Cantabile Development Blog

Follow the development of music software Cantabile

Articles | Full Index | RSS Feed


MIDI Loop Back

I've been playing around with a idea called "MIDI Loop Back".

The idea for this was driven by the fact that the MIDI output of a plugin can't be used with MIDI controller assignments, nor triggers, nor put through the MIDI routing table. I've heard of users using virtual MIDI cables to do this but it's cumbersome and effectively breaks the session if the virtual cable isn't installed and enabled.

The basic premise is that there are 4 MIDI loop back devices (or busses if you prefer). Triggers, media players, routing table entries and most importantly racks can all be routed to one of these loopback devices which then routes the MIDI back in as input.

images/loopback_target.png

The biggest problem with this is avoiding infinite loops but I've put in code to detect this in the most common cases. Also, I've made it so that a rack can never receive input directly from a loopback device (there's no reason to want to do this anyway).

So far it seems to be working well and if after some more testing I'm still happy with it I'll probably merge it in for the next build.

Posted on April 23, 2009

Share This

Posted on April 23, 2009

Steffen says:

Great Idea!

Steffen

Posted on April 23, 2009

Sasu Honka says:

This is a good addition! Hope you have it working. I have used Midi-Yoke to do this, and my whole live setup is running through it. This would keep setups clearer than having to run midi out first to be able to use the input filters.

Leave A Comment

All comments will be reviewed for spam before being displayed.