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Advice on MIDI controller apps
Anyone here use S1MidiTrigger or TB MIDI Stuff as a MIDI controller app? Other than TB MIDI Stuff offering OSC control, how do they stack up against each other?
I'm looking to add touch surface control for my MicroKORG initially, but will likely want to control additional MIDI hardware (e.g. drum machines, an older VHM5 vocalist) further down the line.
Thanks!
Comments
I've only used TBMidi Stuff and TouchOSC. You can't go wrong with TB Midi Stuff. It is great. TouchOSC ... not so much.
If you're planning to work over wireless rather than wired connections, then latency can be an issue - and lost MIDI messages if traffic is high. But that will be the case regardless of which controller app you use.
Be aware that if your outboard gear uses a lot of sysex, it can be really tricky to get things working like you want with any controller app. TB Midi Stuff makes that easier than most apps, but sysex messages can be mind-bendingly complicated.
Apollo seems to fix the Bl;uetooth latency issues. Has a Mac server too. Not sure about Windows.
Controllers:
MIDI Control. Never seems to work so it is sidelined for now.
MIDI Designer. Pretty, but somehow has yet to click with me.
MIDI Studio. Very pretty, some nice standard controller views, but HUGE footprint.
TouchOSC. downside 1 is the need for a Mac/PC editor to design new panels. Downside 2 is IIRC limited vocabulary for control messages sent. But I have built a nice controller for a PC mocap program I'm writing with it.
TBMidiStuff. My goto controller currently. Can send arbitrary sets of arbitrary MIDI messages on a single tap, can (this one is impressive) translate between CC messages and Sysex equivalents (such as used by Roland gear) both ways. In -App editing. Forum with page exchange. Excellent MIDI impemtation re CoreMIDI, VirtualMIDI, NetworkMIDI, defines 4 Virtual send ports for complex setups. Yes, I like it. Downside is slightly cheesy graphics, but I'm not a DJ so there's no beauty competition.
MIDI Toolbox. Have this for the one feature I could not get TBMidiStuff to do - send Sysex dump requsts and save the response as a named file for later playback. I use this to manage Korg nano*2 patches directly from the iPad. Korg do not have an iPad based editor and can only manage patches from a Mac/PC editor program. But they do publish the Sysex specs. Still waiting for KMI to do the same so I can remap my QuThings on the fly too.
There are many others of more restricted application, e.g. iXY for a simple XY pad on the iPhone, much handier now with Apollo.
Apollo is pretty fast for MIDI, but a heads-up on OSC -- it's a much more verbose protocol, and it will send a lot more data for the equivalent thing in MIDI. OSC is good if you've got a really high bandwidth connection (ethernet), but it's not great over Bluetooth or WiFi, IMO.
The next update of Apollo will have a built in keyboard and pads, to make life a little bit easier. Plus some MIDI message logging, to help troubleshoot connections.
The Mac server for Apollo is out now, and the Windows variant is in the works.
The MIDI Control app mentioned above is mine as well -- and in dire need of a complete reboot, which I'm hoping to get done in the next month or three. There's a good chance that MIDI Control and Apollo will merge some features.
Thanks, folks! I appreciate all the info. Most helpful.
@dwarman said:
@SecretBaseDesign said:
It's great to hear this! Is there any plan to include a screen with faders, switches or knobs too?
@SecretBaseDesign - looking forward to the reboot. I liked it as a lightweight controller. Will it retain its iPad 1 compatibility? I'm using my old 1 as MIDI central now, a not too bad work-around those pesky promiscuous synths etc that frustrate MidiBridge mapping. TB still runs fine there, as does MB.
I think I'll strip down MIDI Control to just provide MIDI surfaces, and probably also have built-in support for a little bit of routing, and Bluetooth connectivity. It currently has support for Audiobus, AC+P, etc., but all of that stuff makes it harder to maintain, and there's more things that can break.
Faders, knobs, etc., all pretty easy to do. Just need to find the time.
I'm an old Unix guy myself. I like finely focussed tools that work together vs do everything behemoths. And iOS 7 with iPad Air power is finally ready for that way of doing things. Modular Studios.
So I would really like a multi-instance arpeggiator (like StepPolyArp) that can drive multiple synths differently vs synths with all those features built in each but only to a basic level and each differently so from the other.
And MIDI Control doing only what its name says, yes, definitely fits. Thanks.
1++
for finely focused tools that I string together for my needs.
Seeing as I can't use Apollo, I'm not too keen for features to migrate from MIDI Control to Apollo.
I generally don't update apps where features are taken out.