I just got my BomeBox and discovered that it works quite well as an USB/MIDI router and 8 of my 9 devices have USB.
Now I have two choices:
One small USB hub, two small MIDI interfaces and many MIDI cables, or
One bigger USB hub, no MIDI interface and less cables.
Only 2 devices are bus-powered and the USB hub is powered.
Of course I would prefer less cables (USB) without MIDI interfaces, but life has taught me that free lunches are rare… Is there a drawback I should be aware of? Latency, perhaps?
I am talking about a standalone hardwired setup with MT Pro projects in the BomeBox, not over network.
For my standalone setup, I mainly use USB with a powered USB hub. USB data transfer is much faster than MIDI DIN, and like you I prefer less hardware/cables. The only possible drawback is that I’ve found a few USB devices that even though don’t require bus power, might be a bit finicky in their behavior. I haven’t been able to completely narrow it down but sometimes moving to a different USB port on the USB hub fixes things. It also might be because of hub I was using. Again, I was never able to pin it down. I currently am using only 1 DIN cable in my setup which is an FCB 1010 connected to the BomeBox.
Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care
Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz
One more question:
At the moment only USB is connected to my BomeBox. I deactivated automatic routing in the web interface.
In the port list on the web “MIDI Routes” page, the dropdown menu shows me all my named MIDI ports. At the very end it shows additionally a list of numbered USB ports 1-15 with all the names again. Why two lists with the same devices and does it make a difference which entries I choose?
Hi, the numbered USB ports are “auto aliases” and for the most part, I just ignore them. If you route to the physical port and the auto alias both, you will have problems in either receiving or sending double MIDI messages. I typically create my own alias names in the MT Pro project and then assign them to the USB device assigned port names as to me, it is more intuitive. The reason I create my own aliases is because different platforms may assign them different names and using my own names makes my projects more portable across platforms.
BomeBox is setup with a fixed IP and connected by Ethernet cable, no WiFi.
I found some more ports I’m not sure about:
BomeBox Web Routing
To/From “Network 1 (Peter-mac-mini)”
To/From “Peter-mac-mini”
In Mac applications:
To/From “Network Session 1”
To/From “BomeBox - Net”
Staying locally, I believe I can ignore the “Network…” ports, which are provided by the Mac’s Audio MIDI Setup and I should use “Peter-mac-mini” and “BomeBox - Net” for direct connections between computer and BomeBox. Is this correct?