08-28-2023, 03:44 PM
Hey D,
I'm not 100 percent sure that I'm grokking part one of your question, but I believe that if you connect the MRCC or the 880 to the Mac it should show up as a destination in your DAW regardless of any default settings in the Audio MIDI menu, so unless you turn it off as a target there, it should be accessibly by the DAW. You may still need to set it up in the DAW, however.
Now your routing from the DAW will be to (or from) one of the available virtual MIDI ports on the device (4 ins and outs on the 880, 12 each on the MRCC), and so any routing to downstream devices is managed on the device, where you can manually route from virtual ports to either physical ports, or other virtual ports, via the routing buttons on the device. You may be able to route between virtual ports in the audio MIDI setup page, but I haven't explored that yet, and since the MRCC can do that easier manually it just seems to make more sense to do it that way to me.
As far as sending the clock from the DAW, I can't think of any issues which would arise in the Audio MIDI setup page, but it could be that is just my lack expertise on that particular subject, maybe someone else can chime in?
The way I can see this working (correct me if I've got things turned around), is that let's say I have an MRCC and 3 synths/drum machines and I want to record them, 2 are hardware one is some external program on the computer (I can't see why it wouldn't be in logic, but let's just say for the example it's not). What I would do is set up Logic to be on Virtual ports (in and out) 1, then the external software synth on port 2 in and out, and my hardware devices on physical DIN outputs 1 and 2.
So on the MRCC I would pick Virtual input 1 (from Logic) as a source, then send it to Virtual output 2 (our soft synth) as a destination, and then to physical outputs 1 and 2 as well. Now as long as we are listening on the right channels the clock and MIDI from the DAW will pass through the MRCC and back into the computer for the soft synth, and out to the hardware dudes. No fuss. If you needed to ensure that no note data was passed you could even drop a note filter on the routing. You can save a particular set of routings as a preset and jump between them as necessary, but even doing it by hand it's so fast that it's doable on the fly in most use cases.
With Multitimbral synths it's really nice, because the MRCC just does the MIDI merging automatically, so if I send MIDI Ch 1 and 3 from the DAW and live play keys from my keystep pro on channel 2, and send it all to DIN port 3 where my blofeld is set up, all of the MIDI from the DAW will be mixed with all the MIDI from the Keystep. If I only want the Clock from the DAW to pass, I can put a Clock filter on the Keystep routing, etc. but the merging is all automatic, and unless you're sending from multiple sources on the same channel (and notes are overlapping for instance) then it should be 100% seamless. So yeah the last question is a "Yes", you can do it.
Hope that helps, and again if I have it confused my apologies, let me know and I'll try and get it sorted out.
I'm not 100 percent sure that I'm grokking part one of your question, but I believe that if you connect the MRCC or the 880 to the Mac it should show up as a destination in your DAW regardless of any default settings in the Audio MIDI menu, so unless you turn it off as a target there, it should be accessibly by the DAW. You may still need to set it up in the DAW, however.
Now your routing from the DAW will be to (or from) one of the available virtual MIDI ports on the device (4 ins and outs on the 880, 12 each on the MRCC), and so any routing to downstream devices is managed on the device, where you can manually route from virtual ports to either physical ports, or other virtual ports, via the routing buttons on the device. You may be able to route between virtual ports in the audio MIDI setup page, but I haven't explored that yet, and since the MRCC can do that easier manually it just seems to make more sense to do it that way to me.
As far as sending the clock from the DAW, I can't think of any issues which would arise in the Audio MIDI setup page, but it could be that is just my lack expertise on that particular subject, maybe someone else can chime in?
The way I can see this working (correct me if I've got things turned around), is that let's say I have an MRCC and 3 synths/drum machines and I want to record them, 2 are hardware one is some external program on the computer (I can't see why it wouldn't be in logic, but let's just say for the example it's not). What I would do is set up Logic to be on Virtual ports (in and out) 1, then the external software synth on port 2 in and out, and my hardware devices on physical DIN outputs 1 and 2.
So on the MRCC I would pick Virtual input 1 (from Logic) as a source, then send it to Virtual output 2 (our soft synth) as a destination, and then to physical outputs 1 and 2 as well. Now as long as we are listening on the right channels the clock and MIDI from the DAW will pass through the MRCC and back into the computer for the soft synth, and out to the hardware dudes. No fuss. If you needed to ensure that no note data was passed you could even drop a note filter on the routing. You can save a particular set of routings as a preset and jump between them as necessary, but even doing it by hand it's so fast that it's doable on the fly in most use cases.
With Multitimbral synths it's really nice, because the MRCC just does the MIDI merging automatically, so if I send MIDI Ch 1 and 3 from the DAW and live play keys from my keystep pro on channel 2, and send it all to DIN port 3 where my blofeld is set up, all of the MIDI from the DAW will be mixed with all the MIDI from the Keystep. If I only want the Clock from the DAW to pass, I can put a Clock filter on the Keystep routing, etc. but the merging is all automatic, and unless you're sending from multiple sources on the same channel (and notes are overlapping for instance) then it should be 100% seamless. So yeah the last question is a "Yes", you can do it.
Hope that helps, and again if I have it confused my apologies, let me know and I'll try and get it sorted out.