How to connect Arturia MatrixBrute with Arturia MIDI Control Centre (Mac)

Here are some notes about using Arturia's MIDI Control Center app (MCC) with our products, trough testing.
My specific test case:

  1. MCC is latest Mac version, 1.13.2.1875

  2. I'm using Arturia MatrixBrute, firmware 2.0.1

  3. I'm using iCM4, firmware 2.2.1

  4. I'm using MIDI Monitor 1.4.1

  5. I'm using iConfig but Auracle X can easily be used

There's very little you need to do to get this working. MCC does not use the port name , rather it polls every MIDI port using a common sysex message looking for an Arturia synth. This can take a while to get a response which may seem like it's not working, but it is working, it's just slow.

Connecting MatrixBrute directly to Mac using USB cable, two MIDI devices show up. The first is "Updater" with one MIDI port and is used to update the MatrixBrute firmware, we don't use that. The second is "MatrixBrute" and has two MIDI ports. We will use the first MIDI port (which is also called MatrixBrute). The second MIDI port (called MIDI Interface) is a "thru" connection to the DIN jacks on the MatrixBrute, so it acts just like a mio, we don't use that for MCC, but we could use it as another set of DIN jacks if we wanted to.

MB 6.png

Using MIDI Monitor on Mac, you'll see that MCC talks to the first port on MatrixBrute MIDI device (the port that is also called MatrixBrute).

MB 1.png

To get this working through iCM4:

1. Connect MatrixBrute to USB host jack on iCM4 and reserve MatrixBrute port #1. You can also reserve MatrixBrute port #2 if you want to use the DIN jacks on MatrixBrute as a mio but that's not necessary for MCC. You can select any of the 8 ports on iCM4, it doesn't have to be 1 and 2.

MB 2.png

2. Select a USB device port on iCM4 and route MIDI between this port and the host port you reserved in step #1. I recommend you use port #1 and not port #16 because MCC will send a sysex message to every MIDI port (5 times for each port, 1 second delay between each message) looking for an Arturia synth. So if you're using port #1, you'll get an immediate response, if you select port #16 you won't get a response until after 75 seconds.

I used port #1 and renamed it to MatrixBrute to make everything obvious. But renaming is not necessary, too bad because it would really speed things up if they would first search for a port with the name "MatrixBrute" before pinging every port. Bad programming.

MB 3.png

I also tried using port #16 and you can see from the two screenshots below how MCC sends out sysex messages to every MIDI port looking for an Arturia synth. Once it gets to port #16 then everything is good (I renamed port #16 to "MatrixBrute" for this example).

MB 4.png
MB 5.png

That is all there is to it. It was very straightforward once I realized that the port name did not make any difference.

Also, in order to do a firmware update on MatrixBrute it MUST be directly connected to the Mac running MCC, it will not work going through iCM4. MCC uses the "Updater" port for firmware updates and it cannot even read the firmware version through iCM4. Nothing shows up in MIDI Monitor either so it is some special kind of MIDI port.

iConnectivity Supporthost port, Arturia