For once, I didn’t have a migraine or other physical ailment get in the way of my music composition project yesterday! I need more days like that. My day was split in half when my medicines overwhelmed me for several hours in the afternoon, but I made good progress on either side.
One bit of hardware progress to report—my Wacom Bamboo pad is working with Sonar X3! I haven’t had a pad that worked with a music program in years. I’m chalking up my earlier problems to the short USB cord that comes with the Bamboo (mentioned earlier), plus my failed earlier attempt to solve the problem by using a USB extension. I guess the Bamboo wasn’t getting the power it needed through the extension cable. This time, the cable is long enough and is plugged directly into a USB port on the back of the machine. It works, so that’s the end of that story for now.
I have to admit I’m a bit surprised that a couple of devices are working from a non-powered USB hub (and an inexpensive four-port Rosewill metal thingy at that). The MOTU micro lite that sits at the center of my rig apparently doesn’t need much power, nor does my iLok “anti-piracy” (translation: pain in the arse) dongle. I’ve got one more connection to make—the USB control from my UPS unit—and I figure it won’t need any power from the port, considering that it’ll be plugged directly into a freaking power supply.
I’m also pleasantly surprised that my keyboard, an Arturia Keylab 88, is working so well as an unconfigured device within Sonar X3. Only the keys, mod wheel, and pitch bend wheel are truly working at the moment (no time to mess with the rest of it for what I’m doing), but it was an honest plug-and-play experience once I got a cable that was both long enough and had a ferrite bead around one end. I’m still left to wonder why Arturia doesn’t ship a longer cable with the thing, as well as why they don’t provide a full control-surface definition for Sonar X3 (or why Cakewalk hasn’t developed support for the Keylab out of the box). Someone needs to get these folks together and have them hash things out.
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