Case Study: The 16th Sheep Reunion Tour — Redundant MIDI at Scale

The Result#

Sold-out venues. 5,000+ seats per night. Tickets gone in minutes. One of Israel's most beloved cultural events — The 16th Sheep (הכבש השישה עשר) reunion tour — brought Yehudit Ravitz, Gidi Gov, David Broza, and Yoni Rechter back together for the first time in decades.

Behind the nostalgia was a massive video production: an 80+ megapixel LED canvas, 12 live 12G-SDI cameras, and multiple Resolume Arena media servers handling real-time camera switching and content playback. Every single MIDI message — from camera cuts to effect triggers — was distributed by MIDInet.

Zero MIDI failures. Every night.

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The Challenge#

Large-scale concert video production creates a unique set of constraints that most MIDI solutions simply cannot handle.

Distance: 100+ Meters from Controller to Server#

The 12 channels of 12G-SDI cameras required enormous bandwidth from stage to the media servers. Rather than run dozens of expensive 12G fiber links to FOH, the production team made a practical decision: place all media servers stage-side, close to the camera inputs.

This meant the MIDI controllers at Front of House were over 100 meters from the machines they needed to control. USB MIDI has a hard limit of 5 meters. Even active USB extenders are unreliable past 30 meters. DIN MIDI maxes out at 15 meters. At 100+ meters, traditional MIDI connectivity simply doesn't work.

Scale: Many Controllers to Many Servers#

This wasn't a simple one-controller-to-one-machine setup. The production required:

• Multiple Resolume Arena servers running simultaneously (both macOS and Windows)
• All servers controlled by the same APC-40 — camera switches and content triggers had to happen in sync across every machine
• Full MIDI feedback — LED states, button indicators, and clip status had to flow back from each server to the controller
• A backup APC-40 that mirrored the main controller's state at all times, ready for instant takeover

Reliability: Non-Negotiable Redundancy#

With 5,000+ people in the audience and national media coverage, there was zero tolerance for failure. The video system needed to be fully redundant — not just the media servers, but the entire MIDI control chain. If the main controller failed, the backup had to take over seamlessly. If a network path dropped, MIDI had to keep flowing.

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What We Found#

Before choosing MIDInet, the production team evaluated every available option for long-distance, multi-machine MIDI distribution.

Military-Grade MIDI-over-Fiber#

Products exist from defense contractors and broadcast equipment manufacturers that convert MIDI to fiber optic signals. These are reliable but prohibitively expensive — often $2,000+ per link pair — with outdated interfaces, minimal software support, and vendor lock-in. Most haven't been updated in years.

Brandless MIDI Extenders#

The market is flooded with inexpensive MIDI-over-Cat5/Cat6 extenders from no-name manufacturers. In testing, these proved unreliable at distance, offered no redundancy, no MIDI feedback support, and no way to distribute to multiple machines simultaneously. For a show of this scale, they were a non-starter.

USB Active Extenders#

Active USB extenders can technically carry MIDI signals over Cat5, but they're designed for point-to-point connections. Covering 100+ meters requires chaining multiple extenders — each one adding latency and a potential failure point. There's no built-in redundancy, and you need a separate cable run for every machine.

RTP-MIDI#

Apple's built-in RTP-MIDI protocol (available on macOS, and via third-party drivers on Windows) works well for simple setups. But it's point-to-point — you need a separate session for each machine. There's no redundancy, no automatic failover, and critically, no device identity cloning. Resolume Arena wouldn't see an "Akai APC40" — it would see a generic network MIDI port, breaking all existing MIDI mappings.

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How MIDInet Fit#

MIDInet solved every constraint the production faced — and it did so with infrastructure that was already in place.

Zero New Cabling#

The production already had fiber optic LAN snakes running from FOH to stage for network communication between departments. MIDInet runs over standard Ethernet — it simply joined the existing network. No new cables, no new infrastructure, no rack space.

Minutes to Deploy#

Installation on each media server was a single terminal command. Copy, paste, running. The mDNS zero-config discovery meant no IP addresses to configure, no network routing to set up. Each client found the host automatically.

# macOS
curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Hakolsound/MIDInet/main/scripts/client-mac.sh | bash

# Windows (PowerShell)
irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Hakolsound/MIDInet/main/scripts/client-win.ps1 | iex

Cross-Platform, Same Controller#

The production used a mix of macOS and Windows Resolume Arena servers. MIDInet handled both platforms seamlessly — every machine received MIDI from the same APC-40, with device identity cloning ensuring Resolume saw "Akai APC40" on every client, preserving all existing MIDI mappings.

Dual-Controller Sync#

Both the main and backup APC-40 received real-time MIDI feedback simultaneously. LED states, button indicators, and clip status were mirrored across both controllers at all times. When the operator switched cameras on the main controller, the backup's LEDs updated instantly — so a seamless takeover could happen at any moment.

Focus Management#

MIDInet's focus management system allowed the operator to switch which Resolume server received MIDI input — cycling between machines for camera control, content triggering, and effect adjustments — while all servers continued to receive the same broadcast for monitoring. This one-to-focused, broadcast-to-all architecture was exactly what the production needed.

Total Cost#

MIDInet delivered broadcast-grade MIDI distribution for the cost of a single Raspberry Pi — using network infrastructure that was already in place.

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The Takeaway#

The 16th Sheep reunion tour proved that MIDInet can handle the demands of large-scale, high-stakes live production. The combination of unlimited distance over standard Ethernet, many-to-many distribution, dual-controller redundancy with real-time feedback sync, and zero additional hardware cost made it the only viable solution for this production's requirements.

Every other option was either too expensive, too unreliable, too limited, or required infrastructure that didn't exist at the venue.

MIDInet just worked.

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