At the 2013 NAMM Show, iConnectivity is introducing a ‘next generation’ MIDI interface for MAC, PC, and iOS, the iConnectMIDI4+.
MIDI interfaces aren’t the most exciting part of an electronic music studio – but iConnectivity has actually managed to make MIDI interfaces cool.
Check out some of the features on the iConnectMIDI4+:
- It bridges platforms – iConnectMIDI4+ is a multi-host MIDI interface for Mac, PC, and iOS that bridges MIDI and audio between multiple computing devices, instruments, and the network:
- ConnectMIDI4+’s multi-hosting capability allows for up to 3 computing devices to share the same interface as well as access and share MIDI resources over its 4 pairs of MIDI DINs and its 60 additional user configurable ports.
- Audio pass-through enables multiple computing devices (Mac, PC, and iOS) to not only pass MIDI data but also act as an audio interface between them.
- USB MIDI Support lets you connect up to 8 USB MIDI synths, drum machines, controllers, etc. And it charges your iOS device.
- iConnectMIDI4+ also has an Ethernet port, so you can connect iConnectMIDI4+ to a wireless router, Ethernet hub/router, or any Ethernet enabled device. It is network discoverable, allowing for musicians to control any of the devices connected to iConnectMIDI4+ over a network connection via MIDI.
Features:
- 4 In & 4 Out pairs of MIDI DIN Connectivity
- Connect 8 additional MIDI devices via USB Host Port + Powered USB Hub
- Over 64 user configurable ports of 16 Channels of MIDI per port
- Audio Pass-Through Between Up to 3 Computing Devices
- Multi-Host Capability – Connect 3 Computing Devices Directly & More via Network
- Network Connectivity
- Integrated MIDI Manager With Snapshot Preset Storage – For MIDI Thru, MIDI Merge, Filtering, and Advanced Routing Control
- Supports MAC, PC, and iOS Computing Devices
- USB MIDI Class Compliant
- Plug and Play – No Drivers Needed
- Charge iOS Devices
ConnectMIDI4+ is expected to be available by early Q2 2013, with a MSRP of $249.99 and street price of $199.99. See the iConnectivity site for details.
Sweet this looks like a nice interface .
Can’t wait to read more about this. My band was just talking about how nice it would be if something like this could become part of our setup. What I read so far has exceded our expectations, and the price is spot on. Nice!
I have their original version and think it’s great. This thing looks amazing.
So looking forward to this, I was really hoping that iConnectivity would release something with exactly this feature set … and they did! Terribly excited about it!
This is probably the most exciting thing so far! Don’t get me wrong synths are great, but once you have a few something like this would really help.
Very curious to know how the audio side works. I mean if I plug an iPad and my MacBook in will I be able to do straight digital recording on the laptop or is there some analog to digital conversion? Either way it seems like a great way to get audio off of it. Although it won’t charge the iPad it’ll be so many less wires than the alesis dock and easier to route!
It also seems like a great way to efficiently use the resources on multiple computers!
@A
It is straight digital from computing device to computing device (iOS, MAC, PC).
It also will charge your iOS device.
@Al – Digital direct to device!!! I kinda want to have your baby.
Nice! I’ve put the money aside to get it as soon as it’s out. 🙂
I would almost be the perfect replacement for my IO Dock. But it’s not… because there’s no audio outputs. I already have a nice audio interface, with a lot of inputs.
Would love to try this out.
– is it DC or AC powered, e.g.my preference for kit is to have a 12 VDC jack so I can power it along with our other battery powered mixer and effects. E.g. TC-Helicon voice kit is all 12 VDC – so easy. We do a lot of outside gigs, highly compact and portable (see our website under Wilderness Voices).
@ uglykidmoe, We’re easy but not quite that easy 😛
@ Tim Netherwood – It is 12v DC with included power adapter.
@iconnectivity
Hello
Thanx for the infos. Who will distribute this in France?
Thanx a lot
The original is wonderful and I was trying to get one (Portuguese distributor doesn’t even return emails), but this one is even better. Reading the specs one by one is “nice, nice, what? funky!, hell yes…
This is one hell of a Swiss army knife.
NAMM 2013 is making me feel poor… 😉
“allowing for musicians to control any of the devices connected to iConnectMIDI4+ over a network connection via MIDI”
Does that mean the device speaks Apple’s implementation of RTPMIDI and also implements its session protocol and Bonjour?
