Building a Bigger, Badder MIDI Mountain

Greetings! And welcome to an LGR Thing returning to the mountain top, the MIDI Mountain that we put together, I don’t know, is it was like a year or two ago or something. Oh good grief, 2017 was four years ago. So anyway, I guess it’s been a while, but you know,

I still use it every so often. Maybe not in its full form, but there’s a reason for that. And that’s because it’s a MIDI mountain! It’s just a stack of MIDI devices that aren’t really connected except via cables, and anytime that I would like to use it. I have to bring the whole setup out or parts of it out. And normally that’s what I ended up doing, if I’m honest. 

I just bring one or two components out as needed, and then it’s not a MIDI mountain anymore, it’s just a regular old MIDI set setup for retro computers. And the thing with these devices here, most of them anyway, everything but the MT-32, is that they are all 1U half rack devices, which means that they fit horizontally. So that got me thinking, Why don’t I just put these in a rack of some kind?

The other thing that really spurred this on is that I’ve kind of already done that. I’ve messed around with putting some of these units and just units of all kinds of different audio stuff into a rack-mount shelving system that I use for my main synthesizer setup. 

Yep, I’m very much into synths, making my own music and such, never really got it with any kind of seriousness, but it’s something I’ve always messed around with, and in 2020 in particular, I really ramped up all the things that I wanted to try and connect together and just sort of building my own synth configuration and just adding things to it and swapping things out all the time. And having had so much fun putting that together. I really wanted to replicate some of that experience with a MIDI Mountain 2.0, rack-mounted, a MIDI Rack Mountain, if you will.

And so that’s what we’re doing in this video here is where revisiting that idea of a MIDI mountain, but doing it even bigger and better. So were going to be taking a look at a bunch of different components going through the different MIDI-modules that I want to be using as well as the MIDI interface itself and the MIDI Thru Box and stuff like that that’s pretty important. Mixers, power equalizer, and you know, a whole bunch of different things, and of course, a rack-mounted case. 

And that goes to be the larger distinction here is that I would like all this fully enclosed in something that I can pack up more easily and move around, or, you know, just pack up more easily. I don’t know, it’s hard to pack this thing up. So we bid farewell to the current MIDI mountain. we hardly knew ye, but in its place will be something much bigger and badder and better, hopefully.

So let’s get right to it. This is also the oldest one well be using. And the only one that’s not General MIDI compatible exactly. This is the Roland MT-32 but instead of normal standalone unit, like we did in the last MIDI mountain video, this is one of them that’s been put into a rack-mount case. I’ve actually done a video dedicated to this over on my blurbs channel. And while I’m not a hundred percent certain this was actually a Roland product, like the case itself, it is made for it specifically and was sold through music distributors at some point in the early 90s, late 80s, and yeah...It’s just a full case replacement for it. 

It’s just a normal MT-32 inside and it’s been a flatly mounted, so there’s no angle to it. It is, unfortunately, 2U tall, so that’s two units instead of one. It’s, I think, due to the front of this whole bezel here, because of the way its normally angled backwards that would be 1U high, but when you angle it forward and make it flat, this is actually from here to hear a little bit taller than 1U, so that’s fun.

But anyway, this is going to be the base of the mountain. I didn’t have the correct volume nob for it. Well, I do now, actually got one 3D printed and it looks very nice. Next, we have another familiar unit. This is a Roland Sound Canvas, specifically the SC-55 MKII. So this and the other MIDI devices will all be General MIDI compatible. And the 55 MKII especially may be a nice little half rack size in terms of width and 1U tall. So the idea here will be to put this on a one unit shelf. 

We’ll see how that does. I’ve taken the feet off of here because it actually has these four feet that go on rock bottom that creates it a touch bit taller than 1U, and I’ve done the same for the other units as well because they will all be a little taller than need be. I still don’t know if they’ll fully fit on a shelf. It’s going to be tight, but we’ll see. So we got the MT-32 and the Sound Canvas, those are necessities.

This is another pretty much necessity as far as I’m concerned. This is the a Yamaha...Dang It. Couldn’t have a spec on the front. Yeah, this is the Yamaha MU80, another classic MIDI module, maybe not as popular necessarily as the Sound Canvas or the MT-32. But, yeah, it does some very similar things to the Sound Canvas and it just sounds great. It has some different tones that it generates. And yeah, this is one that we had in the previous MIDI mountain and it’s just an awesome sound to it. 

