I have, let’s say, four pieces of midi equipment. CUBASE allows me to either pick one as a MIDI input or all of them together (OMNI). However, I don’t know of a way where I can, if the choices are between A,B, C and D, pick both B and C while excluding A and D, or vise versa.
In other words, how can I be more selective with my midi inputs? I’d like to use a breath controller with a keyboard on one track and then use another keyboard with a fader controller on another track.
Do I need some kind of external virtual midi router for this?
I don’t think you do that natively with Cubase, something extra is needed. You could use a hardware midi merge box or two. You could also try a software midi merge application in combination with a virtual midi cable application.
I use both, I’ve got a few midi merge boxes. One doesn’t even need a psu because it takes power from one of the midi cables (doesn’t work with all midi devices, but works with my keyboards OK) so very useful for simplifying the setup.
For the (PC) software variety I use MidiYoke as the virtual midi cable app (which provides 8 extra midi in and out (or rather thru) ports and then MidiTrix to provide the routing between my external instruments and the virtual in port, then I select the virtual out port in Cubase.
You don’t say PC or Mac… But on the Mac there’s the Midi Setup window where you can define your own MIDI hardware picture and just create virtual midi ports straight away without extra software. I haven’t tried merging but I believe it can be done.
I have found that both hardware and software versions are sometimes unreliable when faced with a lot of fast notes or a lot of polyphony. For example, if I’m playing big chords (many notes), repeated fast, with layered sounds across my live keyboards then sometimes the notes might hang. But not very often and usually in places where I recognise the problem so if I’m live then I can be ready with the panic button (Cubase Midi Reset, or changing the program on the keyboard to silence the notes).
I also had/have note hanging problems and i think it has something to do with Cubase sending false midi signals, such as: ADSR or mod wheel commands. Hanging notes are probably a release signal. By sending the signal release as a cc to your keyboard might fix the problem.
In Cubase, you can define, what is the “All MIDI Inputs” in fact. Open Devices > Devices Setup > MIDI Port Setup. On the right-side, you can see a table, which describes all. Yellow MIDI Ports are Inputs. As the 6th column, you can see In “All MIDI”. If this is enabled for the dedicated MIDI Port, this port is part of the “All MIDI Inputs”. If this is disabled, this dedicated MIDI Port is not a part of “All MIDI Inputs”.
So in your case, you can disable MIDI ports A and D from the “All MIDI Inputs”. Then on the track, where you would like to record from MIDI ports B and C, use “All MIDI Inputs” as a MIDI Input. On the other track, use dedicated MIDI In A or D.
Does it work to you?
Or you can use an Input Transformer on every single track, to filter out data, you are not interested in, for the dedicated track.
How about creating two tracks both playing to the the same midi instrument (external or rack instrument). Then set the inputs for these two tracks to two different midi ports (as in the above reply). You will have a merge effect, i.e. two midi ports playing one midi instrument.
But, when/if you record you will get two midi recordings, not that it matters for playback, but editing may be tricky.
You can merge the two together in a few ways but I usually put them on top of each other, move the start of one of them backwards slightly (in lanes mode to see what you’re doing maybe) and then use the glue tool to glue them together.