Midihub, first experience and questions

Midihub Support
1

Our first impression is that the documentation is incomplete in many ways. That’s what we learned so far:

We connect Midihub to a computer with shipped USB cable. All LED’s are lit.

‘Connect’ pressed in Editor. A window shows up telling me that I have to upgrade the firmware from 1.11.10 to 1.13.2. (So I got a pretty old device.)

I press ‘Update Firmware’. After 30 Seconds it says ‘Failed locating midihub in bootloader mode. Error code 4’. I press ok.

However we see that Windows is still searching a driver for ‘Midihub_fw MH-00RQXKE’. This was completed after 3 minutes.

Now I press ‘Connect’ again. The editor reacts by showing me a connector that is crossed. We assume that this means ‘not connected’ and we assume that the mandatory firmware update has not been done yet.

Besides the USB port there is a switch. But we don’t know what for. No description on the Midihub and I can’t find it in the documentation. So I switch it towards the USB connection. LED’s gone off. Seems to be the power switch. I turn it on again. Only 2 LED’s are lit now. One that seems to be the power LED and one beneath ‘A’ in the ‘IN’ side.

Now I press ‘Connect’ again. There is the firmware window again. I press ‘Firmware Update’ again. Now something happens as the LED’s flicker for a few seconds. We get that crossed connector symbol again on top, as well as a Store button and a Load button beneath. However my pipes that I had on the display are gone. (But I have saved it before).

As it seems we have managed the firmware update. Where can I see that I really have the correct Firmware installed ?

There is a menu item Device – Flash Firmware. What’s this? We can’t find it in the documentation.

Now we can go a step further. After inspection of the documentation we still don’t know what a preset really is and how they are managed.

At the top of the Editor window I see ‘(Preset 1)’. And now I see in the menu ‘Device – Store’ and ‘Device – Load’ that there are 8 Presets individually stored on the midihub. So we assume that only one preset is in the editor at any given time.

Somewhere we have read that when powering on the midihub that the ‘current preset’ is loaded. We assume that the current preset is the last stored. Is that correct? So if that happens to be preset 3, when someone presses the button on the midihub once, we now have selected preset 4. Is that correct? Or does it go back to preset 1?

Furthermore, when we have say 5 active presets and the 5th is the current selected preset, what happens when someone presses the button? Does it get back to preset 1 or do we have to press the button 4 times to get to preset 1?

There is in the Device menu the entry ‘Import Everything’. I would have expected that this means to import all presets from the Midihub. But apparently it’s something quite opposite. A window appears and says:

‘This action will interrupt processing and overwrite all memory contents of Midihub.’ Ok it clears the Midihub completly. But what does it really do? We read on:

‘Any unexported modifications will be discarded’. First, we don’t know what ‘unexported modifications’ are. From the terminology we now know that import and export are referred to the Midihub, not the Editor, which is kind of confusing because we are dealing with the editor. Having learned this, the second phrase means nothing else than the first.

So we still don’t know what this operation really does. Please explain. I press ‘No’.

The menu Device – Export Everything demands the name of a file that has to have an .mhd extension. According to the terminology we just learned this must be a file dump of all the information on the Midihub. Does that include the information stored in Device – Settings like Custom MIDI messages ?

We now assume that ‘Import Everything’ means loading the midihub completely from a .mhd file, bypassing the editor. Is this correct?

A last question comes to my mind: The MIDI IN connectors surely are A to D from left to right. But which order is it on the MIDI OUT side. Also from left to right or according to the MIDI IN side, i.e. A IN opposite A OUT ?

I will leave it by now and ask further questions at a later time.

2

You have figured most of it out on your own. :slight_smile:

The first time you’ve plugged in your Midihub, you may have unintentionally held the button down while powering it on - in that case it goes to the bootloader mode. This is necessary only in very rare circumstances, and usually we only ask to go to bootloader mode when providing direct support to the users in order to solve particular issues. In bootloader mode, all the LEDs are lit. In regular mode, the USB LED is always on, and one of the 8 LEDs are lit, to indicate the currently loaded preset. The LEDs blink once there’s any MIDI activity on the matching port.

The LEDs and the text on the cover indicates that the ports are labeled from top to bottom A → D, left side is the input side, right side is the output side.

