Can't connect MIDI devices in Audio Midi Setup

Yes, devices are on and detected. I can talk to the devices ok via their various associated apps. I just can't use the Audio Midi Setup to route MIDI between the devices...

Thanks Daddy 🙂

No, no change occurs to any second device icon when I attempt to drag the link to a second device -- this happens in any combination I've tried. Only the first icon is highlighted, and the link from that you drag around.

(I've tried a bunch of combinations, though not quite exhaustive -- I have up to 4 MIDI devices presently connected, and one of those has 8 ports).

Well, I'm tempted to say "a collection of clinking, clanking caliginous junk" 🙂, but in reality it varies. In the context we were discussing, the devices all either have a USB interface for MIDI access connected to the iMac via a hub, and/or I'm using an E-MU 0404 box ( http://tinyurl.com/2ac4ru) to connect an additional MIDI device.

Imminently, I'm about to add a MOTU Express 128 ( http://tinyurl.com/38hfwo) to my setup and will see if that behaves differently -- in particular, moving the MIDI devices to connect via MIDI rather than USB.

Stewart.

That would surprise me greatly -- my USB MIDI devices are all correctly detected as MIDI devices, so the USB transport should not matter (IMO ;-)).

Hooking up the MOTU MIDI Express 128 tonight, that is also detected ok in the Audio MIDI Setup utility, but I still cannot get the connectors on any device shown in the utility to actually connect to anything, per my original question.

Anyone else actually get these connectors to connect to anything?! Are they decorative only?

Ok, I finally solved this. For whatever reason, I could not set up connections between my auto-detected USB MIDI devices in Audio MIDI Setup -- maybe it is just not designed for this, or maybe I'm still not understanding what to do. i.e., I could not connect my E-MU 0404/USB to any port on my MOTU MIDI Express 128.

However, I was able to configure the individual MIDI interfaces (i.e. the E-MU or the MOTU, separately), using "Add Device" and then connecting between those interface devices and the newly added devices. This was the first time I had seen the "connectors" actually "take" and connect between entities within the Audio MIDI Setup utility, so that was a relief. Presumably doing this informs applications on the Mac how the MIDI system is set up -- I just thought it did more than that, i.e. allow direct routing between MIDI devices using just the utility itself.

I still don't know if I am meant to be able to connect a keyboard to a synth using just Audio MIDI Setup alone (what I had hoped), but I certainly can't seem to get that simple config to work and will have to resort to using some additional software like a sequencer. Not my preference, but c'est la vie.

Thanks for all the suggestions,

Stewart.

Epilogue: I today solved what I was really trying to do with Audio Midi Setup, with MidiPipe 1.4.3.

That allows me to patch arbitrarily between my various MIDI devices, e.g. allowing me to control my selection of HW synths with my selection of keyboards, varying which item is connected to which. I thought that Audio Midi Setup would allow such patching, but it seems not. However, MidiPipe does allow this. I believe MIDI Patchbay, another program, would probably also do the same thing. Maybe there are others too. But, problem solved!