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Midibox SEQV4+ - Record live to midi DAW workflow


jzurd0

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Hi all,

I've been using MidiBox as my main sequencer for several years now and always thought of recording my live performances in midi format.

 Until now I was using all the 4 midi outs I have installed but since a couple of days I remapped all the tracks to OUT1 and set the midi channels accordingly.

 What I'm looking for is to record midi data live while it's being sent to my machines, on the fly, to record all the mutes and changes.

I'm trying to do it using an ancient MOTU interface using the "merge all" mode capturing one of the outputs with Cubase but all I get is midi garbage, stucked notes and so on.

Not sure if it has to be with the Midi interface not able to process all the midi data.

 

 MIDIBOX -> MOTU-> MIDI DEVICES/COMPUTER

Resultado de imagen para motu micro express parallel

 

Any of you is recording live midi data with external outboard/DAW?

 

Many thanks in advance,

Jose

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Hi Jose,

probably not related to your MOTU interface, but what you can do (and what any new SEQ software supports) is to shadow-output track MIDI data to another port/channel. So, you could basically just attach your SEQ to your computer (cubase will see it as four MIDI USB ports) and duplicate the MIDI output to relevant USB Ports and channels. Thus, capturing should be quite easy.

To activate it, within your SEQ go to MENU -> FX -> Dupl. and set up a duplication target for every track.

Have a great day and many greets!
Peter

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Thanks for your response Peter,

I was thinking about that; yesterday tried to install x64 midi drivers without success, but I have a spare x86 machine with drivers already installed to test it.

Regarding FX Dupl., I was looking into the manual and it is not very clear to me, can I just duplicate a track to a single different destination channel or I need to set it up for >1 channels?

Thanks in advance !

 

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Hi Jose,

no problem! In FX Duplication menu it should work like this:

Number of additional channels: 1
Port: e.g. USB1
FirstChannel: Channel number on the USB1 "port", e.g. channel number 1

Then you will get a copy of the note data of that track on USB1, Channel 1. If you set up a higher number of additional channels, more channels will be used on that port to clone the note data - that makes no sense for recording, but in scenarios where you might want to output the track e.g. to multiple synths so that they would "layer" your sounds this is a nice feature.

Best regards and have fun!
Peter

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  • 1 month later...

Hi Peter et al,

Sorry to come back with this but I'm having a lot of issues trying to capture my live midi performance with an external DAW.

 Tried with Reaper and what I get is a lot of stutter and jitter when multritracking 6 midi devices at the same time.

 

Please let me show you my current workflow:

                           ----> SYNTHS VIA MIDI OUT (MIDI OUT 1...4)

   MIDIBOX ---> 

                         ------>  DAW VIA FX DUPLICATE (USB 1...4)

 

I assume usb midi is fast enough to multitrack as per TK's post from 2009.

Any of you is capturing live midi data from the Midibox Seq? 

What I need is to capture the live midi data only but I'm struggling with timing and jitter.

 

 Any input/recommendation will be greatly appreciated!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Hi jzurd0,

am not really experienced with USB MIDI recording, went DAWless a while ago and never looked back ;-).

With RTOS as a reliable base and TK.'s code on top, as a first guess, i would not think the latency issues are caused by the SEQ app.

The problems might well happen within the operating system or the USB driver itself on your computer. Which OS and which computer hardware are you using? USB MIDI under windows is unfortunately a bit unreliable and i would not wonder, if multiple MIDI streams would cause jitter problems there.

Recommendation: if you are using windows currently and have access to a Mac, could you try it with that?

If you are already using a MAC, you could use a tool like MIDIPipe https://www.heise.de/download/product/midipipe-28614 to display and log inbound MIDI messages over USB - that way you should be able to analyze any potential latencies, before the MIDI messages are handled by the DAW. If these latencies are reproducable (e.g. by analyzing timestamps of two MIDI packets that should arrive around the same time but do have variable jitter over time, e.g. bassdrum and synth), this would be a starting point to investigate things in the SEQ app. 

Many greets and good luck!
Peter

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Thanks Peter!

 

 What I'm trying to do is to capture raw MIDI performances from the MidiBox for later playback and eventually record/mix the resultant audio on the fly when playing them (MIDI data) back to the hardware synths/drum machines and so on.

 

 Was thinking of DAW because not really sure that an ancient hardware sequencer has the ability to record a huge amount of midi data in realtime.

 Will try to go that way if I find one for cheap such as a QX3 or similar.

 

 Thanks again.

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