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What equipment do I need for the MIDI Output feature of Show Buddy?

The MIDI Out feature in Show Buddy is primarily intended for controlling hardware FX (like the Roland GT-10 or TC Helicon VoiceLive examples shown in the 1.1.0 release video).

For this, you (obviously) need some external equipment that can be controlled via MIDI commands. Some equipment supports MIDI directly via USB, so all you need to do is install the appropriate drivers and plug the equipment into a spare USB port.

In other cases, where the equipment does not support MIDI over USB, you will need a separate USB-MIDI interface for your computer like this one. Your external equipment would then plug into the MIDI interface.

Show Buddy can also send MIDI to other programs running on the same computer, via a MIDI loopback driver (such as LoopBe on Windows or the standard IAC MIDI driver in OS X). This would let you, for example, synchronise video playback on a VJ program like Resolume with Show Buddy – assuming your computer is powerful enough to run both Show Buddy and the VJ program simultaneously.

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Show Buddy Export to MIDI feature doesn’t work with simultaneous cues

Problem

You create a lightshow in Show Buddy which triggers multiple masked presets simultaneously, to build up full looks. When you export this lightshow to a MIDI file and import it into your MIDI sequencer, some of the simultaneous presets do not trigger correctly in the MIDI plugin.

Solution

Try increasing the “Minimum gap between cues” value in the Show Buddy Preferences window, and re-export your MIDI file.

Show Buddy can trigger multiple presets across multiple banks simultaneously without any problems. But this is not possible in the VST/AU plug-in, due to a limitation in MIDI – if the plugin receives 3 notes on ch 15 (bank changes) and 3 notes on ch 16 (preset changes) simultaneously, it has no way of telling which bank change belongs to which preset. Bank/preset changes in a MIDI track must be staggered by a few milliseconds to get round this problem.

The Show Buddy export function will stagger simultaneous bank/preset changes automatically for you, but you may need to play with the “Minimum gap between cues” value to find a reliable setting which works with your particular host & setup.