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Midi over WiFi from ipad to Mac?
I followed a guide online about how to connect a mac and ios device using the midi configuration settings in Audio Midi Setup on the Mac but each time I try I get some kind of error message saying check the router or firewall etc. I checked some apple help page about this problem which was a bit vague and tried to follow what it said but had no joy. Both devices are on the same he WiFi network. Anyone got any experience of how to solve this?
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I use it almost every day 👀 had no problems
things to check
midi network setup -> who may connect me - select anyone
live routings -> I dont recommend to choose a specific routing session
double check midi routing pref. in your daw -> ex ableton- preferences-link midi- midi ports- network session track and remote controls on
and Ive firewall on but allowed all incoming connections for ableton -preferences/ security/ firewall/ firewall options/ click on + and add the daw/app you use on mac
that should work
Can be router problems, many wifi routers are just a bit shit (especially ones you get with your internet connection). Maybe dig into the router settings - doing a firmware update or reset might also help.
@Gavinski Are you able to connect to the Mac with another iOS app, maybe Files or Termius (SSL terminal)? That would resolve general connectivity problems (router, firewall), before delving into MIDI specifics.
More specific information would help. Perhaps a screenshot with the message so that we can see the precise message and at what stage it is appearing. A screen recording might be even more helpful.
If you have a router, it is possible that it is set up with restrictive settings and needs to have its firewall settings changed. If possible use an ad-hoc network to reduce latency and likelihood of clever security settings on the router foiling you.
I was going to suggest tge adhoc network, but i see it has already been done. It's te best alternative.
Here how I send midi over wifi from ios device to Mac
Launch the midi app you will be using on the ios device
Launch Audio MIDI Setup on the Mac. ...
After it loads, click Window in the menu bar and choose Show MIDI Studio.
then in the same menu select open midi network setup
Create a session by clicking the plus (+) button under My Sessions.
You should see the ios device in the window below the session window
then press "connect" then open your Mac app and select network as the midi source.
Now I mostly use
Apples "IDAM" for this I plug my iPhone or ipad to my mac using the lighting port. Open AudioMidi setup under the "Windows: menu select show audio device. You should see your ios device listed on the left side in the device list. Select the ios device and press enable.
Then in your DAW or whatever application your using that accepts midi and you should be able to select. your ios device.
I'm also able to do this wirelessly using Bluetooth midi.
Oh wow, needing to dig in to router settings, I haven't got the first clue about that kind of thing and no idea where to even start. I'll look into it, that's the likely problem. @hacked_to_pieces the problem is definitely nothing to do with ableton, I'm not even able to get to the stage of trying it in a DAW, the problem arises after pressing connect in Audio Midi Setup - the connection fails. @espiegel123 I'll look at sending a screen recording later, cheers
You should probably do a test where you send from a hotspot or something to rule out any router restrictions.
If you are checking into ports you can start with this. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202944 Though, you’ll probably want to see what ports network MIDI works on as I don’t think these ports in the article I mentioned have anything to do with MIDI.
@Gavinski - Any particular reason for trying midi over WiFi rather than just using Bluetooth midi? BT midi is easier and should perform much better.
@DMan thank you!
No reason, except that the Polyphase manual mentioned doing it over WiFi and I wanted to try it. Was not something I have tried before. If Bluetooth midi is better I will do that instead.
@wim So over WiFi doesn't have better latency?
this is midi over bluetooth , which i prefer, not sure if it helps. I did not have major latency issues with Midi over wifi , but you have to create network connection (which messes with my browsing/my personal preference)
I do not know if, polyphase has BT midi
However , If polyphase can be loaded into audiobus ( or any BT discoverable device like AUM, midimtr) ,BT over midi should be fine
Thanks, I did succeed in getting polyphase to send to my mac over Bluetooth, it worked well, but there was definitely considerable latency - edit: no actually, after checking more I see there is no noticeable latency. I am glad it worked for me first time, unlike the midi over WiFi nightmare. Cheers!
just a little reminder for ableton users- link is not supported over bluetooth
It is the other way around, wi-fi has more latency and variable latency. BlueTooth MIDI has fairly low latency ... unlike audio. Many people seem to think the audio latency is related to Bluetooth over-the-air transmission which is not the case. The audio latency has to to with the audio passing through a codec to be compressed before sending and then being decompressed on receiving. MIDI data is sent and received without re-encoding (as MIDI is low bandwidth).
Thanks Ed. Strangely, I got some problems putting Polyphase into my mac via Bluetooth just now. Everything worked fine until I pressed stop on polyphase. Then, pressing play, it would no longer work and I had to set everything up again. I then tried the midi over WiFi again, and today this worked fine.... Bizarre
Interesting. Is this just MIDI sent by polyphase from the iPad to the Mac? I've had issues with the Morph and Bluetooth but that is a known Morph bug.
Yes, midi from polyphase to the mac over Bluetooth
Latency over WiFi is no better in my experience. In fact, I gave up on WiFi entirely after way too many hours trying to get it to work acceptably. But more than latency, consistency was always the problem over WiFi. Midi message timing was all over the place, and sometimes there would be buffering going on so that communication would briefly pause, but then a burst of messages would flood in all at once. I'm highly experienced in networking but no amount of optimization would get it to work acceptably. ymmv.
Bluetooth on the other hand has been reliable and with acceptable latency for my purposes. I do find BLE Midi between iOS devices better than BLE Midi between iOS and the Mac. I have annoying connection issues sometimes with the Mac. Devices sometimes show up then disappear in the connection dialog, sometimes it takes more than one try to connect, etc. These things never happen between iOS devices. TLDR; I mainly just use IDAM with the Mac.
On the other hand: bandwidth could be an issue with BLE Midi. I know my NanoKEY Studio disables sending MIDI clock over BLE. I assume Korg did that for a reason. My Sensel Morph can't handle sending MPE over BLE (though this could just be a problem with the Morph as @espiegel123 mentions).
On the other-other hand: I did some tests sending MIDI Clock over BLE midi, and it seemed to work as well as a direct MIDI Connection via USB. I didn't do any extensive testing as it was more for curiosity sake than anything.
As mentioned, WiFi is still needed for Link to function.
@wim: fwiw, re Morph bluetooth. At first, I figured that the problem was that the morph sent so many MIDI cc's (aftertouch, pitchbend, etc) that the receiving apps couldn't keep up. So, I wrote a streambyter script to control the number of CCs that got through and noticed that even if I blocked all the CCs, there were still issues and noticed that occasionally there were missing note offs. I got in touch with Sensel support and they said that they were aware of the issue and that Bluetooth performance was a high priority for the developers (along with working on improving the evenness of response on the pad's margins).
Thanks, that's great data. I assumed that since Korg disables Midi Clock over BLE midi, it was a more general bandwidth limitation. I'm almost curious enough to do some thorough stress testing of BLE.
... Nah. Got more fun stuff to do.
I was able to get pretty consistent clock (with AB3 clock smoothing) from OT through Yamaha MD-BT01.
There was no stress testing, but clock together with notes across several midi tracks and few lines of cc worked fine stability wise, but noticed random timing issues (midi notes from OT).