Who's the culprit in this Midi/Mackie/Logic conundrum?

[markchatwin]

I use a G5 with Logic Pro 7.2 and a Mackie Control Universal. I have my Korg Triton and the Mackie Control interfaced in a Motu Micro Express which goes in the G5 via the USB port. My PCI card is the ESI Julia for balanced input and output. I have been using this setup since last March when I purchased everything.

The problem first arose a month ago when all day long I was going from file to file with no issues. Then I chose a file I had been working on before without any issues and it came up "Control Device absent from Midi port 2" (or something like that). It was telling me that my system was not recognizing the Mackie Control Universal. Needless to say The Mackie Control Universal was useless. No faders worked, the transport controls did not engage or start the song. Befuddled I simply closed Logic, rebooted it and the system came back normal with the MCU being recognized.

A couple weeks went by with no issues. Then last week the same thing happened in a different file, I closed Logic, rebooted it and all was well.

Last night I was involved in a long, complex mix and at the beginning of the session the Mackie Control Universal was working perfectly. After a couple hours of building the mix I realized that the MCU was not working. When I hit it's play button the song wouldn't play, the jog dial would not jog, the faders were useless. The display screen on the MCU still displayed the names of the tracks as I named them in Logic but the MCU controls were gone. Logic's transport was still controllable by my mouse and editing was still possible in Logic. Luckily I was saving all along so I simply closed Logic and rebooted it, opened the file, and the Mackie Control was recognized and it worked perfectly for the rest of the session.


A similar problem occured recently whereby my Logic screens went crazy after I moved my PCI card to a different slot. The Mackie Control Universal was not working and a simple hit of a chord on my Korg Triton caused the Logic Screens to rapidly fire in and out of different windows. The fix was to remove a file called "Logic" and another loose file called "apple.logic.plist" from my computer. These are apparently preferences I had setup early on that got corrupted along the way. These files held such things as templates, custom settings, etc. An Apple tech guy thought a bad chip of RAM that I discovered through the Apple Hardware quick test (about a month ago) might have corrupted some things in my computer. I got a new pair of RAM chips, simply reset Logic's setup assistant and everything has been fine - except for this occasional MCU recognition problem.

I have not tried using different Midi cables but they are secure in the ports. They are brand new Monster Midi cables as well. The fact that the system works 95% of the time and that the cables are never jostled or moved leads me to not suspect them.

What could possibly cause this? I have thought about reinstalling the Motu Micro Express Driver, reinstalling Logic Pro. Any ideas?

[MattiMattMatt]

Are you using any USB hubs?

it didn't sound like you were, but just in case it helps, I was having some wierd MIDI issues that got tracked down to a USB hub being plugged into a surge protector which was limiting power to it. Plugging the hub directly into a wall outlet fixed the MIDI issues!

matt