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[By Design]: Older Hercules devices using DirectMusic drivers do not work with Windows MIDI Services #962

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@Psychlist1972

DirectMusic was introduced in 1996 and was deprecated with Windows Vista in 2006, almost 20 years ago. The new MIDI stack has no built-in support for DirectMusic ("dmus") APIs or driver models for MIDI devices.

As a result, devices which only shipped drivers using the Direct Music driver model do not work with the new releases. These devices include

  • Hercules DJ Console Mk2
  • Hercules DJ Console Mk4
  • Hercules DJ Console Rmx
  • Hercules DJ Console 4-Mx
  • Hercules DJ 4Set
  • Hercules DJ Control Steel
  • Hercules DJ Control MP3 -DJ Control MP3 e2 / MP3 LE / Glow

Possibly others as well. We do not have a workaround for these devices.

In the new MIDI stack, we have strived to maintain as much backwards compatibility as possible, including the work we've done to keep other USB and virtual devices working, but we will not have in-box support for DirectMusic devices.

One possible way these devices could be supported is for interested parties to create a Windows MIDI Services Transport Plugin which can speak to dmus interfaces. We have not investigated the feasibility of doing this, nor will Microsoft themselves create such a transport.

However, we would be willing to advise in case a team has access to the source for those dmus drivers and deep knowledge of dmus. In that case, we could help by getting a template transport project started, and answer questions about how transport plugins work.

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