In both of your diagrams, the QC is a USB peripheral since there is nothing after it - it is the furthest device away from the computer - which is HAS to be, since it only has one USB connector.
The Akai Force has three USB connections - one USB B 3.0 connection (where it acts as a peripheral), and two USB A 3.0 connections (where it acts as a host).
The QC has one USB B connection where it acts as a peripheral.
It is completely pointless (if not impossible) to make this a host port, since there is no other port. It does not need to act as a host, because it has nowhere else to send/recieve digital audio.
If your request was somehow possible, you would have a USB Host at both ends of your signal path, which would cause all kinds of confusion.
What you want is a USB audio interface that can act as a host and peripheral at the same time, into which you can connect your QC and your computer. Get an Akai Force, or ask someone else to build one.
Requesting that a company completely skirt USB standards and change a USB B port to act as a host is not the solution.
TOMFS Wrote: âIn both of your diagrams, the QC is a USB peripheral since there is nothing after itâ
Thatâs not what determines if a device is a USB host or peripheral. That distinction is solely a software mode of how the connection should be handled via the USB protocol.
TOMFS Wrote âIt does not need to act as a host, because it has nowhere else to send/receive digital audio.â
USB hosts sends and receives audio through the same USB port. So yes, you would hook up a single USB cable and send/receive audio into as well as out of the QC (set to USB host mode) from / to the audio interface (USB peripheral).
The audio interface are all hardcoded to act in USB peripheral mode, but then QC needs to be set to act as host.
USB B port is the exact same pins as USB A port. The physical type B plug was just to be a helper / visual clue so that somebody does not connect two peripherals by accident. There is no actual technical difference between the USB Type B or USB Type A. However, if a USB port acts a host or peripheral is changeable in software.
Unfortunately, there is no interfaces that act as USB Audio host and USB Audio peripheral at the same time. Akai Force can be set to act as a USB audio host or peripheral for USB audio, but not both at the same time. Once you set the Akai to act as the host, it works like a charm to interface Akai to an audio interface though. And one can do the same on the QC technically with a software updateâŚ
In the diagrams, there is no USB signal path between QC and computer. And QC is a host for the audio interface 1, just like a PC is the host for audio interface 2. The audio connection between the interfaces happens through other established digital audio standards such as ADAT, MADI, DANTE, AVB etc.
This works in practice also between two PCs both acting as hosts.
Except that one has power out, while the other has power in, but I guess youâre glossing over that?
Apart from the direction of power as I said above, and the connector type, but I guess theyâre not that technical.
Got an example of anyone doing this before? Akai Force doesnât count, because they just added audio support to the USB A host connections. The USB B connection still acts as a peripheral.
None of the devices involved take power from USB, so itâs solely used as a data connection in this case. You could convert to Type B plug and back to Type A, and still get a data connection. It all depends on the firmware of the USB interface.
Anyhow this an option to get connectivity with the kind of digital audio I/O that people ask for. Without itâs not possibleâŚ