possible to import midi to RK008 offline?

benjohnson2001

Can I import midi to the RK008 without an internet connection? I am intending to use the RK008 solely as a midi data filer similar to the Yamaha MDF2 or Yamaha MDF3, and I'm not thrilled on relying on an external website server for such basic functionality.

grit

There's no need for an active internet connection to im/export midi files or backups. As also is the case with the RK006, you can download the settings page HTML from the settings page, save it locally and use the page offline, the link is below on the settings page: https://retrokits.com/rk008/settings/

benjohnson2001

Ahh okay that's great! Are there any challenges to using the RK008 in a similar way as the Yamaha MDF2? I'm assuming I can simply press play and have my midi file sent through the output, but I wasn't sure if it would get chopped up into bars or quantized in some strange way

grit

A quick look at that Yamaha I think it stores on floppies right? That means probably 360k to 1.44Mb of midi storage. The rk008 is mmt8 compatible which means 64k memory. And although the rk008 has 16 blocks of these , it can not be used for continuous recording like that. Recordings won’t be chopped or quantised though, and the rk008 is able to record any midi message.

benjohnson2001

Yes but there are floppy disk emulator mods where you can use a usb stick. Oh I'm not planning on recording midi, I just want to import a midi file and then play it with the midi data going out of the device. However I didn't know if the RK008 would break up my midi file in some way and try to force it into some RK008 specific paradigm. All I want to do is play a midi file unaltered!

grit

It can do that if the midi file is below 64k, and the rk008 will conform to its own tempo - it ignores tempo changes in the midi track.

If you want true 1:1 .mid file playback you can do that with the RK006, you can plug in a usb stick not the rk006 OTG cable and it will play back the midi file as is.

benjohnson2001

This may be a dumb question but how do I press play on the RK006? I need to simultaneously play the midi at the same time I press the record button on my Zoom R8

grit

The rk006 top button can act as a play/stop button, it varies though;

If there is no tempo in your midi setup the button acts as a tap tempo, tapping it multiple times will set the tempo and send a midi start command. If it is playing then press it once again to stop. It can take a while for the rk006 to stop because it needs to detect if you try to adjust tap tempo or if you want to stop.

If you have set a master tempo in the rk006 settings page the top button will be a direct start/stop action.

If there is a midi file on a plugged in usb stick the top button will also do a direct start/stop on the loaded midi file playback (because the tempo is defined in the midi file).

If you feed an external clock to the rk006 it will also act as a start/stop button.

benjohnson2001

I'm watching and it seems to play immediately when the usb is inserted, is this still the behavior? If so then if I wanted to synchronize the playback I would insert the usb and then stop it, then pressing again would playback from the very beginning of the midi file instead of resuming from its current place? Thanks for being patient with my questions

grit

I’m not completely sure anymore about that behaviour: I know that if you feed the rk006 with external clock it will only play the usb file if you press start on the device which sends the clock. It -should- work like this as well when rk006 internal clock is set but I’d need to check that.