Best way to get MIDI wirelessly to iPads?

[MTalking]

Hello! I'm struggling with getting wireless MIDI to my iPads and I'm wondering what you guys have found to be the best, most reliable solution â especially for live performance, where a dropout can be really disruptive.

 

When my band plays live, we have four iPads on stage, one for each player. The drummer's iPad shows his drum charts, the singer's shows her lyrics, etc. We use some tracks, which are on my MacBook Pro in Ableton Live. We have program changes in Ableton Live that go to the iPads to change the lyrics/chart to the right song, and even to scroll at the right part of the song (scroll to the chorus during the chorus part of the song, etc.).

 

I've been routing the program changes out of the MacBook and into the mioXL, and then from there outputting via the DIN ports to the iPads (each of which has a little MIDI-to-USB converter hooked up to it).

 

This method works fine, but I hate having MIDI cables all over the stage and those little converts hanging off each iPad; just looks sloppy, and of course it means more set-up and tear-down time.

 

I tried setting up a Session on my MacBook Pro and sending the MIDI information over WiFi, but for whatever reason, this route caused some interference with Ableton Live and the connection kept dropping live anyways.

 

So then I tried plugging in WIDI Adapters into the mioXL's outputs, and sending the MIDI information via Bluetooth. That actually works pretty well, although I still get at least a couple of drop-outs per show, which is disruptive to the musicians.

 

(For instance, a song starts and the singer's iPad doesn't change to the new song, and she has to manually rifle through the various songs to find her chart. And she has to re-establish a connection to the WIDI Adapter.)

 

What do you guys suggest I try next?

 

Thanks in advance for any input you all can provide!

[Reezekeys]

I"m pretty sure you only have two choices for wireless MIDI to your iPad: Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. If wifi isn"t working, that leaves you with only one!

[MPN21]

All CME-Pro WIDI devices have performed very well for me. https://www.cme-pro.com/

[drawback]

The mioXL > WIDI dongle > Bluetooth route is about the best wireless you can go. Dedicating each iPad 100% to their exclusive tasks would help with dropouts but surely you"re doing that. Are the iPads current and running the latest Bluetooth (5)?

[AnotherScott]

As I recall, there is a slight performance difference between

 

{device + CME WIDI} to {iPad native bluetooth}

 

and

 

{device + CME WIDI} to {iPad + CME WIDI bluetooth}

 

I don't remember which is supposed to be better, but this may be a variable to look into, which might give you something else worth trying, in terms of eking out the best possible BT performance.

[MTalking]

The iPads are all dedicated to running lyrics via OnSong, but they're varying ages â some as old as iPad 3, some as new as iPad Pro 1. There's no real logic or pattern that I can see as to which one drops Bluetooth when.

 

Well, wait, that's not true. I know that testing them at home, I haven't been able to get a drop. It's only at gigs. Maybe it's interference from ...I don't know.

 

In any event, I think I'll try AnotherScott's suggestion of using a CME WIDI device on an iPad (in addition to the transmitters attached to the MioXL). Maybe that will perform better than the iPad's own internal bluetooth. Worth a shot, so thanks!

[brenner13]

Panda Midi Solutions MIDI Beam V2

 

 

It"s a bit more involved with batteries for the transmitter and a usb cable from the receiver and requiring the Apple Camera Connection Kit (lightning connector only at this time, I believe), but by far it is the fastest and most reliable wireless MIDI I"ve come across.

[Reezekeys]

Seems like I'm way behind on this stuff. Is WIDI a separate thing from the standard Bluetooth Midi? A subset or superset? Proprietary to CME? I've only used bluetooth midi to fool around at home to get midi from my controller keyboard to my iPad via my laptop. That works but the latency is a little higher than I like. I'm assuming that using one of these WIDI dongles attached to my A-Pro's midi port will connect directly to my iPad or iPhone and give me better latency performance, correct?

 

As I mentioned in another thread, I do use bluetooth midi to have two pads on my Roland controller turn pages in forScore - but that doesn't demand super-low latency like sending notes to a VI in the iPad.

[Groove On]

Is WIDI a separate thing from the standard Bluetooth Midi? A subset or superset? Proprietary to CME?

In theory, CME's WIDI devices are supposed to optimize the Bluetooth protocol for low-latency MIDI. There are two use cases: 1. connecting MIDI instruments directly to each other and 2. connecting MIDI instruments to a computer. CME's website says that for 1. connecting MIDI instruments directly to each other, they measure latency under 10ms with an average of 4-5ms and a low of 3ms. But this may not be true when connecting to a computer because the OS settings are set for reliability vs. performance. Personally, I've found Apple (MacOS and iOS) to have the fastest out-of-the-box settings, Windows comes in 2nd but may need to be tweaked and optimized, with Linux performance being dismal (unless you enjoy editing the code and re-compiling the Bluetooth stack).

 

Many of us ordered the new CME WIDI Uhost and WIDI Bud Pro (designed for USB) - which is supposed to ship in September, hopefully we'll get some benchmarks soon. I'm curious to see if the WIDI devices for USB are slower or faster than the WIDI devices for MIDI DIN.

[lbkeys]

I use the Yamaha BT01 from my Nord Stage 3 and Kurzweil PC4. The ipad running OnSong conrols all my program changes per song. I've been using the setup for just over a year. It's very stable and easy to use.