Setup Akai EWI USB Control With a DAW

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").