M4U EX : Nice overall, too bad the standalone doesn't have more features.

The build quality seems excelent, also it looks good.

It has a lot of ports so I am quite happy there.

I will be using the standalone feature most of the time.

It has 3 modes that you can cycle through with the button.

1/7 mode makes sense (1 IN to 7 OUTs).

7/1 mode is also fine (7 INs to 1 OUT).

But what the hell is "pass-through"?

4 INs to 4 OUTs? Well, not quite :-(

The manual says it will route 1 to 3, 2 to 4, 5 to 7 and 6 to 8.

How is this different to just plugging the cable directly where you want it.

Or is this like a MIDI patchbay feature? Except that ports 1-4 are on the front of the unit so you'll have 2 IN and 2 OUT on each side.

I thought that this would be like a hybrid between 1/7 and 7/1. Not exacly sure if that would be somehow hard to implement or whatever, but having a patchbay feature seems useless to me.

I mainly wanted a MIDI merge device so this will be fine I guess.

UPDATE: I ended up returning the unit and bought a Blokas MIDIHub instead and it's all I ever wanted and more ❤ (google it - it's awesome).