Overcomming midi length limitation cheap

[jdieks]

Hey Guys,

I'm looking into overcoming the midi length limitation. I want to place my computer in a machine room about 10+ meters away from my synths.
As a conventional device I found this:
http://www.kentonuk.com/products/items/ ... lndr.shtml

Which is relatively cheap compared to other solutions.
I also found the kissbox, which is a pricey solution as I want at least 6 midi ins and outs.

Now I've got another out-of-the-box idea: What if I would run a fanless itx mini pc with a regular USB midi interface (M8UXL)in my controlroom. Run midi-OX on it, where I connect every hardware midi port to an RTP-midi port. On my pc I also install 8 rtp-midi ports and use those in my sequencer.

Would this be a good/stable idea? How much latency would this add? Would it be better to use some other OS on the slave in the controlroom? (Linux for example)

Or does anyone have a better solution?

Thanks for helping out!

[jdieks]

I'm looking into CopperLan now. It seems to be a very good solution for this kind of stuff. Does anyone have any experience with it?

[jdieks]

I think I found the solution... not that DIY anymore though

http://www.alyseum.com/product_AL-88.php

[dmills]

Have you tried just running a 10M low capacitance screened twisted pair?
Midi is a slow 5mA current loop, it should have no trouble at all with 10M.

I think they put the length in the standard just because they felt they had to say something, but looking at the electrical characteristics there is no reason midi will not a go a long way without needing anything special.

If you wanted a way that would actually meet spec, 1N137 driving an RS485 line transmitter at the sending end and a RS485 line receiver driving a switching transistor and a few resistors at the receiving end will skin the cat.

Depending on what you have pulled in, midi will also go over a cat 5 circuit quite happily (In fact you can fit 4 midi circuits down a single cat 5 line).

No need to get clever.

Regards, Dan.