Connecting multiple Boutiques to a DAW via USB

[cloudburst]

I did a little experiment tonight to see if I could set two of my Boutique modules up in such a way with Logic Pro X that I could control them both via the same keyboard, but have lower notes sent to the Juno and higher notes sent to the Jupiter.

- Connected the controller keyboard and both modules to my Macbook Pro/Thunderbolt Display using 3 separate USB cables.
- Created 2 external MIDI tracks
- Noticed there were 2 'ports' both called 'Boutique' according to Logic
- Configured the JP-08 and its ext MIDI track to send on channel 8 on the appropriate 'Boutique' port; configured a key limit on this track of C3 -> G8
- Configured the JU-06 and its ext MIDI track to send on channel 6 on the other 'Boutique' port; configured a key limit on this track of C-2 -> B2

All worked totally as planned. Perfect.

So the next step, once the MIDI control was set up was to get the audio from the modules into Logic Pro.

Here's where I ran into problems.

When I created my audio tracks, I could only receive audio at all by turning one of the devices off.

So I'm wondering if the Roland Boutique USB driver can support MIDI out to multiple devices but audio in from only one? Perhaps it's because of the failure of the driver to announce the inputs and outputs to OSX as anything other than 'Boutique'. When I looked at the audio prefs on the Macbook, with 2 modules plugged in, I had 4 'Boutique' entries in the list (presumably input and output for each of the 2 modules).

Am I doing something wrong?

CB

[cloudburst]

Just in case any of you are interested, I got this all working. I'm able to have a USB controller keyboard with lower keys controlling the JU-06 and upper keys controlling the JP-08 with only 3 USB connections and all MIDI and audio being transferred between devices and Logic Pro X over USB and no audio interfaces required.

Here's what I had to do to get it to work.

Boutiques:
- Set JP-08 and JU-06 to receive on separate MIDI channels

OSX:
- Boutique driver is installed as a pre-requisite

Audio MIDI Setup utility in OSX:
- Create an Aggregate Device and add both instances of "Boutique"

Logic:
- Ensure Input is set to "Aggregate Device" in Audio Prefs
- Ensure Output is set to what you need it to be in Audio Prefs
- Create 2 External MIDI tracks with Port set to "All" and Channel for each Boutique set appropriately
- Set Key limit on each MIDI track so you can filter out the Note On events you don't want that Boutique to get
- Use "Program" on MIDI tracks to select the bank/patch (to stop each Boutique setting the other*)
- Create 2 Audio tracks, each pointing to "Aggregate Device" as input
- Map one Audio track to inputs 1&2 and the other to inputs 3&4

* the one odd thing I did notice was that, despite the Boutiques being set to receive on different MIDI channels, when I changed a patch on one, it duplicated the change on the other; I also found that using the ribbons on one Boutique was also mirrored on the other Boutique's ribbons.

Hope this is useful.

CB

[rsaintjohn]

It is. Or, rather, I know it will be for me someday. Definitely bookmarking this, thanks so much!