Not entirely a roland dedicated question this but as a lot of you are using the SP's intergrated into a larger system i thought it might be worth asking anyway.

I'm basically in the process of putting together my live set up and aside from the individual bits of hardware on my list, i need to know what else i might need to tempo sync it all together and check im not missing anything (there's a budget involved you see!)


Korg Electribe EM1 (Midi In, Midi Out, Midi Thru)

Roland CR78 Analogue drum machine (Ext. Clock in)

Kenton Pro Mk II Midi to CV convertor

MicroKorg (Midi In, Midi Out, Midi Thru)

Roland SP404 (Midi In)

Lots of leads!


My idea is to use the Electribe as the Master sequencer driving the CR78's tempo via a Kenton Midi to CV convertor (as described here: http://www.submodern.com/slowburn/?p=608)
but is it possible to daisy chain the Microkorg and SP404 into the equation and have there tempos sync to the Electribe/Cr78 set-up also considering:

1) The Kenton Convertor only has 1 midi in and 1 midi thru
2) The SP404 only has midi in

Or do i need to buy some kind of multi midi interface?? Any help would be great!

YDR

I have a bunch of these- super handy-
http://www.synthman.com/midiman/115100.html

and these are mega handy too- I have 2
http://www.synthman.com/midiman/117200.html

Electribe midi out --->CR78 (KPro)
CR78 (KPro) midi thru ------>Microkorg
Microkorg midi thru -->SP404

the end

That should work. You'll have to check the manuals for the individual machines to find out how to set em to midi master/slave/sync/whatever.

That's indeed one of the best solutions without any additional boxes. It's really ok if you don't care too much about timing - everytime the midi signal goes through a machine, it is delayed a bit - it sums up so the SP-404 would get the worst timing of the bunch. Not the perfect way to go when usually on rhythm-based music, the machine supplying the drums should be the one with the best timing.
But however, it works and maybe you won't even notice. Depends on your sense. You should try that before thinking about the following:

Buy a MIDI-THRU-Box like the second link Om_Audio supplied. It takes the incoming MIDI messages and sends them out the outputs at the same time. That way you get rid of the MIDI-THRU-Delay and have much more versatile routing options.
Use it to route the MIDI output of the EM-1 to everything else (MicroKorg, Kenton Pro MkII, SP-404) with a seperate cable each. On the MIDI THRU-Box you'll have quite some out(thru)put ports left for possible extensions of your setup in the future.

Plus it would be nice to route the MIDI output of the MicroKorg into the input of the EM-1 so you can play and record the patterns using the Korg's keyboard. You don't need the THRU-Box for that though.

Just make sure you set a different MIDI channel for each of the EM-1's parts (=sequencer tracks), and the input channels of the machines you want the tracks to play with accordingly.

Hope that helped, if anything is unclear just ask. If I failed at explaining the slightly complex routing, I could quickly draw it up if you want.

Like esrom said:

Electribe -> Kenton -> CR78
Kenton THru -> Microkorg thru -> SP-404

There will be no noticeable timing delay with only this many chained devices.

Hey so i was looking at your post i am having a similar issue maybe you can help me. How would you best midi sync these devices?

-Roland SP404sx
-Microkorg
-Akai XR20
-Boss Loop Station

how would you tech heads best tackle this? what would be the most proficient way to set this up?

xr20 should do the master (it has midi out and it's a sequencer, micorkorg has midi out too but it isn't a sequencer), slave the others.
so xr20 midi out to microkorg midi in, microkorg midi out sp404 midi in; if the loop station got midi I/O, then the sp404 should be tha last of the midi chain.