iConnectivity mio 1-in 1-out USB to MIDI Interface for Mac and PC

USB is great for Midi, except when it’s not. With many devices, DIN Midi just works, when a USB connection sometimes won’t, or is less reliable. DIN Midi also brings the benefit of the opto-isolation that quality gear has on the DIN Midi connection, that will not be engineered into the USB port. This may mean few chances for electrical noise to creep into your signal. Case in point: The USB port on my TC Helicon VoiceLive 3 Extreme simply wasn’t compatible with the device I wanted to connect it to. I put this 1-in/1-out interface between, and they immediately synced up. Simple. This is the second iConnectivity product I’ve bought. The experience with both (MioXM) and this Midi 1-in/1-out has been just right. These product simply work. They do exactly what they promise, with no frustrations. Before getting the MioXM, I had questions. Tech support was excellent. iConnectivity is a company that solves problems, not creates them. I can’t say enough good things about both of the products I’ve bought from them.

I've had one of these for quite some time. Works great. Works great on iphone, ipad, macbook, windows... I use it as the dedicated in/out for my octatrack to my daw (whatever it might be for the job). The big caveat is though, because of the way windows handles USB devices, if you buy 2 MIOs, and plug in 2 at once, only 1 is going to work. I did this because I thought I'd be smart and leave 1 plugged into my desktop at all times, and have another to move around to use with the iphone... or whatever right? So no value added for me if I can't use them both at the same time on the desktop for convience. I do have to other midi devices that use USB that could give me a physical midi port on my iphone or Ipad, but they are keyboards or pad controllers... the convivence of the size of the MIO just being a single cable to midi I/O is what I was looking for. Weird edge case I know, but I couldn't find anything answering this situation anywhere, so now I've done that experiment, and you don't have to. Again, if you just need 1 midi I/O on your machine or iDevice... and dont need a full blown audio interface. This is the best tool for the job.

Hands down the best midi cable I’ve bought. Will work with just about anything and doesn’t feel cheap like so many other cables of this kind. Buy this cable if you need to do anything midi, it will not let you down.

So far I'm impressed with the unit. I purchased it with the intent of using it as a synchronization mechanism in a theatrical venue. IE - I have it sitting at FOH, where sound and lighting are connected physically via DIN. The unit is then connected to the venue's network, Pro Tools machine, Ableton Machine (loop/click,) and backup mac all connect to the unit over network. (ETH ports 1-4,) I've also purchased a kenton LNDR to run a physical DIN connection to stage from FOH over another cat5 connection so that our Kronos may be synchronized to Ableton over the Mio4 network. In terms of overall function, all of the connections and routing appear to function as desired. I am able to trigger multiple show parameters in complex ways with very little effort. For instance, Ableton can act as both trigger master for Pro Presenter and Lighting while also supplying midi synchronization to the Kronos, which makes the arpeggiator function actually useful in a live setting. I can do the same from the sound or lighting desk, or even pro presenter, using Ableton as a submaster triggering mechanism. In that regard, this unit is super solid. Having said that, I do have one fairly large concern about using this thing live: This venue has a fairly large network, so show control devices must be set to static ip for stability/usability from show to show. When powering on the mio4, at least in static ip mode, it will NOT recognize connection to the network if a cat5 cable is already physically patched upon boot. You MUST remove and re-plug the cat5 cable to the mio4 in order for connection to be established. (Same result with multiple different routers/switches,) The unit seems to be stupid reliable as long as it remains powered on; zero connection issues there so far. Thus, the concern is two-fold: this is an extra, sort of asinine, step in booting up a show control system, that will also wear out the cat5 connection on the unit (and/or cable,) fairly quickly. ...and b: in the event of power failure, it is an extra thing to deal with while getting the show back up and running. I have submitted a ticket to iConnectivity support and fully expect this will be a simple issue to resolve with firmware update. My only other comment is that I will agree with other reviewers that the iconnectivity software editing interface is slightly confusing at first. I'm pretty well-versed in midi architecture and traffic control; and still found myself pondering some of the filtering settings juxtaposed against the routing setup. (IE you're ENABLING destinations in routing, and DISABLING specific things by way of ENABLING filters in the filter settings.) Really looking forward to pushing this thing to the limit! I'll update this review once I hear back from iConnectivity concerning the iP addressing on boot.

I bought this to connect an older midi out keyboard with an Amazon Fire tablet. Simply Piano recognizes it without trouble and it works exactly as needed. No extra drivers or complicated setup needed. Was plug and play

Super flexible one stop shop for midi, works out of the gate with minimal fuss. Pros: Routing and filtering is very comprehensive, timing seems very tight, and display clearly shows messages and routing. Supports networked midi and controller hosting. Supports Linux out of the box. As far as I can tell its the only 10 port box I have seen that is supported in OSX Yosemite+ Cons: App to configure is not super intuitive, packaging was awful, and app doesnt run on linux, I had to use an iPad to set it up. Also doesnt support presets so whatever is stored is the routing you get. Overall though, rock solid and I'm very happy with it

It doesn't need a separate driver. it really is plug and play. i bought this to replace a cheaper cable and it works so much better and the sound quality is better.

I am going to be tough but fair (IMHO) on this review, so only giving it three stars. I am not saying don't buy however, because if you need a lot of MIDI in/out there aren't really much options out there. Guess everybody is using soft synths these days? So the good is yes you can hook up a lot of gear to this MIDI router. It has newer tech such as USB MIDI. You can hook up two different host computers. There is a lot of granular control of MIDI routing and filtering. I have both Cubase & Pro Tools, and they both have no problem integrating with this device. The critical commentary I have is mainly on software & configuration: For one, the controlling software seems to be designed by an engineer for engineers. As a musician, I think in terms of devices - I want this device to talk to that device, filtering these messages, But this software is all about interfaces (DINs, USB, Eth), and you have multiple pages like working with a multi-tab Excel spreadsheet when doing a more advanced set up. You can name interfaces in the software, but that doesn't resolve the tediousness of working with this software. It is very easy to miss checking a box on one of the pages, causing the "pull your hair out" frustration of checking & double checking things to figure out why a MIDI message you don't want to route to another device is still going there. I would love to see a more polished object oriented GUI for this device. Another minor annoyance is it takes several seconds to 'recognize' and connect to the hardware every time you open the app, That starts bugging me if I open and close it a lot when configuring/troubleshooting. Lastly, this device does not save whatever settings you made in hardware. Every time you turn it on it goes back to default routing everything to everything. Fortunately you can save your settings as a preset and load that after starting it up. But I really don't get the default start up setting of routing everything to everything. All that does is cause MIDI instruments to wig out when you have a bunch of devices connected, and this product is specifically designed for having a lot of devices connected.