midi chains and delays

cartesia · Post by **cartesia** » Sun Aug 26, 2007 4:20 am

how long can a chain of midi devices put together go before it starts to get a noticeable delay between the 1st & last?

eg lets say 4 or 5 electribes were chained up.. problem?

...I'm just contemplating the possibilities of a whole tribe of 'tribes

Post by **nathanscribe** » Sun Aug 26, 2007 10:35 am

This can depend on what gear you're chaining. At the moment, I have two routes for my MIDI: first, from the Mac to a MOTU 128 and then through individual outs to the various bits of gear. Second, from one of the MOTU outs to a Kenton box, through to an old Groove interface, through to a DIY thru box, through to various other bits of gear, one or two of which have thrus to one other device. That makes about 5 items in the chain. The most I've ever run is about 6.

Never had major problems, except when using my Alesis Microverb 4 in the middle of the chain. That really screwed up the timing. Badly. Very sloppy indeed.

filtermod · Post by **filtermod** » Sun Aug 26, 2007 4:52 pm

you can keep latency to a minimum by using a MIDI interface/patchbay as opposed to daisy chaining. remember MIDI only transmits one bit at a time, so the more note and controller information you push through the chain, the more noticable any latency will be.

http://www.myspace.com/atomatik13

Tax-5 · Post by **Tax-5** » Sun Aug 26, 2007 8:56 pm

You can connect 25m of MIDI Cables...
Sure you can connect more of it but then you will here the latency...

Be sure that you calculate every Synth with 1m...
The less you connect the better it will run..

i_watch_stars · Post by **i_watch_stars** » Sun Aug 26, 2007 10:27 pm

I think this is largely a myth.

Before I got my MIDI interface, I chained at least 5 synths together with no problems, and I produce trance which is heavily timing dependant. The reasoning behind the myth, I suppose, is that the device has to "interpret" each MIDI thru, thus slowing it down. I have never read or "heard" any hard evidence to support this though.

Soundwave · Post by **Soundwave** » Wed Aug 29, 2007 7:09 pm

The latency effect by chaining may not be too noticeable with synth sounds but very apparent on percussion.

My advice is choose a bit of kit with rock solid timing for the main master clock then connect it to a MIDI thru box and slave everything else via the thru box.

This is what I use.

i_watch_stars · Post by **i_watch_stars** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 12:29 am

Soundwave wrote:The latency effect by chaining may not be too noticeable with synth sounds but very apparent on percussion.

My advice is choose a bit of kit with rock solid timing for the main master clock then connect it to a MIDI thru box and slave everything else via the thru box.

This is what I use.

Yeah, MIDI thrus are sweet..its hard to find them though. Where did you get that?

Post by **nathanscribe** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 11:27 am

Philip Rees don't make those any more, but you could probably find on on ebay fairly cheap. For some reason, Kenton charge about £50 for theirs... they are dead easy to build though. If you have some DIY skills, you could put one together for a fifth of that.

cartesia · Post by **cartesia** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 1:30 pm

is it just a case of soldering multiple midi connectors to each pin of one?

or does it need some kind of power source to amplify the signal before you split it up..?

Post by **WDW** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 9:34 pm

Soundwave wrote:The latency effect by chaining may not be too noticeable with synth sounds but very apparent on percussion.

This has been my experience. When chaining four deep and having the drum module at the tail, there most certainly was a noticeable delay.

Nowadays, I have five Midisport 8x8s running off one USB hub, with that hub directly connected to my computer. That's 40 ins and 40 outs with no appreciable latency.

WD

Post by **nathanscribe** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 11:11 am

cartesia wrote:is it just a case of soldering multiple midi connectors to each pin of one?

or does it need some kind of power source to amplify the signal before you split it up..?

I wouldn't recommend simply soldering sockets together. You need to run the MIDI input into an optocoupler and use that to drive transistors/logic to switch current across the outputs at 5V. So it's a small powered circuit, but a simple enough one for a beginner to build. I run a small 1-in 5-out from 4xAA batteries and it's had several months of intermittent use without needing recharging yet. Each output only requires a few milliamps. Mains supply would be another option - you could run one from a cheap adaptor.

Soundwave · Post by **Soundwave** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 4:35 pm

i_watch_stars wrote:
Yeah, MIDI thrus are sweet..its hard to find them though. Where did you get that?

20 quid on ebay!