peter, the macbookPro connected to a powered hub should be fine (in case the hub meets the specifications and as long as you keep the used power below the specified 500 mA per port), and AFAIR the dual 1.8 has also USB 2.0.
just an idea: both macs should have at least 2 so called USB controller hubs, each of them leading to 2 USB ports. try to seperate your devices to the two *lines* of USB connectors, one for mouse, keyboard, dongles and the other for novation, Kore - these two possibly need relatively much power and you should consider to give them an external power supply.
also audio devices (resp. their drivers) sometimes tend to grab as much bandwidth they can get so leaving not enough to the dongle which loose their connectivity then possibly.
in any case i would recommend to connect an additional harddrive using firewire or sATA (eSATA) instead of USB, this protocol is great for low bandwidth plug&play devices but brings much overhead and risks with it.
christian