Wireless Midi (both iOS and Win 10)

[Freehold Fred]

Hi,

I am just curious what you all use for wireless MIDI for both playing and recording. I know it is a lot easier with the DKC850/900, but ... we have Mark III with a DKC55RCD. The CD no longer works, but the floppy still works and I have a couple of floppy drive backups just in case.

I just bought the Yamaha Wireless Bluetooth adapter, MD-BT01. My iPad didn't see it at first, until I stumbled on some obscure reference to Visual Performer, which I installed on iPad. Now I am able to play MIDIs with mostly MuseScore and SweetMidi. Rechanneling a Piano Part to Ch 1 for the DKV (for those MIDIs that already don't come that way) is challenging onscreen, but I think I will eventually figure it out.

However, there are several downfalls of these two apps:

1) SweetMidi does NOT a have Staff View for the real musician in the family --- my wife.

2a) MuseScore, AFAIK, doesn't permit uploading one's own Midi files (scores) from the iPad --- uploading can only be done from the desktop version.

2b) I installed MuseScore under Windows 10 on a DualCore Laptop. I bought a USB to Bluetooth Adapter. From my research, I found out that Windows 10 does not natively see MIDI. Further research revealed that I needed a 'virtual cable' using MIDIBerry. Essentially, MIDIBerry provides a 'bridge' connection. Using MIDIBery, I connected the IN of the 'virtual' cable to the OUT of the MD-BT01. Actually this worked after much trial and error, but in all likelihood I will need to see if the overall timings with my spaghetti connections are affected. In additon, I will need a second virtual connection to be able to swap the INs to OUTs in order to record from the DKV or manually do the swap in MIDIBerry.

There's got to be an easier way. I'm coming from mainly the MidiSoft Studio 4 and Cakewalk 6.0 era and before that with Voyetra and Finale. I have extensive PC experience.

Any suggestions or what, again, are you guys using?

Freehold Fred

[Spencer Chase]

Win 10 sucks for midi. Every update can eliminate, or in rare cases reinstate features. I sort of think it is all really there but it can require major registry hacks and system settings just to get back what worked before the update. It took a major effort to get cakewalk to work again.

If one of the things you are trying to do is move stuff to channel 1 , really channel 0 you can batch process files with my midimod2 program and many other utilities on the download page. Spencerserolls.com

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[Geoff Ward]

My experience with Windows 10 is a bit different to Spencer’s.  Everything I used to use with Win 7 works with Win 10, including Cakewalk Pro Audio v. 9  (not the Sonar version), Van Basco, Musescore 3 and MidiSwing.

 

I use either an iPad Pro with Sweet MIDI Player or a Windows 10 laptop running Van Basco to control my Mark IV.  I haven’t done so for some time as it is broken.  It seems that a failed power supply sent a high voltage surge through the system and destroyed it.  So far replaced have been 2 power supplies and the computer mother board.  At this stage the PDA won’t communicate with the piano and the inputs for USB MIDI and DIN MIDI aren’t receptive to a MIDI stream.  It’s been more than 12 months now and the Yamaha Australia tech doesn’t seem to know where to go next.  But… that’s another story.

 

See diagram attached for my wired and wireless connections.

 

My preferred method of wirelessly controlling the DKV is Van Basco on a laptop.  My setup works fairly well.  On occasions, the system will buffer the note stream for a second or two and the send them all at once, producing a pretty horrible sound – but it doesn’t happen often and I can live with it.  I can’t work out why it does this and if anyone has suggestions, please speak up.  I have updated the dedicated router to a new LinkSys with no benefit.  It might be a Windows 10 thing.

 

I can also control my Disklavier with an iPad PRO running SweetMIDI connected wirelessly to the DKV via the Yamaha MD-BT01 MIDI adapter.  This connection works flawlessly, as does SweetMIDI.  At the time of first use, SweetMIDI couldn’t see the Yamaha Bluetooth MIDI adapter.  At someone’s suggestion, I ran another program and, voila, SweetMIDI could see the Yamaha adapter.  I can’t remember which program that was.  It could have been MIDI-OX, MIDIBerry or LoopMIDI.  I have never had the problem again.  SweetMIDI sees the Yamaha MD-BT01 every time I use it.

 

I have tried to run SweetMIDI for Windows on my laptop, but Van Basco did not see a SweetMIDI device as an output.   A workaround suggested by the SweetMIDI tech guy, Rolf, using programs called MIDIBerry and LoopMIDI, was not successful – many dropped notes and irregular timing of notes.  Maybe the CoolSoft MIDI Mapper (referred to in the article below) would offer a solution to allow Sweet MIDI Player to run well under Window 10.  Has anyone tried it?

 

Here is a link to a very interesting article dealing with problems with MIDI on Windows:  http://donyaquick.com/midi-on-windows/

 

I hope this helps someone.

 

Kind regards

 

Geoff Ward

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[Spencer Chase]

must be different versions of win 10 in OZ. cake did work but the ability to play to default midi devices such as the horrible ms wavetable synth came and went with different updates. the most recent update magically got the (horrible but useful for crude file checking) wavetable synth working but the midi mapper i was using (Coolsoft) stopped working completely. previously i had to use the midi mapper to get any audio output from cake now it is just the opposite. to listen to decent piano sound i use either my recently acquired 9 ft Knabe or Pianoteq but it is nice to be able to play files from cakewalk just for checking. every major win update seems to change things. 

