Hi!
I have several synthesizers that I control from 3 midi keyboards. I would like to know if your midihub allows you to merge the signal from 2 keyboards to the same synthesizer, so that “Note Off” sent by one of the keyboards does not affect the synthesizer if the same note is still played on the other keyboard. I’ve done a few tests in your software to see, but I can’t do this. Do you have a solution? Thanks for your help!!
You can merge two or more MIDI streams easily. You might not need to worry about managing the note offs - if the device follows the MIDI standard, it expects to receive an equal number of Note Off messages as the amount of Note On messages - it should turn off the sound when it receives the last Note Off. Of course not all devices might be implemented the same.
Have you tried merging the streams already in some way?
Does your keyboard support OMNI mode? Try enabling it and sending notes on distinct channels.
Currently Midihub does not have a reference counted filter for MIDI notes, but it’s something we’re considering adding in future updates.
Thank you for your prompt reply! I have tried sending the signal from two different midi channels, or from the same one. With my polyphonic synthesizers, a Prophet 10 and a UDO Super 6, the first “note off” cuts the sound in all cases. On the subject of “note on”, on the prophet, the 2nd note has no effect, whereas on the UDO, it restarts the envelope on the note, which seems very good to me! But in any case, it would be great if Midihub could manage this properly, with merging parameters for notes common to two different sources, for both “note on” and “note off”, and sending a clear signal to one channel, without worrying about interpretation by different synthesizers.
A Dispatcher pipe that is currently available might help with this, but has a limit of up to 16 notes played at a time (as it is limited by the maximum number of MIDI channels).
It would work like this - you’d send MIDI notes from multiple sources to a single Dispatcher pipe, it would place each note into its own channel, and would send to the sound producing synthesizer, in OMNI mode, so it should be able to keep track of notes, even if it’s the same note number. It should be able to produce notes in unison, so it would probably sound louder than if a single note was playing. Still, the note offs should work out fine.
A future solution would be a pipe that would keep track of notes played and some ‘Mode’ settings for how to deal with overlapping Note Ons and Note Offs (it could make a 2nd Note On for an already playing note to be silently filtered out, or retriggered) and finally take care of producing the right amount of Note Off messages when the last key is released, according to the behavior of your synth (whether it expects a matching number of Note Off messages or a single Note Off turns it off).
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I remember some old synths were transmitting an All Notes Off message when all keys were lifted. A misunderstanding of the MIDI spec…
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