Midi Controller Question

EBDS · Mon Jul 23, 2018 5:16 am

Hi folks. I have kind of a weird question. I have two Akai APC40's (not MKII). I want to use them for two different software products on the same machine. The problem comes from the fact that when the machine boots up they both say they are called APC40 and I don't know which one is which. Is there some way to rename a controller so that it shows a different name when you hook it up and power it on with your system?

janosvitok · Mon Jul 23, 2018 6:22 am

Operating system?

EBDS · Mon Jul 23, 2018 3:16 pm

Windows 10

EBDS · Mon Jul 23, 2018 9:14 pm

OK, I need to get advice from some of you. So I have two APC40's. I turn one on and it's already set up in QLC. It works fine. I turn on the other APC40. It's not selected in QLC. But the first one that was just working stops working. I don't want to use the second one in QLC. I want to use it for my laser but I can't seem to even turn it on without the one I am using for QLC stopping working.

Help?

Thanks,
Rob

EXELBONSAI · Tue Jul 24, 2018 12:08 am

Hello Rob

Exactly the problem I had and have decided to use the APC-40 MKII for Beyond and set up the APC 40 for QLC ..

__________________________________
Hallo Rob

Genau das Problem hatte ich auch und habe mich dazu entschlossen den APC-40 MKII für Beyond zu nutzen und den APC 40 für QLC einzurichten..

EBDS · Tue Jul 24, 2018 1:21 am

Believe it or not I was actually able to get it all working. I am using three midi controllers; an Akai MPD18 for SoundSwitch, an Akai APC40 MK1 for QLC+, and another Akai APC40 MK1 for Pangolin Beyond.

It took a lot of experimentation. This is what I actually do (your situation is probably a bit different.

1. I hook up and turn on all of the controllers.
2. I boot up my laptop (Windows 10)
3. Then I open Virtual DJ (even though it is configured to ignore all of the midi controllers, it seems to do something not nice to them so I have to start it first)
4. Then I open QLC+ and test the first midi controllers (already selected and initialized from my workspace.
5. Then I have to open the Akai MPD Editor and load the MPD18 configuration into the hardware again because something from an earlier step messes it up.
6. Then I open SoundSwitch and test the MPD18 to make sure it's working.
7. Then I open Beyond and it already has the correct APC40 selected and configured, which is APC40 (2).

Seems like a lot but actually it only takes me a couple of minutes to do it all and then all of my software products work with all three midi controllers. Now, I don't know what I will have to do the first time something flakes and I have to start over in the middle of a $2000 wedding

.

If it doesn't work consistently for me I will probably end up doing the same thing and getting an APC40 MKII for Pangolin Beyond. But so far, so good. Just took a while to get the steps into an order that actually worked.

Rob

UPDATE: I forgot to add that you need to plug your devices into the same USB ports every time because stuff changes when you change ports and then not everything will work. At least that's been my observation.

janosvitok · Tue Jul 24, 2018 9:33 am

I have found this blog post that (hopefully) shows how to relate MIDI devices to their physical hardware: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/matthe ... i-devices/
I believe that each USB device has it's own USB serial number that uniquely identifies the device even after replug to different port. Besides that, Windows assigns device UIDs (that are propably bound to the port in which it is plugged, so one device plugged to different ports may have different UIDs, or not).

The point of this is that it is possible to implement mechanism to always select the same device. It will probably need a change to qxw format because MIDI plugin would need to store containing HW device in the Input Output mapping section.

The blog author also suggests to use WinRT instead of WinMM, but WinRT works on 10+.

EXELBONSAI · Tue Jul 24, 2018 12:09 pm

Then I open Virtual DJ (even though it is configured to ignore all of the midi controllers, it seems to do something not nice to them so I have to start it first)

Maybe my translation is bad.
But you should not disable "ALL" Midicontroller but also set the controller in the controller list to Ignore.

__________________

Vielleicht ist meine Übersetzung schlecht .
Aber "ALLE" Midicontroller sollte man auch nicht deaktivieren sondern in der Controller-Liste aktiven Controller auf Ignorieren einstellen.

GGGss · Mon Jul 30, 2018 8:42 am

All intertesting idea's ... I've struggled more than once with this... as for now I only use one brand and type controller at a time.

I had 2 to 3 occasions I HAD to reboot everything - and boy that IS a bad situation. (A loose USB connection or a simple disconnect your phone while it was charging through USB does RESET the USB bus)
I've been thinking altering their driver files so that the O.S. name of the device would be something like APC40_QLC or APC40_hobos or something... but then again you will have to tweak the UID's those devices are sending out and I hope that I can learn Win10 to use the 'alternative' driver I tweaked...

SO in the end no more putting it in the right USB port no more