I love the pianos and drums and a bunch of the other sounds it makes not necessarily the guitar so much, but you know, it’s a great module and, you know, like those others, I didn’t show the rear of the Sound Canvas, but I have before so whatever. It’s got MIDI in, out and thru, the little serial selection thing, we’re not going to use any of this really, just the MIDI thru and the outputs on the right there for sound.

And here’s where things start to differ though compared to the previous mountain, in addition to the MT-32, I guess, being a little bit different, but yeah this is the Kawai GMega. This is a synth module that you don’t see as much, mostly in Japan. I’ve seen a few folks import them. I mean, that’s what I did. And yeah, it was just another General MIDI module with some slightly different sounds, 32 voice channels. I’m not intimately familiar with this, not something I’ve used as much as the Sound Canvas or MT-32. 

There were just a bunch of these things back then, and they’re all interesting in their own way because they have slightly different features, in terms of musical composition stuff but still it’s got some cool things. Now, this one doesn’t do the quarter-inch outputs, it’s got RCA. And it’s really just the sounds that it generates that are going to be a little bit different, the instruments themselves. An interesting addition, I believe. And the last module is another new addition. So yeah, were not doing the Kong like we did last time.

I really liked that module but I decided I’d try for a different kind of white, off-white, gray-colored MIDI module. This is the Akai SG01K So yeah...A little bit different in terms of the aesthetic, not only the color, but you know, it’s got a screen with these little red LEDs which is kind of cool. And it’s also got these different kinds of push buttons and things. And I would really prefer it to be in black just to match all the rest, but whatever, This is just a cool little device. 

Again, kind of like the Kawai one, this is a somewhat popular-ish import  amongst MIDI enthusiasts, and this one has some very similar things, once again, going on so...They all have the serial which were not going to be using. And there’s also a little three and a half millimeter headphone jack, so if you don’t want to do line level, there you go.

So yeah, this is probably the unit that I use the least out of all these, so this will be fun. And naturally it will need a MIDI interface. So this will be the same stuff that we did in the previous MIDI mountain video. So we have the MIF-IPC here to provide MPU-401 capability, nice and intelligent mode stuff. There are modern recreations and clones and such, but you know, I’ve got the original so...I’m going to use it. And same for the Roland MPU-401, the MIDI processing unit itself. So the card connects to the computer through that, we’ve got the cable there, and then this is just going to be sending a MIDI out to MIDI switcher. I’m not going to mess with any of these other things cause we don’t need to.

And of course, were going to have a bunch of MIDI cables by the time this is all together. And in terms of sending MIDI thru to a bunch of things we have a MIDI Thru Box. Now, I’m going to be using this instead of the MPU-104, a little switcher from Roland that we had at the near the top of the last MIDI mountain, cause, you know, this is rack-mount and we got more rack-mount options to choose from for all kinds of different things.

So yeah, the MPU-401 goes into here and then it’s got eight thrust, to eight different MIDI devices. Were only doing four and, yeah, it’s just a passive unpowered thing. We don’t have to worry about anything in terms of that. And it just works and it gets its power actually through MIDI, so well have a little light lighting up there hopefully. Yeah, handy piece of equipment. Now is for mixing all the audio together. No more cheap little four port switch. 

That’s gone in its place, places the MX822`` by Applied Research and Technology. Yeah, a brand new mixer, look at this. So yeah, eight channels stereo mixer which is ideal really for what we’re doing here. And it does have an effects loop. We can send different effects through here. Don’t have any intention of using that for this. Each MIDI module has its own effects. Now, this is a powered unit here. We have an output there through XLR.

So my thinking is MT-032, Sound Canvas, Yamaha, Kawai, Akai. That’s five channels, why was I saying for earlier?

I meant five. Anyway, we’ve got five things to plug into this eight unit mixer. So that’s awesome. And of course we got volume control, panning for each of the individual things and a nice little level meter set here make sure stuff isn’t peaking. You know, last time I had that graphic equalizer just sitting down near the bottom. Well, I did want another equalizer, not necessarily to do much equalizing itself, but I liked the whole spectrum analyzer deal. And this was a cheap one, I just found it on eBay. I was like, Ah, you know what?

This looks kind of cool. And its rack-mounted so let’s see what it’s about. Again, this is totally unnecessary and mostly just for aesthetics. So albeit its sucked as an equalizer, I don’t really care. I just want the spectrum analyzer, the visual display to look like a thing is happening. Well, this is interesting. So it does have feet on the bottom and no actual rack-mounting ears on there but it’s supposed to be 1U tall rack-mountable thing, so I’m assuming the rack-mount bits are inside the box. 

