AW: Midi merge and thru

["Rainer Thelonius Balthasar Straschill" <rs@moinlabs.de>]

         I'd like to use a combination of two programmable midi controllers
to control two hardware devices.   The 2 devices need to receive all the
channel and command data from both controllers. 

First, MIDI merge normally merges everything to one stream as you call it,
NOT to one channel (normally means that some programmable patchbays can do
this if you specifically instruct them to do so), so no problem here.

Question #1: Would your application also work the following way?

Foot Controller         Looper
        |                        |
        |                        |
        |                        |
   (merge)-----------> (thru)
        |                        |
        |                        |
        |                        |
  Fader Box                     MultiFX

This way, you would save one merge box. Get one which has two outs, and you
only need one device for your MIDI routing.

Another possibility (as already mentioned) would be to use a fader box or
foot controller which offers MIDI merge and then use the MultiFX's or
looper's MIDI thru if available for something like this:


Foot controller ----> Fader Box -----> MultiFX (thru out) -----> Looper

Have you already decided on your fader box and foot controller? Some fader
boxes will do what you intend to do here...Behringer's BCR2000 offers one
standalone mode where it will merge MIDI from the MIDI in with the MIDI 
data
from the fader box and send it to both outputs...exactly what you need.

        Rainer