iConnectivity iConnectMIDI2+ Owner's Manual page 41

convenient and cost-effective to add, say, an iPad to your music-making set-up.
USB MIDI
USB is a bidirectional protocol that's fast enough to carry a wide variety of things
simultaneously – audio, MIDI, printer hookups, keyboards and mouses, etc. Some MIDI
instruments today have USB connections instead of the standard DIN ports, in other
words they have the equivalent of built-in MIDI interfaces that connect directly to a
computer.
Those devices don't need to go through the iConnectMIDI 2+ . Plug them directly into
your computer, to which they'll appear as additional MIDI interfaces. You can route
MIDI from the computer to the iConnectMIDI 2+ (and anything connected to it). If you
run out of USB ports, USB hubs are very inexpensive.
MIDI daisy-chaining
Daisy-chaining: iConnectMIDI 2+ MIDI out port to MIDI In, MIDI Thru to MIDI In, MIDI Thru to MIDI In and
(not shown) MIDI Out to iConnectMIDI 2+ MIDI In. Repeat on the other MIDI DIN port.
The iConnectMIDI 2+ has two pairs of MIDI DIN plugs. What if you have three
instruments? Or six?
Well, most MIDI instruments have MIDI In,Thru [sic], and Out ports, normally positioned
in that order; and each MIDI port has 16 MIDI channels. Thru ports echo what's coming
into the device's MIDI in.
So you connect an iConnectMIDI 2+ MIDI DIN out to your first instrument's In, your first
instrument's Thru to your second instrument's In, your second instrument's Thru to
your third instrument's In, and (not shown in the illustration above) your third
instrument's Out to the iConnectMIDI 2+ MIDI DIN in. And so on.
You will almost certainly want to divide the 16 MIDI channels on each port between the
instruments so that they don't all play at once, and there is only one MIDI at the end of
the chain. Daisy-chaining lots of instruments is not ideal. For larger set-ups we offer the
4+ , which among other features has four pairs of MIDI DINs and support
iConnectMIDI
for three computer devices.
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