Automatic Copperlan Configuration Idea

[widdly]

An example using two machines with two pairs of hardware midi ports each...

Machine A has two midi input ports named "DX-7 In" and "Polysix In" and two output ports named "DX-7 Out" and "Polysix Out"

Machine B has two midi input ports named "TR-909 In" and "K5000s In" and two output ports named "TR-909 Out" and "K5000s Out"

On Machine A, Copperlan adds two pairs of Virtual midi ports named "TR-909 In", "K5000s In", "TR-909 Out" and "K5000s Out". These are routed to the relevant hardware midi ports on Machine B.

Likewise, on Machine B, Copperlan adds two pairs of Virtual midi ports named "DX-7 In", "Polysix In", "DX-7 Out" and "Polysix Out". These are routed to the relevant hardware midi ports on Machine B.

For hardware-only Copperlan appliances, their ports would be automatically added as named virtual midi ports to all the PC's.

Tobias Erichsen, the Windows rtpMidi guy, has some apps which dynamically creates virtual midi cable at runtime on WinXP and up so I figure this should be technically feasible, at least in Windows.

This would be a really intuitive way of managing the Copperlan configuration.

[CopperPhil]

Hi!

Well, what you describe is what we call the "MIDILink". When a CopperLan hardware using this feature is connected to the network, MIDI ports (in, out or both depending on the hardware) are created automatically on every computer (Mac or PC) located on the same network. So it gives the user a way to easily handle the equipment, but in MIDI only and so with all of MIDI's limitations. Beyond that the hardware can be controlled in native CopperLan, offering high resolution, hundreds of parameters with current value feedback, ...

So yes, such VMIDI cables can be automatically created in CopperLan, but it restricts their use to MIDI mode while CopperLan can do far more than that... Moreover we haven't implemented this MIDILink feature in the computer's MIDI port handling because an automatic replication of all MIDI ports on each computer can put a mess when you have several computers, each hosting a handful of equipment and interfaces.