[PlanetCCRMA] MIDI Through?

[Martin Visser]

It is basically a bus for internal midi devices. Clearly you have to
manage the 16 MIDI channels appropriately. The best way to test it is
to connect up a couple of instances of "vkeybd" (on different channels
or the same) and a few synths (listening on the same or different
channels) all to the same MIDI through port. hitting the different
vkeybd's should result in all the listening synths play their
configured instruments, on whatever channel they are configured for.


On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 07:37:47 -0800, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 23:08:54 +1000, Martin Visser
> <martinvisser99@gmail.com> wrote:
> > You will notice that the Midi through appears as both an "in" and an
> > "out" device. You basically use it as a bus to connect all your
> > sending Midi devices - this might be your Midi keyboard, a sequencers,
> > soft synths, whatever
> >
> 
> Respectfully, this doesn't make sense to me. All MIDI devices that you
> can connect to these MIDI Through in and out ports could be connected
> directly. The keyboard, which might be transmitting on channel 3 of a
> certain physical MIDI port, could be connected to the soft synth
> directly. What value does using the MIDI Through provide?
> 
> Further, since MIDI handles only 16 channels having a single MIDI
> Through port would seem to limit you to 16 MIDI channels.
> 
> I already do MIDI Through on my system. I run two MIDI Outs from Pro
> Tools to two MIDI Ins on my Linux box. I hook MIDI In to MIDI out on
> both channels on my Linux box using aconnect commands at boot time and
> then run two MIDI outs from Linux to a 3rd machine running GigaStudio.
> I typically run 32 MIDI channels of data doing orchestral stuff. This
> allows Pro Tools to drive both the Linux box and the GigaStudio box
> all the time.
> 
> This new MIDI Through wouldn't allow me to do that since it's not
> associated with any specific physical interface. (Unless it's
> implemented incorrectly.)
> 
> I still don't get it.
> 
> thanks,
> Mark
>