great news! I just ordered one thanks for your reporting.
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Hey friends,
Anyone here ever used Norns with a MidiHub before? I’m experiencing difficulties with this setup that I can’t wrap my mind around and would love some help from anyone familiar with both devices. There are a host of weird issues that I won’t go into fully here until someone more seasoned than myself is willing to engage. Essentially, I’m pretty confused about how Norns is interpreting the variety of devices connected to the system. The whole thing is making my brain soup so I’ll attempt to be more articulate if there is indeed someone here who might be able to help me.
In a nutshell, I get unexpected MidiLoops as if Norns is receiving doubled midi from pipelines that are only sending once, and I see double slots for each device on Norns—once as the designated MidiHub USB port (which appears in their “mh-2e0 . . . 1” format, and then once again as the device that is plugged into Midihub.
I hope some kind soul can help me!
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i have this combo, and so does dan.
probably something to do w/ how you’ve configured midihub.
midihub exposes 4 virtual USB interfaces, which allows doing advanced routing on the other side of the cable. when used w/ norns you don’t want that.
only bind 1 USB interface in both the editor (called USB A, IIRC) and in norns SYSTEM > DEVICES > MIDI menu.
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Excellent! I guess my biggest question then is how (or is it even possible) to send Midi from a controller plugged into one of Norns USB ports back into MidiHub to be sent elsewhere? I.e. can Midihub do USB port to port routing on the host device? I assumed that each of the “mh-2e0 . . .” (as displayed in the Norns menu) were corresponding to one of Norns own physical USB ports and that Midihub could interpret midi on each of those ports. It sounds like maybe that isn’t exactly how this thing works though?
norns has no internal midi routing by default. you’d have to use something lile passthrough (mod, so available at all time once enabled) or monitor.
no, each is basically like a virtual bus and all go through the same single USB port (the one midihub is plugged into).
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Okay! Passthrough will get me going in the right direction I think. Thanks a ton.
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Been messing with this the last month or so and it’s become one of my favourite tools for making music. Very fun generative composition techniques like tintinnabuli are relatively straightforward to achieve. And today I was experimenting with midi LFOs!! Very interesting feature to bring animation to older or simpler synthesizers. One trick I’ve learnt is you can modulate a midi lfo with another lfo by looping back the output of the midihub into itself.
One massive headache is that the midihub only has a single USB connection. I was reading on the blokas forum that a Raspberry pi running patchbox OS maybe a work around solution (but that’s just another piece of gear to worry about) I’ve also created complex usb routings via norns but jeez even a single additional USB connection would have been useful (CV input also maybe wishlist inclusion)
I dunno haven’t seen this box get any sort of hype and I encourage people to CHECK IT OUT. I’ve been in a deep modular mindset for years, maybe discounted all the things possible with midi processing.
edit now that I’m thinking about it probably Blokas wasn’t conceiving of the midihub to be for a DAW-less setup? I guess that’s how I have a tendency to create things, but for most probably a computer with many usb connections will be in the mix. Still wish they could have included extra ports to support a headless style of operation
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I really like Midihub and it has been a great addition to my setup as well. I use it pretty much DAW-less with my Octopus as the primary sequencer and the MidiHub doing channel/port remapping and per port midi clock division. I do wish there was more IO and I’ve been looking at a second.
The Conductive Labs MRCC also looks compelling with more IO of different types, including 4 usb host and Type A/B TRS midi, and routing can be done via the hardware interface. Reading the manual makes it seem like it has many of the routing and filtering features of the MidiHub but it appears easier and faster to configure advanced presets on the MidiHub. Plus the MidiHub has robust set of modulation sources.
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I think you’re right… feels like a missed opportunity to have made it more standalone. (Although at least it has the 8 preset buttons.) It’s a fantastic swiss-army-knife MIDI tool, but always feels a bit hamstrung by an assumption that it’ll mainly be connected to a computer.
An onboard host port for directly connecting a USB controller, potentially plus extra logic for manipulating Midihub preset parameters, would have been fantastic.
Bit of a more niche ask, but a future update to develop presets in code rather than via the visual editor (à la Teletype, Crow, &c.) would be helpful too.
I agree the Midihub is an amazing tool. I was under the impression I could use it together with my RK-005, which can act as a USB host, and which can also be connected to a USB hub.
So RK-005 would be the host, routing everything from the other USB midi devices connected to the USB hub to Midihub, which would process things and then spit them back to RK-005 which would then route them where they need to go. I haven’t tested this though.
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