Lots of midi inputs.

[thedreiskre]

I'm trying to use multiple different midi controllers on one teensy4. What is the best way to connect multiple different midi controllers to one teensy?
I saw that you can use a usb hub to handle multiple midi inputs - would this still allow for differentiation of the different controllers. (basically, I would like to know where all the midi messages come from). Is this possible with a usb hub, or is using multiple midi channels and daisy chaining the controllers a preferable solution?
Furthermore, is USB midi bidirectional, in that I could send midi messages to the controllers from a teensy?

rough sketch of the architecture I'm going for.
https://imgur.com/a/OXl3CU0

 

[vjmuzik]

Yes you can differentiate between the different usbMIDI devices connected and it is bidirectional, each device has its own class object so its easy to tell which devices sent what. There probably isn’t a preferred method, I would say it just depends on the user, personally I would use usb since daisy chaining midi can cause latency issues. It also has the advantage of transferring faster than MIDI so if you have to transfer a lot of messages I would use usb for that reason as well.

 

[PaulStoffregen]

Yes, USBHost_t36 supports hubs and you can create as many MIDIDevice and MIDIDevice_BigBuffer instances as you need.

Yes, communication is bidirectional with all connected devices.

To sort out which MIDIDevice instances are which of your USB MIDI devices plugged into the hub(s), you'll need to call functions like idVendor(), idProduct() to identify them.