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anyone know any manufactures who still make midi patchbays similar to say the Akai ME80P?
preferably rackmounted

I believe MOTU still makes them. I am unfamiliar with the Akai one, I will check it out. I am using a M-Audio Midisport 8x8 which was already a legacy product when I bought it years ago. It's getting harder to find larger patchbays. I have a larger midi setup than most and I need an 8x8 system. I am actually just about to have fun seeing if I can get the drivers working properly on a 64 Bit system.

yea i def need to expand somehow and a patchbay offers some options a normal interface doesn't assuming the cost can still stay similar

motu.

What about midi to usb converters though. I think that is the ticket. Just get a couple hubs, there is your 8x8? Does that work?

I'm using a unitor, but am having a fuckload of problems. Some caused by my virus, with a slightly older os which induces midi feedback loops, partly the old drivers, and partly my lack of knowledge of working with major midi in flstudio. Back in my midi days, I was in logic.

Can you explain what a midi patch bay is like? is it just an expanded midi interface with x16 physical i/o ports?

Why not daisy chain?

With a midi patchbay you can assign whatever is coming into the in ports to any of the output ports. It was an easy way to play multiple midi synths at once. You can do a lot of that in your DAW, but some people sometimes wanted that functionality without being tied down to the computer.

I found out yesterday that M-Audio did release a 64 bit driver for the Midisport 8x8 but they do not support the software that controls the patchbay anymore. So it still works as an interface on my 64 bit machine which is what I mainly used it for.

My bud has a roland or edirol one in his studio he never uses, he won't sell it though

upstateface wrote:My bud has a roland or edirol one in his studio he never uses, he won't sell it though

Right i understand, thanks

I did want to try to replicate a patchbay with my DAW (Ableton) yesterday and I was successfully able to do so. I created three midi channels, assigned one to a Novation BassStation Rack, one to a Yamaha TX81z FM synth and one to a Roland JV-2080 synth using the SFX card. I was able to control all three synths at once with one master keyboard. I actually got a pretty cool bass sound with the combination of analogue, FM and sample based synthesis all playing at once.

EZ

mks wrote:I did want to try to replicate a patchbay with my DAW (Ableton) yesterday and I was successfully able to do so. I created three midi channels, assigned one to a Novation BassStation Rack, one to a Yamaha TX81z FM synth and one to a Roland JV-2080 synth using the SFX card. I was able to control all three synths at once with one master keyboard. I actually got a pretty cool bass sound with the combination of analogue, FM and sample based synthesis all playing at once.

EZ

yeah in the logic environment (the back end of logic) is fantastic at this, it provides a graphical interface and you can drag virtual cables around to whatever you want, all with an inspector so you can see exactly what messages are being sent ware. You can also link channels like you said, but split the midi keyboard into zones so you can have it well... split between a pad and a bass for example.

In this day and age, the primary use, other than merely having 8 i/os, is to be able to work a midi setup without the computer. With some of the old patchbays, you can use them just like an audio patchbay. This is useful when you have a few sequencers. Maybe you have three. One is the master, it sends start and stops two two slaves, and all three of those seqs send note info to other tone modules.

But then lets say, you want one slave to control a different group of tone modules, you just patch it through the bay into the new set. Very dynamic studio, without the use of the nasty nasty "c" word.

midipipe

nowaysj hit the nail on the head about working without the comp at times which is why i'd prefer a patchbay vs other solutions

Try Soundigy Midi Patchbay http://www.soundigy.com./midipatchbay.php - it's free and kind of an usefull pice of software