MIDI software roundup

I’m doing a quick post on my current MIDI software setup on my audio laptop currently – partly for me and partly for you. I seem to forget which bits of software I’m using during a particular period of time, DAW-epoch if you will.

In the dark ages I used to use Hubi’s MIDI loopback driver, but that’s pretty much ancient history now. Somehow I keep thinking that’s what I’m looking for, when in reality I want MIDI Yoke.

So, for MIDI general transformation/mapping duties, managing sysex dumps and all-around MIDI debugging, nothing beats MIDI-OX, from the same author as MIDI Yoke. There is a purportedly more powerful MIDI translation program called Bome’s MIDI Translator as well, but I have not actually needed it yet. If you are on Mac Bome’s is pretty much the only game in town.

For crazier MIDI mappings, and/or anything that needs to interface with HID devices (joysticks, etc.) Pure Data is my go-to tool. The learning curve is pretty huge compared to doing simple mappings in MIDI-OX, but once you get to a certain level of complexity in your mappings MIDI-OX starts to get really tedious, and IMO, it’s time for PD.

Recently I’ve become aware of some other MIDI loopback software, such as Tobias Erichsen’s loopMIDI. I have not tried this out, but Tobias is also the author of a really interesting bit of software that provides a Windows rtpMIDI driver that is supposedly compatible with iOS/Mac OS network MIDI. This could mean that iPad apps can do network MIDI with a PC.

NTONYX, of Virtual Audio Cable fame, has the MIDI Matrix app, which is able to virtually connect port together, something that MIDI Yoke cannot do on its own.

I’ve started doing some MIDI programming in Ruby also, using the fantastic unimidi library, which appears to work well in Windows. I have de-facto decided to avoid special-purpose programming languages like KeyKit for now although if there is anything I can’t manage in Ruby I may branch out a bit.