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On MacOs there is an app called Jack Pilot that can create virtual midi ports that can be used to route midi data between applications.

Is it possible to configure JACK to do this on Linux?

I have a single midi controller that I want to use to send data to Bitwig and to a serial device input. When I start Bitwig first, the midi controller is unavailable for the serial device and if I run the serial application first, Bitwig cannot receive data from the midi controller.

Can anyone offer guidance or documentation on how to set up JACK to make single midi controller output available to multiple devices? I am using Arch Linux.

Thanks!

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  • Being said that you do not actually need Jack for that precise purpose (since this could be achieved via raw Alsa settings & utilities) But that you can have several good reasons for using Jack, (particularly if you got rid of pulseaudio or equiv… Do you actually need the solution to be based on jack usage.
    – MC68020
    Commented Jul 29, 2022 at 19:39
  • No. Not at all. I'm open to any solution that I can implement that works
    – Кафка
    Commented Jul 29, 2022 at 20:42

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Quick & Dirty (and possibly absurd) answer : Yes you can use jack for that purpose :

Since you are running arch-linux, this should be enough to setup your midi subsystem. (if not, just ask, we can help you deeper)

Do take care (as explained in the above doc) about :

  • Using QJackctl for handy jack daemon setup & graphical interface for connecting devices.
  • To understand that JACK-MIDI & ALSA-MIDI are two different things (different drivers) and that jack2 (which I believe comes as default on modern arch's distros.) does not support ALSA-MIDI.
    (I have always preferred Jack-1 also claimed as much more efficient than jack-2 by Its author Paul Davis. So do not hesitate to install it)
  • Not told as part of this paragraph, remember that jack (1 ou 2) will give its best if scheduled SCHED_RR which implies special settings for the system (at least irqthreaded) and realtime priviledges for the user

If you are happy with above… well… if it works… don't fix it. If willing more… (particularly on a low end hardware) I can elaborate regarding the "absurd" solution.

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  • Thanks for the guidance! I ended up loading the snd_virmidi module to create the virtual ports. I could then have Bitwig listen on the virtual port and send a data stream from the external midi hardware controller to both the virtual port and the serial device simultaneously using Catia.
    – Кафка
    Commented Aug 1, 2022 at 13:59

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