Multiple/identical USB Midi Interfaces

[chrisfoster]

Hi all,

'MIDI Express 128 is a 8-in/9-out MIDI interface compatible with Macintosh and Windows'

I have 5 of these USB interfaces, hooked directly to USB ports on a PC, running Win8

Windows is somewhat of a princess and likes to change the enumeration points of her USB ports in a (seemingly) random manner after a reboot. This makes it hard to do the 'any to any' Midi routing I'm trying to achieve.

I think that CopperLan piggy backs on the Motu win8 driver, which in turn is allocated a hardware memory range?

So I assume that, CopperLan has no way of helping this port re-mapping problem without going native copperlan hardware. This would intercept USB hardware ports before the Windows princess changes her mind.

Unlike a networking device which has a unique hardware mac address, I'm guessing USB has no unique identifier to enable a lockdown of a port by a manager such as coppperlan.

Q: Am I correct?

Q: Would OSX/ Mac, handle identical USB Midi hardware any differently...could it know that each device needs to stay locked to a virtual location?

Q: If It concludes that I need at least 5 Native USB Copperlan ports, to defeat this problem.....is that available to buy or build......can exisiting USB hub devices be hacked?

Thanks from Australia,

Chris

[chrisfoster]

After experimentation:

Do not install any USB3 cards that use VIA drivers...they are a nightmare with USB Midi interfaces!!

I now use 3 identical USB3 PCI-e cards that utilize Renasys/NEC chipset with great success.

You can delete these Renasys/NEC boards in USBDeview and they just spring back to life. They also seem to remember their port assignments very well if your using more than 1 USB interface I use 5 x Motu 128) which of course is essential for routing.

Cheers