MIDI Support

[audiojunkie]

I really love MultiTrack DAW, and I signed up to the forum to express my desire for support for Midi. I would love to be able to use Genome Midi Sequencer, MultiTrack DAW, and various synths via audiobus, and have everything sync'ed up properly! Please DO add this support!

--Sean (audiojunkie on KVRAudio)

[Zoomer]

Judging by the number of reads, a lot of people are interested in this thread... It's an interesting situation: currently there are NO Audiobus enabled DAWs that offer MIDI sync capabilities. Auria is working on both, Meteor does MIDI but no Audiobus; MTD already does Audiobus, and clearly we all want MIDI sync from it, but pwnified is clearly keeping us in the dark about any progress in that direction. We could endlessly conjecture about why, but I think patience is the only real option for now; I'm sure it's not simple as it sounds. My hope is that he'll surprise us...

However, I'd just like to add that IMO, MTD would be the best candidate for this feature because of its relative lightness as an app. Unless you've got an iPad 4 (and even then...) there are real limits to the number of concurrent audio/MIDI apps you can run, so a small footprint is a definite advantage. A minimum setup would require MTD, a MIDI generator app (synced to MTD), Audiobus, and a synth driven by the MIDI generator and recorded into MTD via Audiobus. I'm starting to wonder if an iPad 2 or 3 can even handle a scenario like that. One alternative is using the internal arpeggiator capabilities of some synths locked to the DAW's MIDI clock instead of a MIDI generator app. We'll have to wait and see what's possible...

[pwnified]

Apologies for keeping you in the dark, it does seem to be a highly requested feature, and for good reason. I'm on board, and looking into midi sync and midi start/stop triggering. On the first glance at iOS midi, I'm not impressed with it unfortunately, looks like a lot of developers have overly complicated the whole thing. Still looking, and thinking about how to simplify it. Audiobus might have an update which can help clean this up, if it can do for midi what it did for audio, we'll have it made.

[ZenLizard]

@pwnified

While I have been going all over the place, shamelessly pestering devs to get clock and start/stop sync running in their apps, I respect and sincerely appreciate that you don't want to farg up your app with messy code. One thing I can definitely be patient for — well... reasonably — is for streamlining and standards to be rooted, instead of releasing hardcore glitchography into the app-verse where the headaches are already long and exceedingly painful. The idea that anyone might be about to clean up the MIDI-mess that is already out here is a sound for sore ears indeed! Thank you for caring enough about your app and it's users to wait for a better way. In other words... I'd rather not have it than have it giving me heartburn.

[Zoomer]

Apologies for keeping you in the dark, it does seem to be a highly requested feature, and for good reason. I'm on board, and looking into midi sync and midi start/stop triggering. On the first glance at iOS midi, I'm not impressed with it unfortunately, looks like a lot of developers have overly complicated the whole thing. Still looking, and thinking about how to simplify it. Audiobus might have an update which can help clean this up, if it can do for midi what it did for audio, we'll have it made.

Thanks for the feedback, pwnified. You're totally right about this. The fault is really Apple's for not laying down the law on MIDI in the first place. It's a real shame because they had it for OS X and could have simply ported things over to iOS from the get-go. I guess they never realized how popular it would get. As a result it's now a hodge-podge of competing layouts. From what I'm hearing, Audiobus are no angels in this either, now contributing in their own way to the complexity rather than adopting existing schemes. It's no wonder you're having a hard time wrapping your head around implementation! And more shame too, because in real terms, MIDI is a rather simple protocol.

Unless Apple steps up and starts cleaning things up, I'm afraid we're going to be stuck with a real mess in terms of incompatibilities and implementations. Already how MIDI is setup, it's defaults and options, vary significantly from app to app and there's too many incompatibilities. As in so many things, maybe it's going to get worse before it gets better...

[ZenLizard]

@zoomer

I wonder if there might be a method behind the madness. It would seem on the surface that apple should have said, "okay, guys, this is how it's going to work." I was shocked by the idea that it hadn't occurred to anyone at apple, for example, that musicians would want to use the audio from their music apps in the same project at the same time, and that copying and pasting audio was a ridiculous way to go about it (I still do. That's why I purchased Audiobus on the day it was released).

Then I started thinking about how many other standards have come about by letting competing ideas duke it out until eventually the best methods were hit upon, which then became the standards. Of course, sometimes they are established by whomever has the most power or the best marketing campaign and not the superior ideas.

Maybe music app developers should form some kind of a convention where they can discuss, debate, and come up with a consensus on MIDI and audio integration. By working together they could correct all these issues of incompatibility, which would produce happier customers, which in turn would result in more sales. (Forgive my ignorance if such a body exists already. If one does then they need to get their butts in gear!)

[Zoomer]

@ZenLizard

Then I started thinking about how many other standards have come about by letting competing ideas duke it out until eventually the best methods were hit upon, which then became the standards. Of course, sometimes they are established by whomever has the most power or the best marketing campaign and not the superior ideas.

You mean like VHS vs Beta? (Beta was the better medium) Or RS-232? (a total breakdown of standardization beyond the name!) Seems these things get decided by quite a mixed bag of corporate imposition and marketing saavy; letting a standard define itself usually doesn't yield good results. MIDI itself was an evolution of ideas that many companies signed up on. What helped define it was that they all had a common goal and in the end they all benefited by it's standardization.

In the case of iOS, and because Apple HAS let competing standards emerge and re-invent the wheel, we're now dealing with associations of developers with the same idea but different implementations. So now it becomes about hegemony. When you think about it, GarageBand's Jam Session feature could have been the birth of an iOS virtual audio standard that would have made Audiobus redundant. But since they accepted Audiobus, clearly Apple didn't want to throw its own resources at this issue; they opted to let someone else implement a third party solution. This doesn't make for a pretty garden, but it probably sells more iPads...

Like I said: it's probably going to get worse before it gets better. Interesting times!

[ZenLizard]

@zoomer

Good point. I should have written "most of the time" rather than "sometimes" Every time I try to think positively, reality rushes in and stomps on my sand castle. At least those guys pushing the square wheel lost out to the circle group. I can cling to that.

[Zoomer]

At least those guys pushing the square wheel lost out to the circle group. I can cling to that.

LOL! I would have liked to listen to the marketing spiel at those consumer trials...

[Bendy]

Well I have been using the ipad 2 with multitrack daw and audiobus and midi clock to run funk box and sunrizer. And it's bloody a bloody marvel. Work like a dream.

But there is a massive but

all the audio comes in on one mono track, unlike the majestic multitrack daw that splits things up with its audiobus magic

So an ipad to can cope with all this magic but we just need the clock sync in harmonic dog. Really you can forget all the fancy midi edit stuff at the beginning. Just the midi clock, it'll drive drum machines and arps.

Can't wait