#1

I have begun to approach a setup that I believe would allow for extensive and long form performances and improvisation sessions and am trying to squeeze a few last drops out of my hardware setup.

I wanted to see if anybody has a way of using a single 16n across 2 norns? Basically, I would like for a few sliders each to be global params on each norns for cross fading, input, monitor and more. It would be great to have this on one piece of gear, but without something in between, it might not be possible…

Any thoughts?

(PS, one idea is to have two 2hosts connect the norns via midi to my computer and have an IAC bus send each slider that way, but I would prefer not to have to have other gear in the flow)

#2

Could you use 1 2 host to connect the norns? And the connect the 16n to one and somehow pass the midi thru?

#3

Does the norns allow for midi pass through? How would that look? I’m thinking that COULD look something like this:

16n -> laptop -> 2host -> norns a -> norns b

But I’m actually unaware of norns midi passthrough capability…

#4

Recently I’ve been using Passthrough to go “16n -> Norns -> MIDI USB-USB -> AUM on iPad” and it works very well. You just have to add two lines of code to add Passthrough to the Norns script you want to use.

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#5

Replace the iPad with norns 2 and that’s what I meant. No need to involved the laptop. You do need 2host or some other host to host adapter to make it work

#6

if you get them linked via wifi it’d be absolutely trivial to send data between them with OSC.

get into scripting! it’s easy! and ostensibly the reason norns exists— easy entry into code. software can solve problems in ways that mean you don’t have to get more hardware

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#7

I’ll give sending OSC messages a shot.

#8

One more possibility - use both USB-MIDI and hardware MIDI (from the TRS jack) on the 16n.

You’d need a TRS to DIN MIDI adapter and a DIN->USB-MIDI adapter.

So - USB-MIDI out connects to one norns. TRS MIDI out connects thru the adapters to the second norns. Use half the faders for one, half for the other. Manage MIDI mapping on each device since you’d still receive the MIDI from the entire 16n

For the previously mentioned route of using 2host - I was going to suggest using aconnect to create a routing at the system level (to pass 16n to twohost)…

But… that won’t work. It appears you can’t make aconnect connections once norns is running (matron I believe).

10.0.1.21 ~ $ aconnect 20:0 24:0
Connection failed (Resource temporarily unavailable)

@tehn is there something specifically blocking aconnect from matron? If I make an aconnect connection before norns has fully launched, matron will stall out, things go non-responsive and the display will be completely blank. Once the aconnect connection is broken/disconnected, everything returns to normal.

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#9

This is a good choice as well. I enjoy the possibility of routing from one norns to the next via OSC. It’ll be a fun attempt at augmenting scripts. I don’t have a particularly strong sense of confidence, so this option is a damn good backup.

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