Ah-ha, there they are. So we’ve got those little metal things go on the side there and make that rack-mountable. And we will take the feet off of their cause we be needing this. Man, this certainly does feel cheap. I mean, it should be if its only like $69 or something it’s probably just a clone of all of the other stupid cheap looking things that are on eBay with these equalizer kind of features.

So, you know, it’s possible that this won’t even be an actual a spectrum analyzer and it’ll just be some dumb display that just dances to music but whatever. These screws don’t even really fit. Look at that, they’re like wood screws. They’re pointy and slightly too wide. So it’s just sort of digging into the metal. Well, it looks more rack-mountable. I have full expectations of it being awful, but you know, it was cheap. 

And as long as it provides a display that displays something, I guess we’ll call that a win. Lastly, though, in terms of things we’re putting in the rack, I needed something to turn all the power on and I got one of these power centers with 10 inputs. USB, apparently too. That’s kind of cool. Yeah. Look at that. So do I have 2 USB right there?

And I wanted one among these that has all the switches just because I find that incredibly enjoyable to do. So there’s that. So we can just switch everything on like it’s the Back of the Future time machine. Fantastic. Unfortunately, with some of those wall warts, you may have to use some little adapter extension things to get them to fit. But yeah, that’s that. This’ll be either at the very bottom or the very top. Let’s go ahead and get to...The actual rack unit itself. 

And for that, I’ve gone with one of these gear cases because, I don’t know, I’ve always liked the way that these ridiculous trunks look. It’s got a handles and its opens both front and back so... Kind of twists open like a can opener. And there you go. Check that out. It’s just a big old box and it’s not terribly deep. It’s like 12 and a half inches inside. So yeah, I didn’t want it to be ridiculously deep cause I’m not putting any ridiculously deep modules in there.

In fact, the deepest one is the MT-32 and you can see that it’s not even going all the way to the back. So yeah, this is about the shallowest of these type of things that I could find that also was mounted in the way that I kind of liked the look of, there’s a sticker!

Some mounting hardware for the racks and then there of course are the actual rack-mounting bits themselves. So this is an eight unit rack and I mean that’s all there is. It’s just... That’s just an open space with some holes and metal and stuff. I had considered getting a custom wooden one made, but the prices on those man... you know, for another project I’m doing, because you’ll see. 

But for this, you know, just a pre-made thing is totally fine. And I like the fact that it’s got handles. Handles are cool. Okay, then... So that is enough with the explanation of what we’re going to do. So let’s go ahead and do it. We’re going to build things inside of the case and get it all hooked up and set up and then try it out with some MIDI files and a game or two and enjoy the new MIDI Rack Mountain.

Let’s get to it. Almighty, it is time to assemble this new MIDI Rack Mountain out of our mole hill of MIDI components, beginning with the case itself, of course, and getting everything inserted into it which requires the use of some mounting hardware. In this case, it’s a little bit simpler than some of the other audio racks that I’ve used You just have these screw in bolts and the rack itself is pre-drilled with threaded holes. So it doesn’t require any extra little metal clip on components or anything’s till stay in place. You just screw things in with some bolts and washers. 

And the first one is the MIDI Thru Box which my thinking here was to put the least visually interesting unit at the very bottom and then build up from there, with the mixer being next on top of that. And yeah, so far so good. I mean, you know, this is just an audio rack. This is standard stuff. 19 inches across all the holes are pre-drilled, everything just screws into place normally. Everything should be perfectly fine, and the reason I’m saying this is because it soon was not perfectly fine whatsoever because of that questionable equalizer.

This stupid thing. So its advertised as a 1U standard 19 inch rack thing. And you know, at first glance it kind of looks like it. But as soon as I put it in there, things looked a little off and that’s because they were checking this out. of the unit to make it rack-mountable?

Yeah, they don’t fit. You could kind of line up either the top or the bottom hole but it threw the other one off at that point. So I thought, okay, maybe I mounted them on their incorrectly, but nope. I took them off there and spin them around every which way and fiddled around with a little bit and just determined that they’re not drilled correctly whatsoever. 

And they’re also just a little bit taller, so the entire rest of the rack be thrown off if I were to mount it in here, so I put them back on there that I had already put into the rack and then stuck the equalizer down at the bottom seeing if maybe I could get it mounted a little bit lower, so it doesn’t throw off the entire rest of the rack. And it looked like that would probably do the trick. So I also decided to drill out the mounting brackets just a little bit so I can get all four screws in there, Not necessary, but I did want all four, just so it would look nice, but that ended up being a mistake because with all four in there, it, once again threw off the height.