Geoff, good luck with Coolsoft, with the current update to win 10 64 bit, it seems to be totally useless. Worked just fine before the update.

My antique XP computer seems to do everything MIDI just fine. Just can't connect it to the internet.

 

 

Best regards, Spencer Chase
67550 Bell Springs Rd.
Garberville, CA 95542 Postal service only.
Laytonville, CA 95454 UPS only.
Spe...@spencerserolls.com
Spe...@poodlex.com
Spe...@mcn.org
http://www.spencerserolls.com
http://www.poodlex.com
(425) 791-0309
(707) 223-8212

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/disklavier-support-group/001101d5f11d%24d0ade2e0%247209a8a0%24%40bigpond.com.

[Freehold Fred]

Hi Spencer and Geoff,

I went back, eliminating Bluetooth (BT), and connected a UNO USB2Midi to my Win 10 (v. 1809) Laptop. I found my Cakewalk Express Gold 8.0 circa 1998 CD. Installed it and put it in XP SP2 Compatibility mode. Lo and behold, I am in business --- got the Piano Staff View that I wanted. My Mark III plays without any hesitations.

I also successfully ran MuseScore 3.

I haven't tried recording yet.

VanBasco was a no go.

Back to BT2Midi in Windows 10, I suppose I will have to leave it others to hack an improvement, but for now it looks like my prepping will be done on my PC, but wireless playing via BT will be on an iPad.

Also of note, MuseScore has a 'latency' parameter under Preferences > I/O. My research indicated that while, yes, 'latency' is in there, there is little evidence that is of any use. So BT latency and/or buffers are major timing obstacles in Windows 10 for the purported software contenders my and existing laptop hardware for now.

BTW, Spencer --- quick question on your MidiMod2, when a Piano patch/part is moved to Ch1 and Ch2 and what was there is moved to Ch3 (as i understand it), what happens to what was on Ch3? Is that now merged?

[Freehold Fred]

Geoff,

VanBasco, as I replied above, was a no-go for me.

Yes, I had to install Visual Performer app on my iPad before I could 'see' the MD-BT01. On my PC, I had to do an update of the BT01 driver, but I feel it is still not working properly.

The link you provided is a semester's worth of info :>)

I forgot about CoolSynth, which I used in the past, but with Yamaha module, I am quite pleased w/o any virtual sounds.

Good luck with your power supply issues.

Best,

Freehold Fred

On Tuesday, March 3, 2020 at 12:37:30 AM UTC-5, Geoff Ward wrote:

 

My preferred method of wirelessly controlling the DKV is Van Basco on a laptop.

 

I can also control my Disklavier with an iPad PRO running SweetMIDI connected wirelessly to the DKV via the Yamaha MD-BT01 MIDI adapter.  This connection works flawlessly, as does SweetMIDI.  At the time of first use, SweetMIDI couldn’t see the Yamaha Bluetooth MIDI adapter.  At someone’s suggestion, I ran another program and, voila, SweetMIDI could see the Yamaha adapter.  I can’t remember which program that was.  It could have been MIDI-OX, MIDIBerry or LoopMIDI.  I have never had the problem again.  SweetMIDI sees the Yamaha MD-BT01 every time I use it.

[Geoff Ward]

Fred, my Windows 10 Pro version is 1909.  I have never had a problem with Van Basco.  I use Windows 10 for USB MIDI and iPad for BT MIDI. 

By Coolsynth, I assume you mean VirtualMidiSynth from Coolsoft.  Maybe VMS is causing you a problem with VB.  I haven’t used VMS for a while as I didn’t see much benefit from it and it did cause some problems for me.  I don’t have it installed anymore.

 

Kind regards

 

Geoff

 

 

From: disklavier-s...@googlegroups.com [mailto:disklavier-s...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Freehold Fred
Sent: Wednesday, 4 March 2020 6:30 PM
To: Disklavier Support Group <disklavier-s...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Wireless Midi (both iOS and Win 10)

 

Geoff,

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[Spencer Chase]

i installed coolsoft virtual when ms wavetable stopped working. i could use virtual to play wavetable but not directly. i don't remember but it might not have even showed up in the chooser menus? they all just look at the registry to find the available midi devices so ???

anyway it worked for a while but with one of the more recent updates, virtual synth stopped working completely and miraculously wavetable synth started working again. i only use it for rough checking of files. if i want to know what they really sound like i use pianotech or the real piano.

 

 

Best regards, Spencer Chase
67550 Bell Springs Rd.
Garberville, CA 95542 Postal service only.
Laytonville, CA 95454 UPS only.
Spe...@spencerserolls.com
Spe...@poodlex.com
Spe...@mcn.org
http://www.spencerserolls.com
http://www.poodlex.com
(425) 791-0309
(707) 223-8212

------ Original Message ------

From: "Geoff Ward" <gwar...@bigpond.com>

To: disklavier-s...@googlegroups.com

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/disklavier-support-group/004001d5f282%2445fb8740%24d1f295c0%24%40bigpond.com.