I just assumed you would use audio aggregation in MacOS to work this magic, did not know MOTU offered this AVB functionality. That is pretty brilliant actually. The schematic made it all clear again, but the footage on floor level was nice too. Great talk Luke!
Thank you very much and I have been struggling for a week with this audio interface (motu 24io and 24 ao) and its routing. thanks to you everything worked out.
Thank you so much. Finally I can understand this AVB Protocol. This is the limit to be clear: Connection Sample rate Channels (in and out) Thunderbolt / USB3 44.1 to 96 kHz 128
Great walk through, I've been having so many issues with the Motu Midi Express 128 not showing the ports in Ableton midi preferences. have to get in touch with Motu about this problem
Yeah that would be intensely frustrating. I assume you're on PC? MOTU's PC drivers are a bitch sketchy on the older gear. The new stuff is much better but there are no updated midi devices from them yet. The New 828 is promising though in showing that they are still updating the line.
Great video! We've got a similar setup, I've got the switch, 2x 8A and the 828ES. 3 Samson patchbays, a push and a ridiculous amount of synths and fx. I was having some trouble getting ableton setup, but apparently I just had to switch usb ports and it was solved. Thanks to this I stumbled on your video though! Just one question, how is your midi sync? Because you don't seem to use an audio rate clock. I have a lot of drum machines so I'm using expert sleepers ES-40 triggered by the optical out on the MOTU to get everything in sync with ableton.
I dodge that bullet by not using any external gear that generates a clock and let everything receive clock from Ableton via the MOTU interface. I have a couple drum synthesizers, but they do not have internal sequencers. I simply program them from Ableton directly like any other synth. I’ve seen a lot of other people, especially dawless people, struggle with having individual machines out there that have their internal clocks then need syncing and going mad trying to get everything to line up on the grid. So, I’m sorry I guess I don’t have a good solution for that because I sort of work around it by not using external machine clocks.
Excellent video. While I don’t have the same interfaces, going to see if what I have in my toolbox works. In theory, it should. Reality? I’ll get back to you.
I have a very simmiliar setup, but old motu 828 mk3's connected via ADAT between each other. Also old midiman 8x8, push 2. Keystep pro runs as a main midi keyboard but if i need bigger keys one of the synths is on midi out duties as well. My modular comes in through adat interface as well thats going into adat B on one of the motus. I also use ERM multiclock to have a very stable clock with ableton and drum machines. I was thinking about upgrading to AVB but it all works fine. As they say of it aint broken dont fix it. :-)
Latency with that particular gear can get nice and low, sub 3ms. I usually leave the buffer around 128/256 samples which yields 6-10ms for most things.
The splitters seem redundant. What's the extra hardware for when you have enough ports on the MOTU to begin with? Or do you have more hardware synths than ports? Usually in this case you can add another MOTU Midi Express in the chain. I'm a little confused with your setup.
Sure! That’s certainly a valid option. :) I have more synths than ports and about half of them only need a single channel. I also try to limit the number of USB devices as for whatever reason system stability goes down as the number of devices goes up. I don’t have facts to prove that, but it has been my empirical experience…more USB devices == more crashes.
Pretty valid point for your setup. I have 2 sets of reliable powered USB hubs for all the different devices to send to the computer. Crashes with USB can tough to troubleshoot. Sometimes the performance of the PC hardware vs USB connectivity, number of devices per USB port, UBS power constraints, OS or a combination of all of the above. Good tips to keep in mind. Keep up the good work.
thanks for the explanation... for instead of using an "extra box" to make the MIDI SPLITTER, is it possible to use the synthesizer's own output in THRU mode?
@@synthseeker i didn't know about "latency"... would that be due to longer cables? i'm about to set up my MIDI system here for the keyboards... your video helped me a lot to think about what to do, the only difference is that i only got an old MOTU that doesn't even have a USB output, only parallel.
@@synthseeker well, I've never done this test, at most 2-3... I'd be curious to know if the latency is the size of the cable or the number of synthesizers in THRU
