Four Midihubs are connected to USB hubs attached to my PC. Fortunately, my setup is pretty static, so once routings are made, they can stay. The editor routes the ins and outs to one of four virtual USB ports (they’re not labeled “virtual,” but they all share the single cable) for each Midihub, one at a time. In my DAW, Studio One, devices are assigned to whichever port matches what I assigned in the editor, and once that’s done they can just be called up in a track and they just work, because the configuration is already in place. For devices doing double duty as a keyboard and synth, like your typical desktop synth with sequencer, my DAW requires one “device” to be created for each function, so each device would either be receiving ‘from’ a port, or send ‘to’ a port, thus those instruments end up with two “devices” in the list.
In that context, I wouldn’t say that multiple routings are able to be quickly reconfigured as with a page showing the entire matrix at once, but it’s easy enough to make quick single changes if necessary. One thing you’ll need is individual FW files for each of your Midihubs, so that the computer can distinguish between them, and @Giedrius has been kind enough to supply these as needed. Otherwise, if they all share the same public FW, the PC, and hence the DAW, will display multiple instances of the same port name, but they won’t work, in my experience.
For all this to work, of course, your DAW has to be open to a song with the pertinent instruments and controllers loaded and assigned. You could have a generic song with everything in your studio assigned and ready to go, and use it in a quasi DAWless mode, not using the recording / sequencing features, but the DAW would have to open just to act as the central router for all your hardware. Now that I think about it, I might create a song just to do that; so far I’ve just added a few instruments to each song as needed.
The other thing I’ve thought of, but not yet tried, is daisy chaining Midihubs, which would allow them to be used independently of the PC once configured. If I were to do that, and if it works (don’t see why it wouldn’t, but needs to be tested) I might choose one Midihub to be the central one from which all the others are chained, in order to allow anything to be routed to anything else in two stages, which wouldn’t be the case with chaining in series. Since my configuration stays put, with the PC always available, I just haven’t found it necessary to experiment along these lines.
Hope that helps.
