Have you ever looked at your piles and piles of MIDI equipment—some of it modern, some of it vintage—and thought, “Why can’t I somehow network all of these devices, so that I may have a seamless and powerful workflow that will merge, filter, and route my MIDI messages?” Well, if that sounds like you, look no further than the iConnectivity mio4, a 4 Input / 4 Output USB MIDI Interface with Ethernet Connectivity.
With a complement of four 5-pin MIDI connection points, USB jacks, and free software to coordinate it all, this interface can function as a hub through which all connected MIDI-enabled gear will work with two computers at the same time—and even more, if you connect the unit to a router via the onboard Ethernet port. All in all, this unit gives you a total of 49 configurable 16-channel MIDI ports, allowing you to utilize all your MIDI gear in separated lanes across Windows- and Mac-based DAWs. Custom configurations can be saved onto a flash drive, and recalled automatically whenever you power up the machine. The device itself is USB bus-powered, though the use of an iConnectivity power adapter (available separately) allows you to use the unit without a computer. Stand-alone mode makes it quite suitable for onstage use, so it’s a good thing this piece of gear is durable and portable, taking up only a half of a rack space.
Further maximizing the flexibility of the mio4, any MIDI port can be routed into any other MIDI port; it is a veritable matrix of connectivity—and one that allows for wireless networking. Buckaroo Banzai once famously said, “Don’t tug on that: you never know what it’s connected to.” With this device, you can bypass his advice altogether, because you won’t have to tug on any of your MIDI gear for a long, long time.
