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Setup Akai EWI USB Control With a DAW

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supertonic
Posted

Some users asked for it. Here are the instructions how to use EWI Control with your DAW:

 

 

Akai EWI USB Control can be chained between the EWI-USB hardware and your DAW. For this you need a MIDI Loopback Driver ("virtual midi cable"):

    EWI-USB => Akai EWI USB Control => Loopback Driver  => DAW

On The Mac, a Loopback Driver is part of the system. Spotlight for "Audio MIDI Setup" and open its MIDI Window. There you find the IAC Driver. Make sure it is online and has at least one port created. The loopback ports should now appear as "IAC Bus" in the list of available MIDI ports on your Mac.

On Windows, you will need to get a third party loopback driver (LoopBe, MIDI Yoke, or similar). We have tested with LoopBe (www.nerds.de).

After setting up a loopback port, restart your DAW and the Akai EWI USB Control utility. In the utility, select "EWI-USB" for midi input and "IAC Bus 1" as output. In your DAW, select "IAC Bus 1" for midi input. Now the midi signal flows from your EWI-USB to the utility and then to your DAW input as shown in the diagram above (replace "IAC Bus 1" with the respective loopback port names on Windows, e.g. "1. Internal Midi").

 

Profile picture for user spartacus
spartacus
Fri, 2016-01-08 - 17:29 Permalink

hello

i just buy the Akai Advance 61 , it is possible to have a mapping Synfire Pro? For control Synfire like all other DAW inside the controler keyboard

thanks

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marco56
Fri, 2018-12-21 - 18:55 Permalink
Hello everyone. I can't get any sound from my Akai Ewi Usb connected to Logic Prox with the Akai Ewi Usb Cognitone controller. I followed the guide and playing Akai in Logic the leds are active but no sound comes out. However, I see that by choosing external midi in Logic, "IAC Bus 1" is selectable only as Output and not as Input as specified in the guide. What could be the problem? Thanks a lot!

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andre
Fri, 2018-12-21 - 23:29 Permalink

If the MIDI arrives at Logic, you might need to turn on input monitoring on that track.

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marco56
Sun, 2018-12-23 - 10:45 Permalink
Hi Andre, input monitoring does not appear as a button even if it is selected as icons in the configuration menu.

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marco56
Thu, 2018-12-27 - 12:02 Permalink
Everything works. However, even if the driver is set on "out" and not on "in", selecting an instrument now also works with the Cognitone control. So now everything seems ok Image removed.

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Hypothermik
Wed, 2021-09-01 - 20:39 Permalink

Hi guys, does anyone have the akai ewi usb update for big sur? I cant open the installer. Also... when I plug the usb in the green light should come on right away right? Or do I need the dirver installed? I'm on mac.