Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
Download on the App StoreAudiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.
Comments
I wish it could be limited to a list, like how you can limit Airdrop to your Contacts list.
Resolved, solution below. Has anyone encountered one iPad not showing 'Network' in either AUM or MidiFire? I have one iPad talking on the network and to rtpMIDI. But alas, the other iPad won't cooperate. They are both connected to the exact same IP Address and port. Do I need to give them separate ports perhaps?
For what it's worth, I updated the non-responding one to 13.3 and restarted. It's working now.
I notice one iPad is 1ms and one iPad is 6ms. But I guess that's what LINK is for?
Is there any best practice as to which device you want to send the MIDI clock? e.g. iPad 1, 2, Desktop PC (Ableton), or SLMKIII controller?
I'm pretty late to the game here. But can you get a stable connection over wifi? Or Bluetooth for that matter?
I use the app MIDI Network to make the midi wifi connection and it connects. But from time to time there are bad drop-outs.
I'm connecting a keyboard to my iPhone 13 mini (IOS 15.0) and sending midi over wifi to iPad mini 6 (IOS 15.5), and the connection is really good for a minute, then bad for half a minute etc.
Any tips?
IMO, bluetooth is generally preferred over wifi. wifi latency can be quite variable and depends bith on the router and network usage.
I've worked professionally managing Wi-Fi networks for more than 25 years, so I know a bit about optimizing them. That said, I've never been able to optimize Wi-Fi well enough to play live with MIDI consistently, even in "peer-to-peer" networks with no router or other traffic in the way. I find it (usually) workable for non latency sensitive tasks such as mixer faders, but for playing? No chance.
Bluetooth MIDI is fine for my purposes, though not up to MPE (with the Sensel Morph. Other controllers may be better.)
What might work is Network Session over Ethernet. But that requires USB ethernet adapters, cables, maybe a network switch, etc.. I did get a couple of adapters, but haven't gone so far as testing that setup yet.
I've heard a few others claim Wi-Fi is adequate for network MIDI, and others claim Bluetooth MIDI has too much latency. These are just my experiences. I would be a bit nervous about Bluetooth MIDI in a crowd setting (not so much because it could be hacked but because of the device trying too hard to sort out all the broadcast pings from so many devices). I'd do a lot of testing of wired solutions (ethernet, or just plain ol' USB MIDI cables connected together) if I was going to be in a live situation.