Does it work stand-alone, meaning I can connect it to a wifi router and use an IPhone/IPad to control connected midi devices without the need for a computer or cable midi connection to the IOS device?
Chris – yes the device when connected to network uses the RTP MIDI protocol implemented by Apple. It also uses Bonjour for network discovery.
Thus for a Mac, it is simple, you just use Audio MIDI Setup to connect to device and your are off and running. On iOS devices, we will release a simple application to establish MIDI session, but then any CoreMIDI compliant application will work.
For Windows, there are free drivers available to make it work.
Yes, Wireless MIDI by simply connecting your Wireless Access Point.
It’s great that iConnectivity is answering questions here, would you mind clarifying these:
* audio pass-through: is this pure USB-to-USB, no digital outputs like SPDIF, ADAT, AES?
* audio pass-through: is this stereo or does it expose more audio channels over USB to the iOS devices?
* powered USB hub: just to make sure, can this have any class compliant USB audio device be connected so that it’s available for the iOS devices to use?
Thanks a lot for the help
+1
I (and my ‘band’) would like to know the answers to these questions too…
If anyone is interested,
That’s how we do it all separately until the day we’ll buy this new iConnectMIDI4+, and that’s why we’ll buy this as soon as it gets out there.
We’ve been using an audio extractor on the HDMI output to grab a digital output on optical SPDIF. Output it’s fantastic compared to the default output, any external DA converter whether separate or part of an audio interface is better than ipad’s default one. If only there was some sort of control panel for the HDMI output it would have been nice to use more channels (don’t know really if the 5+1 or 7+1 configurations could be managed as 6 or 8 chnls).
Using the HDMI output adapter the ipad can be charged. That’s the same/main reason why, for the MIDI side, we bought a couple of irig MIDI instead of the original iConnectMIDI, despite considering the iConnectMIDI better (other reason was price vs specs).
Another thing we added to our setup is a MIDIpal programmer, to do stuff similar to what we usually do in Max/MSP or Bome MT inside the laptops, but on the ipad MIDI output of some apps. Clearly with some other apps like lemur there’s usually no need…
All it’s now in one box, we’ll have to spare some money to buy two or three but we can’t even think of how many possibilities we are still missing until we’ll have them in our mini studio.
Nice!
most people (like myself) will only need the 2+ version of this and that’s only $89.99. SO SOLD!!!
Hmm, I need an 8 port, maybe an idea for the future?
This seems good indeed!
Is there anyone that can answer a few questions?
– MultiHost Capability
– Connect 3 Computing Devices Directly & More via Network
How exactly is this handled? At first seemed like Multihost was referred to USB host, but that “More via Network” while intriguing confuses us a bit.
Have you managed integrating something like NI Maschine, which needs the NI daemon on the host PC to work?
– Integrated MIDI Manager With Snapshot Preset Storage
– For MIDI Thru, MIDI Merge, Filtering, and Advanced Routing Control
Is the MIDI Manager or Advanced Merger, Filter Router itself controllable via MIDI or from network OSC?
Can somebody from iConnect gives us a few examples of the Advanced possibilities?
Is it possible to manage multiple multiple_INs-to-multiple_OUTs associations and switch between them?
How can you tailor the source MIDI to every module receiving it?
– Audio pass-through
We’re also interested if is this just stereo or it expose more audio channels over USB
to and/or from the iOS devices?
I vote this as best of NAM so far.
Bit late to the discussion but what I really want to know is how does one monitor audio using this device?
It’s really such a revolutionary concept to be able to pass audio digitally between my MacBook, iPad & PC at the same time using the one interface … brilliant!
But am I going to have to use an aggregate device (OSX), ASIO4ALL (PC) or monitor on the headphone out of the iPad to be able to hear what’s going on given that the iConnectMidi4 doesn’t have an audio output?
Aggregate devices and ASIO4ALL are likely to up the latency pretty significantly. And monitoring on the iPad means using the iPad as the audio master destination, which seems like a waste if there’s a Mac or PC in the system.
Would love to hear more from iConnectivity about how this is going to work.
Does Audio passthrough work with the Wifi midi ?
If so is the latency still 1 ms ?