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DMX 2 Midi & Midi 2 DMX

DMX controller software and lighting desks provide quick and easy way to program DMX lighting, but usually lack the powerfull timeline based recording and editing features of Midi based DAWs that most musicains are familiar with. DMX2Midi receives up to four universes (2048 channels) of DMX data over ArtNet and converts it to Midi data, where it can be fed into any Midi software where it can be recorded or editied. It can then be output through the Midi2DMX app where its converted back into ArtNet or sent to a compatable Midi-DMX interface such as the DoreMidi MTD1024.

DMX2Midi and Midi2DMX

are available in the Mac App Store

Buy Both for a Discount

Getting Started

DMX and ArtNet Primer

Data Format

DMX Output

DoreMidi MTD1024

Getting Started

You'll need a suitable Art-Net controller - We've used LightKey on Mac and Photon (v I and II) on iPad. Run DMX2Midi, then in your controller select either MulitCast mode or with the IP address of your Mac. Note you can't run two ArtNet nodes on the same machine, so you may not be able to run your controller software on the same machine as DMX2Midi.

Once your controller is sending data to the App, you can select Midi CC or Notes mode. Which you choose depends on what you want to do with the Midi data. Both should work identically, but various DAW's handle note and CC data differently and one may be more convienient.

Finally select the Midi destination - either a hardware device, the input to the sofware you want to record in, or an IAC bus (configured in Audio Midi Setup)

DMX and ArtNet Primer

If you're a musician you're probably at least vaguely familiar with Midi, but DMX and particularly ArtNet can be complex. DMX traditionally ran on XLR cables, which can each carry 1 bank of 512 control channels. This signal is sent to the lights which can be daisychained together. Each light has a block of channels that it listens to.

As lights got more complex 512 channels became insufficient, so mulitple blocks of 512 are used - each called a Universe. Universes are either carried on multiple XLR cables, or over ethernet. When DMX is carried over ethernet it uses a system called ArtNet.

You laptop can sends ArtNet data over the network, whcih gets picked up by an ArtNet "node" which typically converts back to the older DMX over XLR system to connect to the actual lights.

Data Format

The apps use data in one of three similar formats, optimised for representing DMX data within the Midi world.

DMX data consists of Universes which can be thought of as similar to Midi Channels. Within each Universe there are individual DMX channels which correspond to Midi CC's. However a DMX universe contains 512 channels, while a Midi channel only holds 128 Midi CC's, so one Universe requires 4 midi channels to carry the same data.

Universe 0 uses channels 1-4, Universe 1 uses channels 5-8, Universe 2 uses channels 9-12 and Universe 3 uses channels 13-15. To make things slightly more confusing than they need to be, DMX numbers Universes from 0, and Channels from 1, while Midi numbers Channels from 1 and Notes/CC's from 0. The table below summarises this.

Rather than using Midi CC's you can also choose to use Midi notes or Aftertouch data. The mapping is exactly the same and there is no inherent benefit to either format. However if you're feeding this in to a DAW for recording, then your choice of software may influence your choice. Some DAW software dislikes Note On's without Notes Off's (which we inherently need, as to fade a light, we can't turn it off between steps), while some DAW software may try to interpret the CC's in ways we don't want.

DMX Output

To output the Midi data back to DMX, the Midi2DMX app receives data in ths format, and outputs it back to ArtNet.

Alternativly you can use a DMX interface that can receive Midi such as the DoreMidi MTD1024, which has two hardware DMX outputs.

DoreMidi MTD1024

Before using the software we recommend updating the interface to the latest software - during development we saw various problems with the interface hanging when sent large volumes of data. With the latest firmware we've not seen any issues during performance, though factory reseting before reprogramming seems to help.

Firmware updates are currently only supported on Windows. Details and Downloads are availabe from the manufactures website.

After updating the firmware, perform a factory reset, then upload the mapping file below which maps midi CC's from channels 1 to 8 onto the two ouputs as per the table above.

Once this is installed, selecting the MTD1024 as midi output in DMX2Midi will allow immediate control of your DMX lights.

MTD Mapping for CC Mode

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