It had some DIN ports – In and Out – on the back for something called MIDI. It certainly wasn’t the first piece of kit I ever bought – that honor goes to a second-hand Roland Jupiter 6 back in 1988.
#Midi patchbay rack Patch
I can not remember when I acquired the Roland A-880 MIDI Patch Bay. Particularly the problem of reconfiguring MIDI cables to suit a particular playing situation.ĪNYONE WITH A studio setup containing more than one MIDI sound source will have encountered problems with MIDI leads.Fig 1. A cheap solution lies in the use of MIDI Thru boxes, but the cost of a programmable MIDI patchbay increases in proportion to its size (eight input/output being the largest under £200).Īnd incorporating a sequencer in the studio makes things much worse. MIDI Merge facilities add further to the cost. What's been needed for some time is a relatively cheap unit which can handle a large number of controllers. DACS, a British-based company, have now entered the market place with a MIDI patchbay with a difference. The DACS MIDI patchbay is a 1U-high rack-mounted 10-channel unit. The rear panel consists of the relevant MIDI sockets while the front reveals the surprise of this piece of equipment - jack sockets. MIDI In, Thru and two MIDI Outs are provided for each channel in the form of standard ¼" jack connectors.Ĭircuit board and component quality is very good with no obvious skimping, except for the way in which the front panel is fastened onto the body - two out of four of the fixings on the review model had pulled away by the time I received the unit, leaving the front panel actually hanging off. Bearing in mind that this panel has the holes for fastening onto a 19" rack and that these small inserts effectively have to take the weight of the patchbay (just under 1kg), this particular design fault needs immediate attention.
Also, the solder side of the printed circuit boards is completely unprotected, which could lead to shorts from other rack-mounted equipment if this unit is racked. The instruction leaflet mentions that, as long as there are as many MIDI Ins as Outs, the power to drive the unit can be derived from the MIDI lines. The unit is active because each MIDI In has to be "decoded" by a small electronic circuit. For the sceptics, a +5V socket is provided on the rear panel and DACS will provide a power pack at a small additional cost. The unit has the MIDI In earths connected by small jumpers with instructions to disconnect them if MIDI data is audible due to bad equipment earthing - they also advise that as few earths as possible should be disconnected. For those of you who are interested, this appears to contravene the original MIDI 1.0 specifications, which called for earth connections on MIDI Out/Thru sockets but not on those for MIDI In. Remove them all, however, and the unit ceases to function - they obviously provide the ground for the power supply from the MIDI units to the patchbay.Įquipment is connected to the bay using standard MIDI leads, while jack-to-jack leads are used for patching on the front panel.
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