Quicco mi.1 bluetooth midi interface

[stoken6]

I'm close to pulling the trigger on one of these. My new band is mixing up set lists close to the event, and my Nord Stage 2 is struggling with patch selection.

 

I'd like to use it with Set List Maker on my iPhone, and wondered if any forumites had used it successfully? @Kawai James, you posted about these a while ago, I'd be interested in your experiences.

 

Cheers, Mike

[Kawai James]

stoken, yes I'm a big fan of the mi.1 - I think it's a great little device. The Quiccosound team are ex-Yamaha employees, and have their office located 30 minutes or so away.

 

When I first tried the mi.1 at a musical instrument festival in the city, it was running a beta firmware, and there was some noticeable latency between playing notes on the keys and having a voice on GarageBand play on the iPad. I recall at that time the devs telling me that they envisaged the mi.1 more for recording/playback/control of MIDI rather than necessarily for real-time VI playback.

 

Regardless, I backed their IndiGoGo campaign with the full pledge, receiving three units and an invite to their launch party. I kept one unit, sent one to my father in the UK, and another to a colleague in the US. The launch party was pretty cool - a collection of keyboard enthusiast geeking out about MIDI, controllers, and bluetooth - good fun.

 

Anyway, the initial firmware that shipped with my mi.1 was a little laggy, and could cause stuck notes when using the expression pedal. I was happy to receive my unit as an early adopter, but a little disappointed with the performance and the sticking notes.

 

A month or so later a firmware update was posted that improved latency and also resolved the sticking notes issue I was experiencing. This was obviously a major improvement - I was actually very satisfied with the performance.

 

Then a few months later, following the release of iOS8, the v2.0 firmware shipped. This crucially did away with the 'mi.1 control' app that was required as a bridge between the mi.1 and MIDI apps. Instead, the native iOS8 Bluetooth MIDI api was used. This allowed even lower latency and simplified the connection process.

 

I currently use a 1st gen. iPad Air and enjoy playing around with Korg Module, Galileo Organ, and Neo Soul Keys. While some players may be able to feel a minor latency when playing the keys, it's not something that concerns me - certainly when playing instruments in Module from my Nord I don't feel like I'm playing a VI. I've never tested it properly though - it would be interesting to record both the iPad and native Nord sounds simultaneously (on separate channels) to test how slow/fast the mi.1 is.

 

I've yet to use the mi.1+iPad combination for any live performances, partly because I'm not so confident about the headphone output. However, that may change in the future.

 

Also, please note that I do not use Set List Maker, preferring instead to organise the patches on my Nord (and using the Nord Sound Manager) then just sticking a handwritten setlist and corresponding patch number to the left of my board. However, I'm thinking about giving it a try for future band practises and performances.

 

So my experiences with the mi.1 and Quiccosound have been incredibly positive - I have confidence in the device and would recommend it to anyone looking for a wireless MIDI solution. Again, I do not use it live *yet*, but the more I play with VIs on the iPad, the more confident I become. It might even come to a point where I leave my Nord at home and just show up to a performance with my iPad and mi.1 and use whatever board is available at the venue - provided it has MIDI terminals, I can set everything up the iPad (and use SLM) and have an ultra portable gigging setup.

 

I hope this helps! If you have any further queries, please let me know.

 

Cheers,

James

x

[stoken6]

Thanks James,

 

Latest on their website is they're no longer shipping to Europe! I've dropped them a mail to see what's up.

 

Cheers, Mike.