Lost MIDI connection

A friend of me is using a little Hauptwerk organ with a Kawai CA digital piano. She uses a notebook with Windows 10 x64 and a Focusrite Scarlett Solo. The MIDI connection is done via USB from the piano to the notebook (no special Kawai driver available, so Microsoft drivers are used). Beside Hauptwerk the notebook is only used to play piano with the software Pianoteq. Pianoteq runs like a charme, there where never any problems with the MIDI connection. But Hauptwerk sometimes doesn't recognize the USB MIDI, although in windows device manager the USB MIDI is listed as working okay. So the only workaround is to deinstall the device in windows device manager, then searching for new devices will recognize the USB MIDI again. Then Hauptwerk recognizes the device, too. So, what is going wrong here?

[mdyde]

Hello Uwe,

Whenever Hauptwerk launches it simply asks Windows for the list of MIDI port names. It can have no direct knowledge of the drivers, or how they're connected to the PC. There won't be any difference between Hauptwerk and Pianoteq in those regards (except conceivably that Pianoteq might have been compiled with a different version of Microsoft's Windows development libraries, which might conceivably behave differently internally).

Does your friend have Windows set to launch Hauptwerk automatically when the PC boots? If so, sometimes Windows is probably just launching Hauptwerk before it has finished loading its USB-MIDI drivers (a common issue). In that case, try increasing 'Minimum time to wait on start-up' setting on Hauptwerk's 'General settings | General preferences | Advanced ...' screen tab, e.g. to 15 seconds.

Also make sure that Windows isn't somehow set to launch Hauptwerk twice when it boots, as covered in the links in this topic: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=13274&p=98024#p97985 .

Does your friend have Windows set to launch Hauptwerk automatically when the PC boots?

No, she uses Hauptwerk occasionally.

[mdyde]

Thanks, Uwe.

Just to confirm, do you mean that the MIDI port isn't listed at all on Hauptwerk's 'General settings | MIDI ports' screen, even after (re-)launching Hauptwerk?

Or just that playing keys on the digital piano stops causing keys to play in Hauptwerk? If the latter, then Windows has probably re-assigned the piano as a differently-named MIDI IN port, so she would need to enable that new port name in Hauptwerk and auto-detect settings for it. (Also a common problem with devices that use Windows' default USB-MIDI driver.)

(Since Pianoteq only has one virtual keyboard it might possibly just respond to all MIDI note-on/off messages that the computer receives, regardless of the names of the MIDI port.)

Also, with many MIDI device drivers, it's important to make sure that two applications aren't running simultaneously that have the same MIDI device enabled, otherwise the results might be unpredictable.

Hello Martin,

thank you very much for these valuable hints! I will check the details in the next days, when I have access to the concerned notebook.

Best regards, Uwe

Hello Martin,

problem solved, Kawai released a new usb driver

Best regards, Uwe

[mdyde]

Hello Uwe,

Thanks for the update, and glad to hear it's resolved now.