At the status bar, bottom right of the window, the upgrade popup comes up every time the upgrade must be done upon connecting, otherwise, it just connects to Midihub.

It’s from device’s perspective, so ‘import’ means import stuff into the device, ‘export’ means to download everything and save to file.

Yes, everything is included, that’s why it is called Everything. :slight_smile:

There’s only one active preset at a time. The preset is the current collection of pipes placed in the device, performing the necessary processing.

To open preset 2, you have to click 2 times. Then to access preset 5, you have to click 5 times. The LEDs indicate what your selection is going to be. There’s a little timeout giving you time to go over all the presets once more, if you accidentally click too many times, before the switch is actually performed.

Alternatively, you can switch presets using Program Change messages on the configured port in Device → Settings.

Would you have some particular suggestion what could have helped your ‘getting started’ experience in particular? You seem to have figured most of this out on your own, which is what we intend, but any pointers into what exactly should be changed are welcome. :slight_smile:

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4

Thank you Gledrius,
Thank you so much for your reply. Yes I pretty much figured it out (the hard way).
So far there remains just one thing I cannot find in the documentation:
I want to realize keyboard zones with different voices playing on different midi channels on the same voice expander.
Therefore I want 3 pipes which filter the notes played on a single keyboard and redirect them to different midi channels, all on the same MIDI cable.
Can I have multiple pipes starting with ‘FROM MIDI A’ ? Or is a midi note ‘eaten up’ by the first pipe and no longer available for the second pipe? If yes, do I have to use ‘TO VIRT A’ and then start with ‘FROM VIRT A’ three times?

5

Every “FROM MIDI A” gets to process its own ‘copy’ of the incoming message. For your splitting case, you have to build a couple of lines starting with “FROM MIDI A”, then filter or remap the keyboard range, and remap the channel. Let us know if you’d like an example made.

6

Thank you. I just experienced the opposite of what you just said. Then I used Virtual MIDI, same result.

Keyboard Zones.mhp (838 Bytes)

I hear just the first zone, the rest of the keys are disabled. What I am doing wrong?

7

Hey, Alexander,
I imagine you might not hear from Giedrius until tomorrow a.m so I’ll try to help.

Just tried your patch. I think it’s doing what the Description panel says you want.
The notes arriving at Virtual_D_in are as I’d expect:
Screen Shot 2022-10-28 at 19.33.56
(here I also sent A_in directly to Virtual_D_out, just so you can seen the ‘treated’ & ‘raw’ on alternate lines)
Is this not what you wanted?

Two things to check:
1.the View>Note Value Display is set to the correct C (unlikely to be the answer as you said ‘disabled’ but mentioning cos often trips people up)
2. your sound device(s) for channels 2 and 3 is actually set to them and they are connected to MIDI-A_out

PS. You will get the same result from three lots of A_in > Note Remap > [Channel Remap] > A_out, but I guess you were testing different options cos it was not giving what you expected…

PPS. Also 3x Transform (Replace) will do the job in a single Pipe, when you want to try it. (Midihub often has ‘more than one way to skin a cat’!)

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8

Hi resonotter,

I have to check that this afternoon. Thank you so much for looking at it.

Meanwhile I open a new thread about how to deal with presets.

9

Hi resonotter,

I finally got to manage Midihub to do what I want:

Incoming notes from Piano de Voyage on Channel 2

A1. Limit Note Range up to C#3
Set MIDI channel to 1
B1. Limit Note Range from D3 to E4
Set MIDI channel to 2
C1. Limit Note Range from F4 to B6
Set MIDI channel to 3

A2. Note C7 sets Bank 0 Program 32 Volume 96 (Bass) on Channel 1
B2. Note D7 sets Bank 10 Program 25 Volume 64 (Guitar) on Channel 2
C2. Note E7 sets Bank 0 Program 1 Volume 127 (Piano) on Channel 3

Let’s Face 2.mhp (1.7 KB)

So when I’m somewhere with my portable MIDI Keyboard, I just turn my midi helpers on (Kenton MIDI Host and Blokas Midihub), then press the 3 keys C7, D7 and E7 and I’m ready to play the Keyboard with 3 Zones and Voices selected at a given Volume.

That’s great! Thank you for your support.

Alexander

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