Last night I added a BomeBox to my network and tried to set it up. The install went fine but when I tried to integrate into the network I ran into several questions.
When I looked at routes I see automatic routing turned on and a bunch of routes between Midi 16x16 1 etc and USB midi 16x16 1 etc. I turned automatic routing off and they all went away but when I go to add a route I see all these 64 ports ( I have a midiplus 16x16 connected to it). I presume the USb designations are the physical ports but are the other set all virtual ports?
Next I connected to one of my other racks. Once connected, I tried clicking on the connection to display the available ports to enable as per the PC environment but this did not do anything. WHen I go the midi ports I see a port for the rack (normal behaviour) but when I go to routes and try to route from a USB port on the BomeBox to a port on the connected rack the only thing that shows is the rack port itself and I do not see any ports designated Rack1b (port number). How do I enable a route between a specific midi port on the Midiplus attached to the BomeBox and a specific Midi port on the Midiplus on Rack1b?
I then tried to connect to Rack1a since i need to be able to route midiports on the BomeBox to ports on multiple racks. When I opened the connection to Rack1a, it closed the connection to Rack1b. What do I have to do to prevent closing an existing connection when opening a new connection?
As well as the multiple drum synths on RackD, I expect that I will also have connections to certain synths which have a large number of drumkits on them as well as they fact that I would often have a connection from a port on the BomeBox connected to ports both the sequencer node as well as on at least one of the racks.
The BomeBox MidiPlus is connected to an Alesis DM MarkII Pro, 32 trigger Megadrum, two PAD80s, two DrumKats, a TrapKat and a MalletKat so there will be routings between these and about 8 drumsynths on RackD as well as three or four synths on the other three racks.
More detailed knowledge of connecting and routing with a BomeBox required.
Thanks
Hi, thanks for your purchase. For every USB port your device has there will be 4 ports exposed in BomeBox. In my case I have a 4x4 and I see 8 input ports and 8 output ports. Half of the ports are the physical ports and the other half are virtual ports that are automatically created. The virtual ports only will be exposed a PC or Mac attached to the Bome Network as Remote Direct MIDI ports.
When I go to my PC, open the Bome Network tool and expand on my BomeBox, I can see them as shown below and can turn on or off the switches to make them accessible directly from the PC (or Mac or Linux). The exposed ports are only 4 and are 2 way ports. For you you should see 16 if you have one 16x16 attached or 32 if you have 2 16x16’s attached.
As far as the MIDIPlus, I’m not sure how it exposes ports and your terminology of a ‘Rack’.
The bottom line is that you can route between ports using the routing tool on the BomeBox itself and if you need other than the main direct route between your BomeBox and other computers, you need to expose the ports to the computer and connect to the BomeBox ports that way. On your computer, you can use the Bome Network tool to route these MIDI Direct ports to other ports (Maybe on another BomeBox or another computer).
For now Remote Direct MIDI is only seen on computers and not other BomeBoxes. We are are working on a new release to make Remote Direct MIDI exposed on BomeBoxes but I can’t give you a timeline.
Maybe if you explain your terminology of racks a bit more I can help you better. Sketching and posting a picture would be quite helpful. Maybe your racks connected to the MIDI DIN connectors on your 16x16’s. From a routing perspective on your 16x16’s I think you should configure them so that you tie MIDI DIN to it’s respective USB port and not try to do additional routing within the 16x16. Not that it wouldn’t be possible but it might add complexity and confusion.
I don’t think I completely answered your questions but maybe this moves the conversation along.
Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care
Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz
A rack is a 19" rack that has a number of rack synths mounted to it. Anywhere from 7 to 11 currently. Each rack has a PC with an attached Midiplus 16x16. Racks 1A, 1B, C, and D have all the same setup: a NUC running Bome Networking, a Midiplus 16x16 and multiple rack mounted synths connected to the rack’s MIDIPlus 16x16. Rack D is somewhat more specialized as all its synths are drum synths.
Once setup, these Bome Network nodes are all passive. They do not initiate connections. They only receive connections requests. All connections routing has to be done from the requesting nodes. The keyboard node, the patcher node, the sequencer node and the drums node(bomebox) are where the routing from those nodes to the various rack nodes has to be done since they are dynamic depending on the connections required. With the exception of the BomeBox, all of these non-rack nodes are PCs running Bome Networking(there is a reason I own licensing for 10 nodes). On the BomeBox, like on a PC, I need to be able to connect to multiple rack nodes and select the ports from the racks that I need to use, to route the BomeBox inputs to the various rack’s synths. As indicated, the Midiplus attached to the BomeBox has multiple percussion sources that I need to route to the various racks’ ports. So I have about 9 midiplus input ports on the BomeBox that I need to route to 9 out of about 22 synths (that have suitable drumkits) out of the 42 physical synth’s network rack ports across the network. When I implement the VSTs nodes, this will increase.
From the BomeBox, I need to do exactly the same thing as a PC where I open a connection, select the port(s) I need to use, open another connections and again select ports and once all the ports are selected, go to routing and route the 9 in ports to the enabled rack ports across the connected racks.
I will try to add some pictures later to add context. The studio is located in an unfinished basement and right now it is a bit of a clusterf because I have a ton of equipment that I obsoleted as part of this change stacked everywhere. Electronics are all hazmat. I don’t have a place nearby that accepts electronics, so I have to plan a distance trip to dump them.
You will only be able to do routing on BomeBox to devices directly connected to the BomeBox because the current firmware does not yet recognize Remote Direct MIDI ports. All it will see on other nodes is the main node network connection.
However you can expose all ports on your Bomebox by turning on Remote Direct MIDI switches from the other nodes and route to and from the BomeBox ports that way. So if you need to get to the devices on BomeBox from the other nodes you will need to use Remote Direct mid from the other nodes.
As I said, we are working on a firmware update to make the visibility both ways but until then, that is the way it has to be done.
I hope this makes sense.
Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care
Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz
Thank you for confirming what I was seeing during testing. Once I had your confirmation, I swapped out the NUC on RackC for the BomeBox. It has worked perfectly as a Provider Node.
