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MIDI over Bluetooth sounds drunk

asnorasnor
edited May 2017 in General App Discussion

I got MIDI from fugue Machine, on an iPad, hooked up to DRC, on an iPhone, via Apollo MIDI Controller and it works; however, the timing makes Fugue Machine sound drunk.

Any ideas, where I can look to tighten up the timing?

Thanks!

Comments

  • JocphoneJocphone

    @asnor said:
    I got MIDI from fugue Machine, on an iPad, hooked up to DRC, on an iPhone, via Apollo MIDI Controller and it works; however, the timing makes Fugue Machine sound drunk.

    Any ideas, where I can look to tighten up the timing?

    Thanks!

    Drink more?

  • AudioGusAudioGus

    Bluetooth bad Rarr! (Never had much luck with it). Just out of curiosity, which devices?

  • asnorasnor

    @Jocphone said:
    Drink more?

    Got it covered, thanks!

    @AudioGus said:
    Bluetooth bad Rarr! (Never had much luck with it). Just out of curiosity, which devices?

    That sucks. I thought midi over BT was supposed to be the shit. I'm using an iPhone 6 and gen1 mini with 10.3.1 and 9.3.5 respectively, though it does the same thing with my wifes gen4 ipad with 10.3.1.

  • AudioGusAudioGus

    @asnor said:

    @Jocphone said:
    Drink more?

    Got it covered, thanks!

    @AudioGus said:
    Bluetooth bad Rarr! (Never had much luck with it). Just out of curiosity, which devices?

    That sucks. I thought midi over BT was supposed to be the shit. I'm using an iPhone 6 and gen1 mini with 10.3.1 and 9.3.5 respectively, though it does the same thing with my wifes gen4 ipad with 10.3.1.

    Hmmmm, I do think bluetooth in general has been improving over the last while...

    I did have a pressure sensitive bluetooth stylus that was unusable a couple years ago but just recently i gave it a try on new ipads / new iOS and it works great... I should give bluetooth midi a try again.

    Gen4 or gen1 mini may be too old to take advantage of any bluetooth enhancements that may be in ios10, more current hardware...?

  • asnorasnor
    edited May 2017

    That makes sense. It doesn't seem like it's been that long, but the gen4 is actually getting pretty old by iOS standards.

  • AudiojunkieAudiojunkie

    Also, make sure that all of your devices are using the latest version of Bluetooth LE (I think it's now 4.1 or possibly 4.2, with 5 ready to be released at any moment). Older devices with older support won't operate as well as newer versions.

  • AudiojunkieAudiojunkie

    @Audiojunkie said:
    Also, make sure that all of your devices are using the latest version of Bluetooth LE (I think it's now 4.1 or possibly 4.2, with 5 ready to be released at any moment). Older devices with older support won't operate as well as newer versions. You'll only be as fast or as low latency as the slowest device (oldest Bluetooth LE version) that is communicating. Things are getting better! :wink:

  • AudiojunkieAudiojunkie

    For example, if you were using an iPhone that only supports Bluetooth LE v. 3.0, you would likely have worse timing issues than you would if everything was using Bluetooth LE v. 4.1 or higher.

  • asnorasnor

    @Audiojunkie said:
    For example, if you were using an iPhone that only supports Bluetooth LE v. 3.0, you would likely have worse timing issues than you would if everything was using Bluetooth LE v. 4.1 or higher.

    Is there any way to update this on the devices, or am I just stuck with what's built in?

    Thanks!

  • AudiojunkieAudiojunkie

    @asnor said:

    @Audiojunkie said:
    For example, if you were using an iPhone that only supports Bluetooth LE v. 3.0, you would likely have worse timing issues than you would if everything was using Bluetooth LE v. 4.1 or higher.

    Is there any way to update this on the devices, or am I just stuck with what's built in?

    Thanks!

    I'm not sure how much the software affects the standard. I'm sure some devices have firmware updates that help with compatibility or fix bugs, etc.. But I don't know of (and haven't personally seen any) situations where a device designed with a Bluetooth v.3 for example, got an update that made it capable of Bluetooth v.4.1. I would be more apt to believe that if it can be done, it doesn't happen often.

  • wigglelightswigglelights

    @asnor said:
    That makes sense. It doesn't seem like it's been that long, but the gen4 is actually getting pretty old by iOS standards.

    From what I can find, all your devices have BT 4 capable hardware.

    Are you following "best practices" for audio?
    I.e. Force close all background apps, fresh reboot? For the phone especially you may want to have airplane mode on - if the phone is busy checking mail and Facebook, it may be slowing down the BT network.

  • asnorasnor
    edited May 2017

    @Audiojunkie said:
    I would be more apt to believe that if it can be done, it doesn't happen often.

    Yeah, probably not something I'm going to bother with.

    @wigglelights said:
    Are you following "best practices" for audio?
    I.e. Force close all background apps, fresh reboot? For the phone especially you may want to have airplane mode on - if the phone is busy checking mail and Facebook, it may be slowing down the BT network.

    I haven't done a restart on the phone, but everything else is pretty much standard procedure. Will give it a shot. Thanks!

  • SecretBaseDesignSecretBaseDesign

    Hey, jumping in here. I'm guessing that Fugue Machine is generating a ton of MIDI messages, and it's hitting the bandwidth limits of Bluetooth. With a BTLE connection, you've got low latency, but also low bandwidth -- and iOS will actually throttle high bandwidth connections(!), and there's no way to turn it off.

    With Arpeggionnome, I recall there being a steady stream of message for pitch bend and everything else -- even when there was no pitch bend happening. I don't have Fugue, but it's the same developer, and that's my guess.

    Apollo just sends out whatever MIDI message comes in, but it can get hit with operating system throttling, and bandwidth constraints. For most cases, it should be snappy, but this might not be one of them!

  • GanthoferGanthofer

    Adding on to @SecretBaseDesign 's theory that there are just too many Midi messages and not all of them needed and or useful. If that is causing or contributing to the problem, I would think that these could perhaps be filtered out with a Midi App ( midi bridge or midi flow to name a couple).

  • AudioGusAudioGus

    @Ganthofer said:
    Adding on to @SecretBaseDesign 's theory that there are just too many Midi messages and not all of them needed and or useful. If that is causing or contributing to the problem, I would think that these could perhaps be filtered out with a Midi App ( midi bridge or midi flow to name a couple).

    Good call(s)! Midiflow is awesome for cleaning the midi pipes. I had to do this once with TC Data, worked great.

  • asnorasnor

    @SecretBaseDesign

    @Ganthofer

    @AudioGus

    Thanks for chiming in! I will look into Midiflow, et-al.

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