Limitations of MIDI

When a key is pressed on your master synth, it takes up to seven milliseconds for the synth to route that MIDI information to its MIDI OUT port. It takes another millisecond for that message to travel to the next instrument, which in turn takes up to seven milliseconds to respond to the incoming message and play the note. This delay is not generally noticeable to the ear, and MIDI can transmit up to 1000 NOTE ON or NOTE OFF messages in a single second. (This does not count the other MIDI messages, like pitch bend, modulation, sustain, etc.) If you are playing live... then you shouldn’t really worry about it. I doubt seriously that you have chops enough to outplay MIDI bandwidth. BUT... if you are in a studio environment with lots of MIDI tracks being recorded into a sequencer, then, it is quite possible that you might reach the limit of the bandwidth if your composition is complicated. If you have a lot of instruments, then a THRU box is something that you will want to invest in, or a MIDI Patch Bay (if you have the cash!) This can help minimize the effect of transmission delay and keep you making music instead of pulling out hair, something which I - fortunately - have an abundance of.

Even though you might find this painfully obvious... you cannot splice MIDI Cables together and make a Y- cable. (Oh, reeeallly?) It will corrupt the data stream and wake up the neighbors. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.