Ableton Forum

How does Live differentiate between MIDI devices with same name? I've noticed that if I plug in multiple devices then it will call them Synth, Synth #2, Synth #3 where Live is adding the #2 and #3 suffixes to help the user pick the right one. That's very useful but it fails for some other MIDI devices I have. My best semi-educated guess at the moment is that Ableton actually differentiates between devices that have the same USB VID and PID.

The problem I have is one device has a different USB PID but the same name and I think this confuses Ableton when I plug them all in. It fails to distinguish between the two different PIDs and I think I can only communicate with the first one it finds.

I'm a humble Live Lite user so I can't raise this as a support ticket

Hi, what is your full set up?

Hi, I have a similar question. I'm using a Korg MicroKey in Ableton Live 9 Standard on a 2015 15" MacBook Pro running High Sierra. I would like to buy an identical Korg MicroKey in order to play two different synths at the same time. Can Ableton differentiate between identical MIDI devices?

Korg is a good example for this kind of problem. They've got their Korg USB-MIDI driver that caters a number of devices. That installs a driver setup utility you need to run in order to identify and configure the driver for the particular device.

Some of these devices are capable of serving one of two MIDI ports (A vs. B). So it should be possible to configure two devices and make them both available to Live. Go to Korg's download page for the MicroKey, get the updated driver, manual and librarian software.

To avoid this whole problem, and if possible, always try to sort devices by MIDI channels. That’s the old school way and the most reliable.

I get a similar quirk with two Novation controllers, I have an SL25Mk2 and and SL61Mk2. Often one keyboard will be recognized as the other model by Live, which breaks the MIDI input assignments in saved sets. I have to be very careful to plug each kbd only into specific USB ports for it to be recognized correctly.

I have the exact same problem with two Akai MPKmini mkII
and I'm also a lite user so I can not ask to support, did you find any solution?

I raised the issue with Ableton Support and this was the response:

[Live uses the USB ports to identify the corresponding Midi device.
If there is only one device it doesn't increase counting. As soon as there is the same device twice Live uses the USB port to identify which device is which.
The order is stored in the preferences of Live and is also properly recovered when restarting.

There is no general way to identify different Midi devices easily and It is not as simple as you might think.

Sorry for the inconvenience.]

As I wrote previously, that’s what MIDI channels are for.