Simultaneous USB MIDI devices from multiple vendors

[David Thiel]

I've recently refurbished my studio after 15 years.  I sold a NI S88 in favor of 4 octave keyboards.  While I play piano I rarely record anything pianistic and I wanted pitchbend and modulation closer than I could get it with the S88.

Toward that end I have a Novation  UltraNova, two Lumi keyboards and two Roli Key blocks , a Roli control block, a Donner DMK25, and a Korg NanoKontrol2.

I am having difficulty getting them all to work with Cakewalk at the same time.

The DMK25 is the newest.  Cakewalk sees it but nothing seems to come through.  MIDIOx gives me this when I attempt to connect to the DMP25

Obviously, nonsense on a 32 Gb system.

Is there a better MIDI driver, perhaps the one from Yamaha or something that will deal with this.

I'd like to get back to making sound.

David

[David Thiel]

To be clearer, this is most the UltraNova is unseen on the right:of it,

Edited January 29, 2022 by David Thiel

[Colin Nicholls]

@David Thiel, I want your keyboard.

[David Thiel]

Once I can get this configuration stable I need to woodshed on the Roli key blocks to get better at using MPE.  I have a half dozen plug-ins that respond to MPE plus a number of wind instruments that would benefit from the addition gestures should I be able to master that.

I need to speed up making expressive music and I want to stop drawing and editing CC params.

[User 905133]

In my experience, the "not enough memory available" most often comes from software trying to access a midi port/device already being used by another piece of software.

This has been mentioned many times in the Cakewalk Forum.  I know--I have mentioned it myself (as have others).  Let me see if I can find some links. Better yet, just search the forum for "not enough memory" [with the quotation marks].

Edited January 29, 2022 by User 905133
(2) updated with a link to the search I used; (1) updated with reference to doing a forum search

[David Thiel]

4 minutes ago, User 905133 said:

software trying to access a midi port/device already being used by another piece of software.

the exclusive use of MIDI devices is a bit of a PITA.  I know that I have to close down Cakewalk to run Korg Kontrol Editor to adjust properties of knobs, sliders and buttons of NanoKontrol2.   From time to time Cakewalk has seen input from DMK25 and then it stops.

Donner|Microsoft|Bandlabs.... with a communication issue it is hard to know who is at fault.

[Byron Dickens]

You're probably not going to answer this question either, because no one else ever does but here goes: is it plugged into a USB hub?

[User 905133]

My understanding is that (1) it has nothing to do with the amount of memory our PCs have and (2) software that gives us that dialog is just reporting a message from our Microsoft OS.  I know we "can't fight city hall," but maybe if enough of us ask MS politely, they will change that.

Edited January 29, 2022 by User 905133
to make the use of "your" v. "our" consistent

[David Thiel]

2 minutes ago, bdickens said:

You're probably not going to answer this question either, because no one else ever does but here goes: is it plugged into a USB hub?

good question

No, as part of my studio refurbishment I opened up the computer case and with adapters brought out all of the USB2 and USB 3.1 and 3.2 latent USB ports to the back and front.  Only devices like trackball, mouse, macro keypads and dongles (iLok and such) use a USB hub.

So all the music devices plug into their own respective computer USB port.

[David Thiel]

5 minutes ago, User 905133 said:

that dialog is just reporting a message from your Microsoft OS

Yeah, that is what I thought.  And like so many OS error messages, it is not true but very indirectly points at the area of the problem.   My intuition tells me that it is an issue with my MIDI driver (2).   I have the Win10 drive, plus while I was trying the Novation LaunchKey I installed their driver.   I don't think ROLI has a specific driver.

Generally, this thread was initiated to explore this MIDI driver issue.  Are MIDI drivers mutually exclusive?   Additive,   Last one installed is effective?  Did Microsoft get it even vaguely right?  ( it is a media issue and MSFT has never been great at this).

ddt

[Byron Dickens]

12 minutes ago, David Thiel said:

So all the music devices plug into their own respective computer USB port.

That's good. Korg, for instance will not work in a hub. It will show up, but it won't work.  Others, I'm sure are the same.

[Will.]

59 minutes ago, David Thiel said:

I've recently refurbished my studio after 15 years.  I sold a NI S88 in favor of 4 octave keyboards.  While I play piano I rarely record anything pianistic and I wanted pitchbend and modulation closer than I could get it with the S88.

Toward that end I have a Novation  UltraNova, two Lumi keyboards and two Roli Key blocks , a Roli control block, a Donner DMK25, and a Korg NanoKontrol2.

I am having difficulty getting them all to work with Cakewalk at the same time.

The DMK25 is the newest.  Cakewalk sees it but nothing seems to come through.  MIDIOx gives me this when I attempt to connect to the DMP25

Obviously, nonsense on a 32 Gb system.

Is there a better MIDI driver, perhaps the one from Yamaha or something that will deal with this.