Cause not only are the brackets off. So is the entire height of the equalizer itself. It’s just a couple of millimeters larger than an actual 1U rack-mountable device. So the quick and dirty solution ended up being to take out a couple of the screws and then just push the whole thing down into the very bottom of the case because there was a little bit of leeway there. And then with a mounted lower, everything else was in its correct place above that. 

That’s not the last problem with the equalizer but well get to that later because for now it was smooth sailing getting everything else mounted in there because, you know, they were designed by people that actually knew what they were doing. So there’s the mixer in its place followed by the MIDI Thru Box. Which is our only 2U tall rack-mounted thing in this entire setup. MIDI modules are going to start going into place. And to make that happen, I got one of these 1U tall shelves to go above the MT-32 because there wasn’t enough surface area to start stacking things on the MT-32.

And we can start stacking, with my idea being to use some of this industrial Velcro beneath the units themselves to make sure they’re not sliding around. Now, I could use screws and there were some holes in the bottom of the shelves in order to do that, but I didn’t want to. So the first two that are going in here are the Roland Sound Canvas SC-55 and the Yamaha, MU80,  then my thinking was above those would go the next two units just put onto another shelf.

Although, immediately I ran into a problem with the Akai. It was a little bit too tall, I thought, with the front face plate and then the screw that was holding in the front face plate, that made it kind of rock around. So it took the screw out and that made it flat. But then once I got the power strip installed above that, it became clear pretty quickly that it wasn’t going to work out. The face plate itself as a bit of a thickness to it, and with that shelf, the second shelf installed. it just made the whole thing too tight.

So I took the shelf back out and then just sort of stuck the Akai SG01K on top of the Roland Sound Canvas. I did actually have to take the Velcro out from underneath the Sound Canvas in order to get it to fit. But yeah, worked out just fine. Everything’s in there tightly, and then I took the Velcro and put it behind in between the units so they’re not sliding around on the backside. And then finally there was the Kawai GMega which slid in from behind just fine being pretty.

A little more Velcro to hold those in place, keep those from sliding around and there we go. That’s the basics of the MIDI Rack Mountain all put into place. And I got to say it is looking pretty imposing already. Just all of these particular modules stuck together in an 8U rack. Ah, that is a sight to behold. I am loving what I’m seeing. Of course I love it even more with some power and that was next up.

And, unfortunately, these power cables provided an immediate source of frustration. Some of them are really long. Some of them are just clunky and their design. did my best though to try to get everything tucked in place and out of the way. And then for the ones that use a wall wart on the end, I used some of these little extensions, so that way I could actually plug it into the power strip because otherwise they don’t go in sideways, they go in like facing up or down and there’s just no space to make that happen inside of here. So yeah, really just wanting to get everything all connected so I could power it on and I don’t know just admire it really quickly, make sure everything is going to do what it’s supposed to. I mean, I’ve tested all of these individually. I know that they work but I want to see them working with this power strip.

So let’s go ahead and turn it on. That is immediately satisfying. I love clicking all of those power buttons and seeing everything turn on like this but the only thing even more satisfying is turning all of them off again. Yeah, that’s awesome.

So next up, I spent a while doing a little bit of cable management for the power. Just trying to get everything out of the way as much as I could because were about to crowd it up a whole lot more. Like everything has got a MIDI in as well as audio out and that’s got to go to the MIDI Thru Box and then our mixer down there. So yeah, let’s get started. We’re going to begin here with the MIDI cables and I’ve still got the ones that I use from the previous MIDI mountain, so that’ll do. It be kind of nice to have some shorter ones but for now this is just fine.

And getting them all connected is easy enough. It’s just getting the MIDI ends connected to the MIDI thru which sends MIDI out. That’s going to connect to our external MPU-401 that’s connected to the PC. And then it’s time for another bit of cable management of sorts to try and get just a little bit more space for all the audio cables that are coming up. That is going to be a mess. Reason being that pretty much all the cables that I have are three feet long and they don’t really need to be any more than a foot long but it’s what I’ve got on hand so this is what’s going to do for now.

