIDI stream from the FX3 and @Admin M@ says that's not possible and not in this generation of hardware, so it sounds like it's a hardware limitation, not something that can be fixed in trivial software.

Possibly they could write it but that's why I mentioned the CPU. I think a busy CPU could screw up that MIDI processing and take down any other MIDI devices by blocking/queuing the command stream. Cliff and Matt would know best, and since it's been mentioned at least twice before, I doubt it's trivial and probably not doable in software.
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It's not a hardware limitation and the cpu load would be minimal. MIDI messages are always packaged as events, so it's not difficult to synchronize multiple streams. That said, a midi merger device is pretty simple and effective, so, as workarounds go, it's a pretty good solution to the problem posed by the OP.
 
Greg Ferguson said:
Possibly they could write it but that's why I mentioned the CPU. I think a busy CPU could screw up that MIDI processing and take down any other MIDI devices by blocking/queuing the command stream.
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My last comment was about the midi processing being offloaded somewhere besides the DSPs... So I don't think a busy CPU is the concern.

In regards to the midi thru, nothing can be done in the current gen hardware because the thru DIN is literally wired directly to the in DIN.
 
unix-guy said:
In regards to the midi thru, nothing can be done in the current gen hardware because the thru DIN is literally wired directly to the in DIN.
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The out port would be used for the merged stream, not the thru port. This wish is obviously pretty low priority, but no, there are no hardware limitations.
 
GlennO said:
The out port would be used for the merged stream, not the thru port. This wish is obviously pretty low priority, but no, there are no hardware limitations.
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Of course, you are correct for the merged midi...

This thread is too old and my brain was getting hung up on previous comments about the soft thru, which is what I was really talking about being not possible currently.
 
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