Setup Migration : I’ve been playing for a few years now with this setup and a few shows got cancelled in the weekend so I decided to finally take the time to integrate my ZynthianV5 in my setup saying goodbye to the awful (to my taste anyway) Aeros from SingularSound. Anywho, I have 4 days to make this work as previously.
My setup = few midi controllers (88 keys via DIN5, 88 keys via USB, nanoKontrol, etc).
My problem : The two midi controllers from the DIN-5 and USB (type A) do work perfectly with the zynthian Synths (Pianoteq, freeb3, etc) But I cannot for the life of me figure out how to send those two via the USB-typeB zynthian port. I am currently sniffing everything coming from the Zynthian USB and I do not get the notes I play. Tried cloning to midiChainThru, etc.
Hi @PeterLuck . So lovely to meet you. I hope you will enjoy our wonderful community.
The USB Type B connection to a host is called “f MIDI”. I thought we had fixed this but maybe it is on development.
MIDI routing isn’t perfect in Zynthian yet. All MIDI input is merged and then split by channel to feed chains within Zynthian. There isn’t a natural through path (except for the physical thru on the DIN connectors). To pass MIDI through you need to create a MIDI chain which needs a processor. (This will change in a future version.) You can use the “MIDI Thru” plugin to avoid processing the MIDI.
I just fixed a couple of bugs related with this in the testing branch. Update and test, please.
Now you should see the “USB MIDI” entries in the list of MIDI devices (capture & routing) from the chain options menu.
Also, “Bridge MIDI-OUT”, from the admin menu should work, but currently you have to specify the “enabled output ports” from the webconf, so perhaps you prefer to use chain routing. I plan to improve this by adding a MIDI-THRU option to the Main’s chain-options.
Since the title of the thread is a bit confusing : We are talking now about setting up the Zythian in simple (but fancy) usb dongle with only a midi DIN-5 output .
i.e. to send MIDI from some host (USB-A) into the Zynthian USB-B to finaly the Zynthian DIN-5 Output.
I made a second try with 2 zynthians V5, both updated to last testing branch.
The physical connections like this:
MIDI keyboard => V5-1
V5-1 DIN-5 MIDI-OUT => V5-2 DIN-5 MIDI-IN
V5-2 USB-typeB => V5-1 USB-typeA
V5-1 audio out => monitor speakers
Software Config:
V5-1 => MIDI chain in channel 7 with MIDI-THRU processor
capturing from the MIDI keyboard (ACTI)
routing to MIDI-OUT
V5-2 => MIDI chain in channel 3 with MIDI-THRU processor
capturing from the DIN-5 MIDI-IN (ACTI)
routing to USB-MIDI-OUT
V5-1 => Synth chain in chann3 with NozieMaker
capturing from USB MIDI-IN (ACTI)
It works perfectly except …
… the latency is horrible!! In the range of 50-100ms. But it’s quite normal given the number of jumps the MIDI messages takes to reach the synth from my hand playing the keyboard.
Anyway, i tested the type-B USB connection alone and the latency is quite high with this connection. I’m trying to understand why, but probably it’s buried in some deeper layer inside the kernel.
In the webconf MIDI log interface : I am seeing the MIDI packages getting received by the Zynthian USB MIDI-In.
In the very same MIDI-Thru chain, if I activate the capture of the DIN5-Input (which happens to receive some data from a random keyboard) it does send the data to the DIN-5 Out.