alsa-project/alsa-lib issue #442 was opened from Thrilled-Oaf:

Greetings~.

I'm on Slackware, which is a pretty languid, laid back distro... so I have to admit that I don't know when this happened... But I recently updated it, cause I bought a new midi keyboard, a launchkey mk4, and it should have a 'DAW' port, both on its USB connection and the classic pinned midi cable thing.

But instead, aconnect -i and all that just gives me ``` client 24: 'Launchkey MK4 61' [type=kernel,card=2] 0 'Launchkey MK4 61 Launchkey MK4 ' 1 'Launchkey MK4 61 Launchkey MK4 ' ```

I actually use JACK audio on top of alsa but even without jack, this still occurs. I can sort of pretty print this for JACK but it would be best to have this working properly at the very base... cause if I disable all alsa seq/raw support from JACK, then DAWs like ardour won't even see any midi ports anymore.

I also tried being 'clever' and loading `snd-seq-dummy` and setting up some routing that way... didn't work. Then I actually edited the source file for the dummy device to specifically give me a properly named DAW port if the index of the dummy port was like, 3 or something. And while the naming worked, it was ultimately ...not able to help out with this issue.

What is basically assumed by many clients, including the configuration utility `components` for the keyboard is that it has a distinguishable second midi port with a DAW suffix, thus...this is what `aconnect -i` should ideally show.

``` client 24: 'Launchkey MK4 61' [type=kernel,card=2] 0 'Launchkey MK4 61 Launchkey MK4 ' 1 'Launchkey MK4 61 Launchkey MK4 DAW' ```

I think I read an email somewhere that alsa might be running into a name length limit, but ...perhaps there's a way to configure this? If not through a configuration file, then maybe somewhere in the source itself...?

I am not shy about that but I would need directions...100% lol.

I also looked up other issues here and some talk about portaudio and mixxx and stuff but this is definitely a system wide issue for me. And so sad too, it's a text descriptor... a text label of all things... bringing the mighty ALSA to its knees. A measly, peasly, text label for a little bittle MIDI port...

I tried udev too but ...that was utterly fruitless due to my lack of knowledge/skill... but this all should signal that I'm willing to put in some work, too. I just don't know what to do anymore. maybe .asoundrc but all the examples are about PCM and my PCM cards work fine, it's just this MIDI ambiguity thing...

Kernel: ` 6.12.17 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Thu Feb 27 15:22:43 CST 2025 x86_64 AMD Ryzen 7 2700 Eight-Core Processor AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux`

All the alsa related packages on my system (many are third party but compiled by me) ``` alsa-lib-1.2.13-x86_64-2 alsa-oss-1.1.8-x86_64-3 alsa-plugin-jack-1.2.5-x86_64-1SBo-git alsa-plugins-1.2.12-x86_64-2 alsa-plugins-compat32-1.2.12-x86_64-2compat32 alsa-tools-1.0.28-x86_64-1ponce alsa-utils-1.2.13-x86_64-3 alsamixergui-0.9.0rc2-x86_64-2_SBo bluez-alsa-3.1.0-x86_64-2ponce zita-alsa-pcmi-0.3.2-x86_64-1alien ```

Issue URL : https://github.com/alsa-project/alsa-lib/issues/442 Repository URL: https://github.com/alsa-project/alsa-lib