Hello,
I hope someone can help me clarify my doubts or my thought process.
I started with the cre8audio nifty case as my first modular case simply because it have MIDI in/thru and USB to midi with 2 x CV, 2 x gate, clock and a mod. I typically connect the case via USB and set usb midi channel on my DAW (ableton) CV/Gate 1 by default to channel 1 and CV/Gate 2 by default to 2 as specified by cre8audio for nifty case.
Problem 1:
If I use just the midi in of the nifty case with my other hardware (Elektron Rytm is master), it appears that the transport and clock doesn't work. The sound on the nifty is constantly on even if i stop the rytm and the BPM changes on Rytm doesn't affect the bpm/clock on the nifty case.
Therefore I am now sticking to USB mode only. Any insight on this would be helpful as to why when nifty case is sync with MIDI, clock and transport is not affected.
Problem 2:
I want to now expand to a bigger case and need to get some USB/MIDI to CV module. I am so used to having the configuration of the nifty case and do not find any module which serves this purpose, i.e. USB/MIDI -> 2 x CV, 2 x Gate and 1 x clock. I also fear that if i just get a midi to CV I will face problem 1. Having only USB to CV means i have to have a laptop and i sometimes need that if I want to write midi notes on the DAW (I'm not talking about Ableton CV tools - my sound interface doesn't' support optical out, therefore I cannot use Expert Sleepers). It's just simple midi notes, going via USB to channel 1 or 2 - take the CV1 gate 1 and CV2 gate 2 from nifty case and plug it to Rings and Plaits as my sound generators, so to say.
So now the question is when i look at modules which provide USB/MIDI to CV, they are either MIDI to CV or USB to CV and have only 1 cv, gate and clock outputs.
Would I then need 2 such modules? 2 USB/MIDI -> CV to trigger my 2 modules (Plaits and Rings) from my DAW or Sync from external hardware (Rytm). When I sync from Rytm I have to mention thatI sometimes use Qu-bit bloom to generate patterns for both as Qu-bit bloom has 2x cv/gate - but in this case Problem 1 still exists.
Doepfer A-190-1 has midi in and thru but only 2x CV and 1 gate.
Doepfer A-190-3 has usb and midi to gate, note, pitch, v/v and Clt.
Pittsburgh Modular MIDI3 has mid1 to 2 channel CV/gate and a clock
Doepfer A-190-4 has USB/MIDI to 2x CV and 1 x Gate
Doepfer A-190-5 is probably what i might need - 4x CV 4 x Gate and more CV other controls
I just do not know what my next step would be or is my thought process completely messed up?
In short, my use case is:
Trigger Plaits and Rings either with a DAW using USB to CV OR sync the whole rack with external hardware using MIDI to CV and sequence with qu-bit (clock in qu-bit).
I would eventually extend my case for other sound generators which also need to be CV'd and/or Gate'd
Thanks a lot
Cheers