Do you need to use the same USB port everytime?

Cantabile
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Do you need to use the same USB port for each device every-time?
I’m finding that cantabile loses it’s place if a USB device is plugged in the wrong port order

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Hi Peter,

There’s a bit on it here …

Dave

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It’s Windows, not Cantabile.

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Poorly written drivers tend to cause the most issues. Watch out for “enumerated ports” were the driver port name changes when you plug into a different USB socket. Hard lesson learnt from the days of Cantabile 2, which did not have a virtualisation layer like Cantabile 3 does, and I totally screwed my configuration up by plugging a device into the wrong port (in this case a USB 2 device that did not like being in USB 3 port).

To avoid this, I have labelled leads and ports to make sure everything goes where it should.

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Good advice from Terry to always use the same port… I’ve done the same thing for years.
Slightly different topic, but if you’re unaware of C3’s “alias” feature for interfaces and ports, read up on it… Saves a LOT of headaches when using multiple computers with different interfaces.

Tom

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I went further. I always use a combination MIDI/audio interface with a midi merger. One driver, no controllers using USB. Windows can NOT f*ck my system up. :laughing:

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I’ve been burned before with USB MIDI devices acting as a different input (and lost) if plugged into a different USB port, so the one USB port used by Cantabile is labelled on the laptop. Plus, a MIDI-to-USB converter is used to push all the MIDI instrument signals over a true MIDI cable (5-pin DIN). That way, anything with a 5-pin MIDI out can be patched to the laptop without having to add/change Cantabile inputs. A USB hub, DAC, and MIDI interface are velcroed to a rack shelf and the cables are hot glued in place (seriously) so they are hard to change. The spare rack has the same model HUB, DAC, and MIDI interface to swap and not miss a beat. Maybe this is overkill, but MIDI over DIN is universal and USB is very driver- and Windows-specific.

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I used to plug into the same ports religiously and they still swapped around and screwed up.

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I’ve got to add to this that I rarely use the same ports with my rig and somehow haven’t had any issues whatsoever…

YMMV.

P

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The software engineers where I work have found issues with Windows 10 and swapped USB ports. Because of that, I would suggest you ALWAYS plug your USB devices into the same port. Color coding helps.

There is a utility called DEVCON - Windows Device Console. It is a simple executable. You unplug all of your USB devices, and run a batch file to remove all of the associations. It does not delete the drivers.

Then when you plug your device back in, Windows finds the device / driver and you are good to go.

If anyone needs more info, let me know.

Rick

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Hi Rick,

How would you use it to remove all devices; " devcon /r * "?

Al

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This is the command script to view/remove non-resident devices:

Essentially this script creates a file with all the current resident devices (Devcon find *), then runs it again showing all devices ever plugged in (devcon findall *) and filters it so that it can remove ones that aren’t present anymore.

BTW, you must have the correct devcon version for your bit-ness (x86/x64) or it won’t remove them. I copy the correct version into \windows\system32.

NOTE: Rename the file either way to devcon.exe

The script allows you to just “show” the associations or “remove” them.

I’d do the show first!

Also… Rename the *.txt file to *.bat

DevconBatch.zip (710 Bytes)

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