I'd like to get back to making sound.

David

Might be because you have 2x2 of the same midi devices, Cakewalks maps get confused. In other words: You need to run one midi an octave higher than the other.  Like how a normal 49 Keystation would work. 

I never had ×4 25 keystations, so I might be wrong. 

Edited January 29, 2022 by Will_Kaydo

[slartabartfast]

 

1 hour ago, David Thiel said:

I am having difficulty getting them all to work with Cakewalk at the same time.

And probably some difficulty playing them all at once as well.?

Of course the workaround if the problem is just too many active connections is to disconnect unused devices. If that does not work then you need to look for something like this:

You do not say what your OS is, but in older versions of Windows there was a MIDI device limit, and the system typically "remembered" each connection (multiple memories for the same device possible) so that if you did not delete the "remembered" devices you could use up that limit, and get the misleading "not enough memory" message that originated in the OS. Reportedly Win 10 has a much larger limit on devices, but possibly a driver for one of your devices is limited to accessing the older system. 

You might try deleting ghost devices:

https://www.ghacks.net/2018/02/14/ghostbuster-remove-ghosted-devices-on-windows/#:~:text=A ghost device refers to,monitor%2C or any other device.

 

 

[David Thiel]

8 minutes ago, Will_Kaydo said:

ight be because you have 2x2 of the same midi devices

There is ROLI software between Cakewalk and the blocks.  Cakewalk sees one Keyboard block that has four octaves and one Lumi block that has four octaves.  The Roli devices have been OK. 

The old UltraNova has been consistent as well.   LaunchKey and DMK25 have not worked or have been inconsistent.  I gave up on LaunchKey.

 

[User 905133]

10 minutes ago, David Thiel said:

Generally, this thread was initiated to explore this MIDI driver issue.  Are MIDI drivers mutually exclusive? 

I have had a couple of issues with multiple [duplicate] midi devices from the same manufacturer cause problems and some work with no conflicts. I have not had issues (that I know of) where one manufacturer's device [driver] caused issues with another manufacturer's device.  I have used some software [virtual] midi ports as well but never noticed a conflict unless I did something wrong.

I have problem solved by looking at device manager, device properties, etc.  and sometimes completely removing a device/driver and reinstalling one at a time with a PC power reboot to give Windows the chance to make a removed/added/updated device to settle in before adding another instance.  Even so, with one manufacturer, I could only get 3 2x2 usb interfaces working at the same time.

Its been a while since I problem solved midi device issues, but I seem to recall that the properties information for each instance of each device was useful.

In my experience just with the gear I use personally it really depends.  I don't have the gear you have, but maybe other users have experiences with them.

[David Thiel]

2 minutes ago, slartabartfast said:

You do not say what your OS is

sorry, a fully updated version of Win10 (for better or worse0 

 

[John Vere]

I sort of quickly read most of this to make sure no one else had said it but right at the end @User 905133 has and this was immediately what I was thinking after reading first post. You have exceeded a device limit for the USB port.  I cover it in the beginning of this video 
https://youtu.be/AcDcCmjPaWg

 

[azslow3]

The explanation for the error I have given there:

Microsoft can't fix that.

In Windows Device manager, set option "show hidden devices" and cleanup unused MIDI ports (if any). Every time you connect keyboard to different USB port, the system think is is "new" (the consequence of USB MIDI standard, unique identifier is not foreseen and so there is no way to match "old" to "new").

Keep Device manager open and visible. Do you see periodical "updated" of the tree? That normally indicate some device is reconnected.  Happens when the cable or USB socket on device is unstable. I had that with several devices, especially with portable MIDI keyboards since you normally continuously move them and so move the cable and the socket.

Note that Cakewalk doesn't like "on the fly" reconnection more than some other software, also it can react unexpected when that happens with  any device, stable keyboard can glitch when other is reconnecting.

 

[David Thiel]

Thanks so much for the input.  Thanks to John's video I used Device Manager to show the hidden multimedia devices.  There were a lot of grayed out devices that I deleted.

I'm strictly using MIDIOx to diagnose this right now, Cakewalk is not running.

DKM25 MSFT driver was deleted while it was unplugged.  I plugged it in.  When attempting to open it with MIDIOx I get a different message:

progress?

 

[David Thiel]

58 minutes ago, slartabartfast said:

You might try deleting ghost devices:

Good suggestion.  I downloaded and installed GhostRemover.

After scanning it shows 519 devices, 241 ghosted.

clicking on the 'Remove Ghosts' button does something and a rescan but does not remove anything.

left clicking on individual items in the list highlights them blue and clicking on 'Remove Ghosts' button does not remove anything.

I thought that perhaps I needed to run Ghost Remover as an administrator, which I did but it still did not remove anything.

Obviously, I am missing the important gesture that will 'remove ghosts', which seems like a good idea.