Specifying Whether a Port Is Internal or External

For most MIDI sound cards and devices, Musician is able to correctly detect whether any corresponding Windows MIDI port is for an internal MIDI device or an external MIDI device. However, for a few MIDI sound cards or devices, Musician cannot correctly detect the device status when the MIDI device driver reports incorrect information. For such unusual cases, Musician provides a way to correct the inaccurate determination of whether the port is internal or external.

If you know that a listed Windows MIDI port is for an external port, but Musician reports it as an internal port, then you will find that you are not able to assign an external MIDI device, such as a MIDI keyboard, to the listed port. This is because Musician only allows external MIDI devices to be connected to external ports.

Conversely, you might find that Musician incorrectly reports an an internal port as an external port.

The way to correct either of these problems is to follow the procedure below for changing the property of the Windows MIDI port from internal to external.

To change whether a Windows MIDI port is internal or external:

   -- OR --

   Instead of selecting the port and choosing the Port Properties command, double-click or right-click the port name.

  Musician will display the Port Properties dialog, such as the following:

The above is an actual example of a MIDI software synthesizer that incorrectly reports its property as external rather than internal. Note that Musician has a built-in work-around for this particular Roland VSC software synthesizer, so that Musician will correctly detect it as internal rather than external.