I got my first Pyramid MKIII and I am super excited. I am trying to build my home studio, which can be played/recoded live DAWLESS and “also” can be switched to DAW mode (Abelton/Cubase) when composing/arranging/mastering, etc. While I am not a complete amateur with MIDI, I am no expert either, but I learn fast. I thank you in advance for your assistance.
Below is a snapshot of my current setup - all my gears are depicted visually idemtifiable.
Clarifications
Do you see any issues in this setup for live playing and recording considering the following?
The KEYLAB MIDI OUT is merged with the PYRAMID MIDI OUTs at the merger - instead of taking it through PYRAMID MIDI IN. All the synths have local control ON.
The BOSS RC-505 is not receiving any Clock from Pyramid. The Pyramid distributes the clock from BOSS to all other Synths.
The TASCAM is merging the channel inputs into sterio signal for OBS live streaming.
Questions
How do I connect all these gears over USB for DAW setup? I would like to use MIDI and Audio over USB as all these synths can transmit MIDI and Audio over USB and all of these are also connected on a powered USB Hub. I will use my computer as the USB Host.
Do I need to invest in something like MIOXM / Blokas MIDI Hub / BomeBox to seamlessly use all 48 channels of the Pyramid? As some of my synths are multi-timbral - it would be great to expose all 48 MIDI outs from my Pyramid. Also, to be able to route / translate MIDI to USB and vice-versa in between the controllers and the synths.
When in DAW mode - Can I record the MIDI notes and CC messages from the Pyramid into Ableton/Cubase?
In the DAWLESS Live mode - how do I trigger the TASCAM to start/stop recording?
I know it’s a lot of questions here; I appreciate your feedback and thoughts. While waiting for your response, I am also going through other forum topics.
hey - there’s a small detail about how the pyramid works. While the pyramid can sync to the clock, it doesn’t actually ‘thru’ the clock. BAsically it picks up the tempo and then it uses its own clock that is what it sends out. If you want your master clock to be the actual clock you’ll need to disable the sync out on pyramid, and then use a merger post pyramid to inject the clock.
To rephrase, if I want Pyramid to be the master clock, I gotta make Boss the slave to the Pyramid. And then filter out any other midi notes from the merger into the Boss. Cause I heard that Boss picks up noisy notes in slave mode!
yea, if you want pyramid master then everything else syncs to the clock and nothing sends clock (unless that device doesn’t through, but that might get weird… anyways).
And you know, you don’t need to filter out notes unless there are extra notes to filter. Like, filtering adds latency (as does merging) so imho i try to avoid doing that. If you can ensure that the note data on the wire is just ‘correct’ (whatever that means for your music), then you don’t need to filter. For example - let’s say “boss” is on midi channel 12 - you could filter out other midi notes, or you could make sure nothing sends on 12 - if you do the later, not only do you not have to have filter induced latency, you also just have less stuff in your midi bus meaning room for other things that matter.
I mean, essentially a midi channel setting on any device is a filter if you think about it - so i just mean like, using a ‘midi event processor’ as a filter when i’m talking about filter induced latency.
I’m able to do things without filters most of the time just using channels. Every once in a while I get a device that’s hard coded to midi channel 1 (or 16). In those cases I try to manage ‘data on the bus’ using the pyramid’s hardware A/B ports. “oh are two things hard coded to channel 1? okay one goes on port A and the other goes on port B” - then you don’t need a filter until you get three or more hard coded devices (lol, heaven forbid).
The other reason I’d use a filter is sometimes synths have bugs - so like, let’s say you configure the boss to channel 12 and it responds to channel 6 anyway - sometimes that happens. With a boss though, and i’ve had a couple, like the DD500 delay, the midi channel setting worked just fine for me (boss/roland is usually reasonably decent in their midi implementations).
Does all that make sense? I looked it up for you cause i was curious:
Just turn off omni mode and set the receive channel to your favorite number and keep everything else off that channel and you won’t need any other filtering. You’ll probably want to disable program change out as well if you’re setting PC’s with the pyramid.
