Hi Steve,
Many thanks for your compliments. To your questions ..
1 - I started to use MIDI rather than USB with my first installation back in 2006. I'm now onto my fifth Hauptwerk computer. I installed an Edirol MIDI interface which has 3 MIDI ports, to take the pressure off the first computer's limited USB port situation. I just kept using MIDI with subsequent computers and additional keyboard and controller inputs, despite gaining more USB ports along the way. Later I added a second Edirol unit which operates as a "slave" unit connected through the original which is the "master" so the MIDI setup still uses only one USB port to give a total of 6 MIDI ports. Recently I tried connecting the UMX-610s with USB thinking I could simplify the wiring and remove the power supplies to the keyboards. No matter what I did, the keyboards reassigned themselves to different departments each time I powered up the computer. In the end I stopped the headaches by reinstating the MIDI interfaces and independent keyboard power supplies. There have been no problems since.
http://www.roland.com/products/en/UM-3G/2 - The pedals are Yamaha FC-7 units, removed from their base plates.
http://usa.yamaha.com/products/musical- ... mode=modelThey are MIDIfied using effective but somewhat expensive and tricky devices from MIDI Solutions, which was all I could source at the time. MIDI OX is needed to program them, once you've waded through and made sense of the poorly written user guide.
http://www.midisolutions.com/prodped.htmhttp://www.midiox.comThe swell pedal daisy chain is powered by the output from the seventh and last MIDI port in my setup which is on my audio interface, and the signals return to the computer via MIDI IN on the same port. I have the M-Audio Firewire 410 which I understand is now discontinued. The ProFire 610 appears to be the current model and it looks virtually identical to the old 410.
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/ProFire610.htmlAndrew