Question Regarding USB Hubs

Astral Fridge Magnet · Thu Jul 28, 2005 10:27 pm

Hello all,

I am running out of USB ports on my laptop. Of course I know that the solution is buy a hub. However I have heard that hubs can be problematic. First of all I would prefer not to buy a powered hub if I can avoid it. It just means another thing to plug into a wall socket.
Before I go out and buy a hub, do you think that a hub would be able to deal with two dongles (needed for Logic 5.5.1 and Cubase SX 3), a Novation X-Station 25, an external hard disc, a mouse and external floppy drive (that I very rarely use, but comes in handy sometimes).

Which of those devices I mentioned would need their own dedicated hub and which can share a hub without problems? At the moment I have 4 usb ports on my laptop and everything runs smoothly. The only thing that needs to be powered is the external hard disc.

PS. One more question. If I dedicate a usb port for a particular device, should I always use that same port every time I plug it in or can I plug it into any other different port without hassles?

Thanks in advance for your responses and please respond quickly as I need to buy one today. Plus which is a good brand, or doesn't it matter?

Post by **garyb** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 11:12 pm

i use a hub all the time.
yes, if you use all that at once, you're likely to have problems. you'll never need all that plugged in at once in the real world, and i advise against leaving much more than the dongles permanently connected. leave them in the back, bring the hub to the front(powered ones work fine) and plug the other devices in when you need to. don't forget to use the "safely remove" feature before unplugging usb devices....

you don't have to use the devices in the same ports every time, but everytime you use a new port, windows will reinstall the device driver for use on that port. this only takes a moment as the file is already in the computer.

Astral Fridge Magnet · Fri Jul 29, 2005 2:01 am

Hi GaryB,

Thanks for your quick response and also for a response to another question on a different thread regarding reinstalling Scope 4.
Excuse my ignorance, but what is "safely remove" feature you mentioned and how do I use it? I tend not to remove anything until I have powered down.
You also said that running all that stuff at once will most likely cause problems. Even if the laptop is plugged into the wall and the external hard drive too?
What do you advise should have it's own dedicated port? Can an external mouse, and the dongles (for Logic and Cubase) all go into a hub without any performance problems and the keyboard (Novation X-Station-which serves as a midi and audio interface) and external hard drive have its own dedicated port and not going via an hub?

Also I would prefer not to use a powered hub as it means another thing to plug in. So could an unpowered onee cope?

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Astral Fridge Magnet on 2005-07-29 03:05 ]</font>

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 4:38 am

Hoi,

The 'safe remove' garyb mentions goes by first clicking the USB icon in the taskbar tray, select disconnect there then disconnect the hardware.

I've always used cr*cked synoptic dll's (synsoacc.dll) to be honest, since VST3.7 up to SX2 now. I bought all legal versions of them, so it should be legal IMO to save some ports. I don't like having too much USB on my DAW. I wouldn't want sensitive dongles sticking out of the back of my laptop either, I used to keep the dongle in laptop's case. Nowadays my laptop's on Free software.

Hope this helps - anyone know if this dll replacing method is legal? I doubt it, but I also doubt they'll have a strong case in court eh.

Enjoy the weekend,

at0m.

_________________
more has been done with less

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: at0m on 2005-07-29 06:05 ]</font>

Bifop · Post by **Bifop** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 7:39 am

In my experience the SX dongle doesn't like to be on a hub with a mouse for instance... At each dongle call, I would temporarily loose the mouse... The xstation 25 is better plugged straight to the mobo as well. I think you should get a powered hub (any way you already needs to power the hd) as you would drain the notebook battery pretty quick.
Lots of problems can arise when you pull too much energy from a small psu such as the notebook's one...
Just my two euro cents

Astral Fridge Magnet · Fri Jul 29, 2005 7:17 pm

Thanks for your replies so far.

Bifop you say it would drain my battery resources, but I use the laptop connected to a power point in the wall any way. So would my laptop plugged into the wall provide enough power anyway? I almost never rely on battery power.

Atom, I know there are cracked dlls. But are they reliable? I own a legal copy of SX but if I can get away with not using a dongle that would be nice. Though I hear cracked Dlls are unstable.

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Sat Jul 30, 2005 6:56 am

They've worked excellent here from VST 3.7 over VST5 to SX2...

Bifop · Post by **Bifop** » Sat Jul 30, 2005 9:55 am

You should be fine if you're plugging the laptop to it's psu but still, the Xstation is quite a power hog I reckon (I have the Remote 25).
I wouldn't advocate the use of cracked version of SX3 (hey, I'm a legit Nuendo 3 user..). Up to now It's true that cracked version were pretty hassle free.
Next update (3.1), will (again) take care of "dongleless" versions....
But if you really own SX2, why not... It's up to you really.