Can I connect MC8 to MC8 to have 16 switch buttons

Morningstar Gear MC3/6/8 MIDI Controllers
1

Hi there,
is it possible to connect a mc8 to another mc8 throgh the midi pin connectors (out => in) to have 2 big controllers instead of using aux pedals?
Greets

2

Hi. Yes, you can do that. The MC8 can be controlled by external MIDI. So you can use one to control the other. You can find the MC8 MIDI controllable functions in the MIDI Dictionary.

You can also make them bank up/down together by using Bank Presets on one MC8 to send PC messages to the other. That way you can sync banks. We made a video about Bank Presets below.

3

I’m hoping to check here if I’m thinking of this correctly… with this setup, would it then be possible to control more than 16 devices at a time?

I don’t have this need yet, but I got my MC8 as I was really excited to use it for both physical pedals and virtual plugins and whatever else from a studio perspective. I can easily see crossing over 16 devices when everything is combined together.

So to solve this - if I ever decide to go so crazy lol - I’m thinking:

  • Two MC8s, one primary that sends MIDI to the secondary
  • Of course if I wanted to literally control, say 20 devices “at once” I’d have to use both to that stepping on a switch on Primary sends out messages to 16 devices and then press a switch on Secondary to send messages out to the other 4 devices.
  • But if the Primary can change the bank of the Secondary as well, then I could at least align banks and presets and have both in-sync from a navigation POV, so the two-taps I need across both devices are always on the same page at the same time. That sounds interesting.

Could one MC8 trigger another MC8’s preset? That’d also be interesting if possible… Stop on switch “A” on the Primary MC8 which fires off messages to 15 devices +1 message to the Secondary MC8 that triggers it to fire off messages to 5 more devices… lol Crazy.

Am I way off base here, or would some of this be possible?

4

Can’t see any reason why not. Scroll to the bottom of MC8 User Manual (Firmware v3.10) for the MIDI commands you can send in to an MC8. The main job here will be working out how to call presets on the second MC8 whilst managing toggle states, blinking etc. but sounds do-able!

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