I need help to find which is the best for my studio : usb c adapter or USB HUB ?

cyril777

I discovered iOS music about 10 years ago and it came as a true musical revelation.
But now, although I’m quite satisfied with my humble home studio , I’m dealing with more and more unexpected dysfunctions coming from this same home studio which may not be as effective as I thought it was..
Even if everything works fine most of the time, I’m sharing on this forum to find specific advices in order to optimize my installation and try to make it “bullet proof” 🙂

Before I describe my installation, here’s an idea of the different kinds of irregular problems which I’d like to get rid off.

• loosing connection between my external SSD and the iPad
• sometimes my Apogee Duet 3 need to be plugged, unplugged and plugged again to properly work. It was the same with the Duet 2.
• The sample rate often switch between 44 and 48. I never understood what was the reason of this change, especially when the same sample rate is selected in AUM settings and Apogee utility.

An Anker USB adapter is meant to connect all the devices I need, from midi controller to external drive, and the rest.

From my non professional point of view and some info picked knowledge acquired over the years , It seems that the solution lies in the acquisition and proper use of either a USB me HUB (office type) or a USB C adapter, see the wise combination of the two. For what I red, USB adapter and USB HUB have both their pros and.cons and because I never liked computers per say, band pass and SSD is like Chinese to me, I really need your advices and your studio experience feedbacks to help me find the missing link to make my small installation reliable, competitive and like I said « Bullet Proof » !

PS : I’m not gonna bored you to death with each connections of my installation (but maybe I will do it later just for efficiency). Here’s just the list of all devices involved (the ones which are always plugged and running.

• 2 iPad Pro
• Apogee Duet 3
• Arturia BeatStep Pro
• Arturia MiniLab km2
• Launchpad X
• Korg NanoKontrol 2
• XKey Air
• Anker USB C powered adapter
• Atolla USB A powered HUB

And the others devices I use but which are not directly connected to the other devices and therefore do no need a special attention

• a MacBook with a USB HUB and lots of external hard drive
  If the global set of connections and devices interactions needs to be explained in details , maybe a drawing would do better than a long and boring explanation in a quite approximative English….

[Deleted User]

ipad Pro 4-gen here, usb-c hub , launchpad mini mk3 and rme xtc, I found very often at the start of working I need to restart hub from power cycle, so ipad ac adaptor is in conputer type ac power extender with swith, so I can easly switch of and on (sonetimes twice fast) to get everything tight running. rme never change sample rate, but launchpad from last update when it got keyboard functionality - if I lesve it connected and put sleep Ipad, then strange behaviour came next morning, as usb-c hub constantly goues off and on with power. So I disconnect launchpad after use. I think there is no stable option for iPad yet, I mean it is stable by time of using apps and gear, but when you leave it to recharging slept iPad then there is probably IMO some kind of short disconnectings.

I tried to help but I wander if my English is enough to be underdtandsble enough,

mistercharlie

If they’re M1iPad Pros, a Thunderbolt hub will be the most reliable and capable. And the most expensive.

cyril777

@mistercharlie said:
If they’re M1iPad Pros, a Thunderbolt hub will be the most reliable and capable. And the most expensive.

Sadly no M1 ship involve but maybe the HUB is still the best solution… and the most expensive one too !