External Hardware to External Hardware - VMidi bridging

[chrisfoster]

Hi,

External Hardware Trigger -> External Hardware Synths via USB Midi interface(s) and CopperLan

My idea was to setup:

External Trigger 1 -> VMidi1~ Vmidi1 ->External 1
External Trigger 2 -> VMidi1~ Vmidi1 ->External 2
External Trigger n -> VMidi1~ Vmidi1 ->External n....

....so every hardware trigger is connected to every External synth and so when windows decides to change USB port assignments, it wont affect the signal flow.

When I route directly I have signal connectivity, when going via a VMidi1...MidiOx sees VMidi1 activity but it is not being passed out of VMidi1 to the external world.

Yes:

Trigger-Source-Ch16 -> USBMidi -> Win8-Port1 -> [CP-Direct-Connection] -> Win8-Port2 ->USBMidi ->Trigger-Target-Ch16

No:

Trigger-Source-Ch16 -> USBMidi -> Win8-Port1 -> [VMidi1] -> Win8-Port2 ->USBMidi ->Trigger-Target-Ch16

** I have used a midi transformation application called TransMidiFier and used CopperLan as it's Loopback device. Using the same Copperlan set up, it works perfectly i.e it takes VMidi and sends to external synths as set up in CP. Something screwy with CP loopback?

Thanks,

Chris

[CopperPhil]

Hi Chris,

actually there is no CP loopback

There are two VMIDI1 ports in a computer:
- the first is a CopperLan to MIDI bridge
- the second is a MIDI to Copperlan bridge

Both have the same name... as a USB MIDI port exposes usually two different ports MIDI IN and OUT under the same name, except one is "IN" and the second is "OUT". But we avoided this terminology for the CopperLan<->MIDI bridges because "IN" and "OUT" roles can be confused in a network technology using Virtual MIDI ports (for which the IN & Out terminology is inverted).

In your example, "USBMidi -> Win8-Port1" is a MIDI to CopperLan bridge, then you go through CopperLan to VMIDI1 which is a CopperLan to MIDI bridge. When you connect VMIDI1 to "Win8-Port2 -> USBMidi", VMIDI1 is a MIDI to CopperLan bridge connected through CopperLan to "Win8-Port2" (a CopperLan to MIDI bridge). So you are missing a MIDI loopback between VMIDI1 (CP->MIDI) and VMIDI1 (MIDI->CP). You can do that using MIDI software injecting on VMIDI1 (viewed as a MIDI OUT port) what it receives on VMIDI1 (view as a MIDI IN port).

So if you want a loopback between Win8-Port1 and Win8-Port2, you found the right solution: bind them directly through CopperLan. There is no need to pass through VMIDI1, except if you want to catch the MIDI stream in some MIDI software.

Cheers,

/Phil