Copper Lan and Legacy Midi devices

[rathergood]

Hi there, I have two computers running Windows XP SP3. One runs Cubase SX3 and the other runs Gigagstudio and various VSTi's through Vstack.

I also have an external Midian 8x8 deviice attached via the Serial Port. All of the inputs and output show up in Cubaase.

Copeperlan works really well between computers, very happy witrh how well it works. However, at the moment I am having to sue mltiple installation of Midi OX as two of my midi devides use editors and Windows won't let you use more than one program to access a real midi port.

|get the impression that I can eliminate multiple instaces of Midi OX and instead use Copper Lan to handle it instead. However, none of the Real Midi Ports appear in Copper Lan, just the Midi OX ones.
Could you please help me on this? Is it possible to have Copper OLan act like Midfi OX does, allowing me to send virtual outputs to real ones? I cannot see how to do it.

Many thanks for suchg great software

Clive loseyb

[CopperPhil]

Yes, sure it is possible!

First, ensure that the real MIDI ports are not open by Cubase or any other MIDI software.
Then open the CopperLan Manager, go to "Edit" tab, click on the "MIDI on (yourcomputer)", "MIDI to CP interface" or "CP to MIDI interface", a list of your physical MIDI IN and OUT is displayed, set them "On".
At this time, the selected physical MIDI ports are handled by CopperLan, so it's no more possible to handle them directly from MIDI software such as Cubase or MIDI-Ox. But since those ports are now CopperLanized, you can split them to any number of virtual MIDI ports and get finally the same result as you've open the physical MIDI port from several MIDI softwares at the same time. To do that:
- go to the "Connect" tab
- click on "MIDI on (yourcomputer)"
- you get a list of CopperLanized physical MIDI IN ports and a number of MIDI to CopperLan virtual MIDI ports (you can create from 4 to 32 VMIDI ports, see "Edit" tab).
- from there you can create channel basis or virtual MIDI cable connections to one or more VMIDI ports, let's say VMIDI1 and VMIDI2 so then you can open VMIDI1 in Cubase and VMIDI2 in Midi-Ox and get the incoming MIDI stream on both softwares at the same time.
- in the opposite way you can connect VMIDI1 to a physical MIDI OUT port, and then VMIDI2 to the same port, so you can send MIDI data from two MIDI softwares to the same physical MIDI OUT.

Actually CopperLan acts as a huge MIDI patch bay, it's able to handle any physical MIDI IN and OUT port, and you can create any number of split or merge connection with channel remapping at will

[rathergood]

Hi, thank you so much for your answer, it's exactly what I was hoping for. I wanted to eliminate using Midi OX completely and just use Copper Lan but I have hit a problem: my Hardware Midi Ports do not show up in Copper Lan. All of the MIdi OX ports (8 in and 8 out) show up but not the Midiman POrts.

They show up in Cubase (when it is loaded) and they also appear in Midi OX when it is loaded) but not in Copperlan.

In Cubase they appear under Windows Midi (please see attached screenshot). They also appear in my D4 editor (please see attached) and all of my other editors.

Is there something about Copper Lan not recognising Midi Ports that are not connected via USB?

The reason I have my Midiman conected via the serial port not the USB port is because I have had many issues with timing in the past and the only way to get stability was via the Serial port. It may be "old school" but it works!

Anyway I do not know if this is something that can be addressed but I weould thought I would let you know, just in case.

Thanks again for coming back to me so quickly it is really appreciated.

Best wishes

Clive

[CopperPhil]

Hmmm... I've no idea why your MIDI ports are not visible in the CopperLan list. The problem is we don't have such old equipment at hand, and so we can't investigate...

[rathergood]

Hi, I have come back and had another look at this and I am very embarrsed to discover that the Midiman Ports were showing in Copper Lan all allong... they were just below the other ports out of sight and it was only when I moved the whoel thing up the screen that i saw them.

Anyway, that is really good news because I can go back and remove Midi OX and try again!

I'll let you know how I get on

[rathergood]

I have removed Midi OX but the CP Virtual Ports were not appearing. I uninstalled CP and reinstalled and they are back! Now to see if it will all work! Thanks again for your help!

[rathergood]

HI, I just wanted to update you on the situation. After many reinstalls, going back to the drawing board, I now have my two Windows XP PCs running solidly without crashing. One is dual boot so I don't clog up the music partition with anything else.

I have two PCs, one running Cubase and on XP SP2. The other one runs Gigastudio / VStack on XP SP3.

The Cubase PC has got a Midisport 8x8 device connected via the serial port (legacy drivers because USB sucks).

The other PC has got not midi hardware connected.

The Cubase PC allows a maximum of 12 Copperlan Vmidi ports, any more and it does not work.
The 'Gigastudio' PC allows a maximum of 16 Copperlan Vmidi ports, any more and it does not work.

Everything is working very well. However...

The only fly in the ointment is the fact that I have to reinstall Copperlan every single time I reboot the PC.

If I restart normally, when I open Copperlan, all of the Midiman hardware has disappeared.

If I rerun the installer (without removing it first), the midi ports come back and everything is configured as I had left it.

Very strange indeed. I have the latest version of Coppperlan (I think) - 1.2.6.

I would really appreciate your input on this... thank you!

All the best

Clive

[CopperPhil]

This is strange, it seems that the ports are not detected at startup.

You shouldn't have to re-install CopperLan. Restarting the service would be enough.

So just to check this assumption, could you try this: once the PC is started, you don't see the Midiman hardware on the CopperLan network. Just restart the CPVNM service. Does it restore the situation?