 And there all going to be going through the mixer in stereo and they connect to the mixer with quarter-inch TRS on that side,

and then the other side, some of them have quarter inch and then some of them have RCA, just depends. But I had cables for both of them not using any adapters. What I don’t have a cable for is something to go from the output of the mixer to. 

cause equalizers RCA only and the output of the mixer is through XLR. I’m not going to be using that. I’m just going to order an RCA to XLR adapter and get that sent to me real quick, and until then we can test it out using the headphone output on the front of the mixer. And since I’ve tested both of the Roland’s and the Yamaha before on this channel, let’s try something out that we haven’t yet like the GMega. It’s got a built in demo mode, so well let that do its thing.

Oh heck yeah, doesn’t that sound awesome. I really liked the sound of this unit. It’s got a very unique tone to it. You can see why I wanted it in here, but anyway... A couple of days passed and the XLR adapter showed up and this all allow us to just go straight from the mixers main outputs to the stupid equalizer. And I’m going to go from the mixer to the equalizers, I guess, DVD input. Doesn’t really matter what its labeled, they’re all the same, really.

And then I’ve got another cable to go from the rec out of the mixer to our computer speakers, whatever they may be. And the it takes left and right RCA, and puts that to a single three and a half millimeter female jack on the other end.

For now though, I just wanted to test this thing out, that it’s going to be any good, but whatever. Let’s go ahead and get the plastic off of there first. Well, that was exciting. Let’s finally test this thing out and see if it actually has a real spectrum analyzer or if it’s dumb. Well, that’s unfortunate. Sure is unfortunate. It’s the same display no matter what kind of audio you put in there It just increases the height with the volume. That’s it. And you know what?

If I’d have waited, I would have seen that Techmoan got pretty much this exact same thing just slightly as aesthetically differently, but I actually bought this thing before his video ever came out. I’m like, Oh no, I bet mine is just as terrible.

And it is and worse with the rack-mounting garbage. but I don’t plan to use that. Like I said earlier, I really just wanted this for a spectrum analyzer, a VFD on the front, and it doesn’t even do that. So well just pretend that’s not there.

Let’s go ahead and try this out with a MIDI input instead of just the built-in demos. And while we will be plugging this into a computer here pretty soon to get some MIDI files playing. right now, I’m using my Arterial Key Step from my main synth setup, We’ll let that play.

And now that I’ve got them all on the same instrument there’s some weirdness there but they’re all on the grand piano, just default piano. So let’s go with that MT-32 first. So there’s that. Next will be the SC-55. Next is the Akai SG01K.

And then last, the Kawai GMega. They each have their own individual settings for chorus and reverb and things like that. I could go and like make them all completely dry or completely wet or whatever, but I just have them on the default things right now. MT-32 though, even though its blinking on number one here, I actually had to switch the piano to MIDI channel two. And I just put the rest of these on channel two, band then this one sees channel two as channel one.

Eh, it’s just weird because this is before General MIDI, so it treats things a little bit differently, not a big problem in a computer setting when were, you know, games are just going to give it the instructions it needs as long as something is designed for the MT-32, for instance, but anyway... Something else that’s kind of fun is now, since they’re all going at once here, we can just have them all going together.

There we go. That’s five pianos in tune And of course, you could make it, effectively, a five voice synth  and treat them as like five oscillators. Or could just go really nuts at the timing and create our own oscillation by speeding up the rate and...Let’s go ahead and get it plugged into a computer though and see what it sounds like with some MIDI files, and of course, some games OH, this is exciting now that it’s finally coming together. 

Okay, so we’ve got the MIDI Rack Mountain all set up and are ready to go and connected to the MPU-401 box right here through MIDI and then the box in the back is connected to the MIF-IPC card in the LGR Wood grain PC that is running here. And then the cards...

the sound cards line in, the Sound Blaster Pro 2.0, that’s connected to the mixer here, which takes all this, sends it to the line in, and then, yeah, it’s just mixing that with the normal Sound Blaster sound so that we can get sound effects and music coming through the same set of little computer speakers up here so.

Kind of an underwhelming set of speakers compared to all this craziness, but it’ll do the job. So let’s run the, you know, the thing we’ve got to run in terms of testing General MIDI, Duke 3D. And let’s do the MT-32 first because this is not General MIDI and, in fact, something else I’ve noticed, that’s kind of a side effect of it being mounted forward, is you can’t actually see the display as brightly because of the polarization on the front here. If I look at it from down here, it’s nice and bright, but at eye level, it’s kind of dark because of the way its mounted in this rack-mount casing, so that’s something, but it is what it is. So yeah, lets test this.

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