Not a very good unit for alternative software Ubunto and GPL

I've heard conflicting accounts as to how more expensive units behave

It could be that more expensive units have better processing and smaller chip sets, eliminating the need for the middle box, but I don't know much about that first hand.

Unfortunately the replacement is displaying the same symptoms as the first unit, so now it looks like I'm stuck with two possibly-broken USB / MIDI interfaces

THis unit plus the iPad camera connection kit did the trick!I simply plug in the midi jacks, then the usb to the ipad camera usb connector then connect to ipad running your favorite midi software a wham, it just works!!Be warned thought, it does not play nice with the iPhone, but that is likely Apple's limitation...

Returning the defective unit for refund or replacement did not make sense since shipping costs would exceed the cable's value