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Originally posted by DjStephenWiley Title says it all. I need more USB slots but as we all know with audio we can't use ordinary wal-mart stuff. Are there any USB hubs that provide equal, or almost equal bandwith/power to instruments? (Virus TI, Novation 49 Compact MIDI Keyboard)

Do not plug the Virus TI into a Hub. Access is very specific about this.

You should be able to run the midi keyboard on the same channel as your mouse, midi shouldn't take that much bandwidth I woudn't think...

But no, common sense says that if you try to use ANY sort of hub, then you won't get enough bandwidth.

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MIDI = 32.5kbit/s, so slightly faster than a 28.8 modem

A USB hub cannot actually provide any additional bandwidth. Fundamentally it's no different from plugging a powerbar or extension cord into an electrical socket; it will allow you to plug in more appliances, but you still have the exact same total power capacity (bandwidth) to feed them.

In fact, most computers just have one USB "root hub" that provides all the bandwidth, so you can exceed the available bandwidth simply by plugging in 3 or 4 extremely-high-bandwidth devices. I'm not sure why Access doesn't realize this when they talk about hubs. Nevertheless, you can usually use any old switch and plug in any number of low-bandwidth devices like mouse, keyboard, MIDI devices, printer, whatever, and the machine will have plenty of bandwidth to supply them all as well as one or two higher-bandwidth devices.

I think the reason Access says not to use a hub is for the same reason telcos used to tell you not to use a router with your cable modem - they just don't want to deal with supporting whatever wonky equipment you personally installed. If you know what you're doing, you should be fine.

If you're worried about Access's warning (I wouldn't be), just get yourself a regular hub and only plug in the low-bandwidth stuff; keep the TI itself plugged into an actual port.

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POWERED USB Hubs FTW. A lot of instruments will suck in a lot of power, so you can't plug them into your keyboard or a self powered hub. For that, you need a powered hub. I have a Belkin.

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Originally posted by DigiNut A USB hub cannot actually provide any additional bandwidth. Fundamentally it's no different from plugging a powerbar or extension cord into an electrical socket; it will allow you to plug in more appliances, but you still have the exact same total power capacity (bandwidth) to feed them. In fact, most computers just have one USB "root hub" that provides all the bandwidth, so you can exceed the available bandwidth simply by plugging in 3 or 4 extremely-high-bandwidth devices. I'm not sure why Access doesn't realize this when they talk about hubs. Nevertheless, you can usually use any old switch and plug in any number of low-bandwidth devices like mouse, keyboard, MIDI devices, printer, whatever, and the machine will have plenty of bandwidth to supply them all as well as one or two higher-bandwidth devices. I think the reason Access says not to use a hub is for the same reason telcos used to tell you not to use a router with your cable modem - they just don't want to deal with supporting whatever wonky equipment you personally installed. If you know what you're doing, you should be fine. If you're worried about Access's warning (I wouldn't be), just get yourself a regular hub and only plug in the low-bandwidth stuff; keep the TI itself plugged into an actual port.

Absolutely true, but there is another issue that comes in to play which is the physical location. For instance software protection dongles, such as steinberg's and Ilok's. If they are moved, even to a different port in the hub they stop working in many instances, until you restart the software or the computer or tell the licence control software to where it now is. That could be a further complication for access as I've seen the same thing happen with other USB keyboards, and they even freak out when device is kept in the same hub port but one of the other devices in the prot is removed or move to another.

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Originally posted by DjWoody POWERED USB Hubs FTW. A lot of instruments will suck in a lot of power, so you can't plug them into your keyboard or a self powered hub. For that, you need a powered hub. I have a Belkin.

power and bandwith are two separate things here. the concern isn't the actual power here (although it could potentially be a problem) - It is the bandwith. USB ports, thus their extensions, can support only a certain number megabytes per second or whatever. Having a self powered hub doesn't change this number. My initially hypothesis was correct, unfortunately. Damn bottlenecks

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Originally posted by DjStephenWiley power and bandwith are two separate things here. the concern isn't the actual power here (although it could potentially be a problem) - It is the bandwith. USB ports, thus their extensions, can support only a certain number megabytes per second or whatever. Having a self powered hub doesn't change this number. My initially hypothesis was correct, unfortunately. Damn bottlenecks

Yes they are, but the reason why I said that was because if you use a self powered hub, you might run into a lot of problems. I know I have.

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Originally posted by DjWoody POWERED USB Hubs FTW. A lot of instruments will suck in a lot of power, so you can't plug them into your keyboard or a self powered hub. For that, you need a powered hub. I have a Belkin.

+ everything

I have my USB audio interface plugged into a dedicated socket (actually a PCI USB card for the extra bus) and everything else in the powered hub. I found a Novation Nocturn for example to be particularly fussy about the amount of jiuce coming down the USB cable.

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Have the same problem with my Virus TI which was losing USB connection every 5 to 10 min. So took me a couple of day of screwing around my setup and figure it out the best IRQ assignment for Virus.

If you go to Control Panel, Performance and Maintenance, System, Hardware (tab) and select Device Manager, then go to (from the menu) View –Resources by type, you will see IRQ port list. Simply try to find IRQ port with less hardware assign to it. The best would be if you have only one USB assign to one dedicated IRQ.

Cheers.

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Originally posted by TranceLover007 Have the same problem with my Virus TI which was losing USB connection every 5 to 10 min. So took me a couple of day of screwing around my setup and figure it out the best IRQ assignment for Virus. If you go to Control Panel, Performance and Maintenance, System, Hardware (tab) and select Device Manager, then go to (from the menu) View –Resources by type, you will see IRQ port list. Simply try to find IRQ port with less hardware assign to it. The best would be if you have only one USB assign to one dedicated IRQ. Cheers.

There's a great article on how to fix all IRQ issues here:

LINK