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On 2014-08-25 12:00, Ingo wrote: [...]
Now that many manufacturers are building MIDI controllers (apart from keyboards, MIDI guitars, wind controllers, etc.) like a single foot pedal, a single foot switch or gesture control using a full MIDI interface over USB the number will be growing again. I'm pretty sure of that.
Instead of connecting one arduino that can handle 30-40 sensors each controller uses its own MIDI interface.
agreed to all of it.
my question was somewhat different: is it necessary to have Pd provide MIDI-ports for each device, or is it better/simpler/... to have all those devices appear on a *few* ports.
let's have an example, connecting a footswitch, a keyboard and a BCF2000 (in some 3-input mode).
if we have each of these assigned to a separate port, the MIDI-messages will appear in Pd as:
- footswitch: channels 1..16
- keyboard: channels 17..32
- BCF2000: channels 33..80
obviously this only works if we get the device order correct (that is: persistent across reboots).
using a MIDI-merger and proper device setup we might as well have all of them come through a single port:
- footswitch: channel 1; CC 64
- keyboard: channels 1..16; noteon/off
- BCF2000: channels 1; CC1..16; channels 17..32 for other ports
this will work regardless of whether Pd (or the system) is able to keep the device order consistent.
i do think that the 2nd method is superior. obviously, it is easy to construct use cases where this setup is not enough. but i think these are edge-case, and we should not reserve too much screen estate for things that will hardly ever be used. (however, it should/must be possible to handle these things in an *advanced* mode (e.g. via cmdline args)
fgmad IOhannes