Midi with Android 5

[Emanuele Merlo]

Hello! 

I recently bought a tablet with the sole purpose of connecting it to the synthesizer and using some music apps. It 'a Chuwi Hibook Pro, with a hardware equipment of all respect, but runs only with Android 5.0.1.

My naivete, I believed that the midi was supported natively by Android since the early versions, unfortunately we know that it is not so. Now I am at a crossroads: I have to try to understand if I can improve the situation or change the tablet.

So far I've tried connecting the synthesizer only directly to the tablet via usb. It is recognized as a midi device, but many applications do not find / recognize, although at the start I am asked if I want to allow the app to access the device.

In the first attempt I managed to make the tablet play the notes that I was pressing, but with an annoying latency. Despite being able to play, the apps such as Simply Piano were not able to recognize the notes played.

Is there any setting, driver, app or external interface that I could use to try and improve things?

[Phil Burk]

Hello Emanuele,

The official Android MIDI support was added in the Marshmallow 6.0 release.

There are some apps that implemented MIDI on earlier versions by talking directly to USB.

There is quite a bit of variation among Android devices.

Many devices shipping today are still using old versions of Android.

There is also variation in audio latency, from 10 msec to >100 msec.

The situation is improving, but slowly.

> Is there any setting, driver, app or external interface that I could use to try and improve things?

Try this app.  I believe it uses USB MIDI directly and may have lower latency.

   https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.levien.synthesizer

I don't know of any general solution. The issues are at the system level.

Phil Burk

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[Emanuele Merlo]

The official Android MIDI support was added in the Marshmallow 6.0 release.

There are some apps that implemented MIDI on earlier versions by talking directly to USB.

There is quite a bit of variation among Android devices.

Many devices shipping today are still using old versions of Android.

There is also variation in audio latency, from 10 msec to >100 msec.

The situation is improving, but slowly.

Thank you for your answer. 

I've done some comparative tests with my phone (Android 7) and the tablet (Android 5.0.1) 

The phone works quite perfectly, with a really light latency like a slight reverb. The tablet has only a partial support for midi, so the latency is heavyer and the app I want to use which is based on midi notes recognition doesn't recognize the notes I play. 

I can't hope on a tablet o.s. update, so I'll change it. 

 

[Philippe Simons]

Yes and it's basically a lottery, it's very difficult to know if a device will meet the specs for good MIDI experience.

Android 6.0 is required, but it's not enough.

The device needs USB-OTG

MIDI API needs to be enabled at Android level.

and the sound device needs to achieve low latency.

You can expect Nexus/Pixel devices to meet these requirements, but for the others...

It's not like the OEMs are going to announce these kind of features in the specs on the device box.

@Phil could it be possible for Google to build a list (and maintain it) of such devices ?

Philippe

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[Philippe Simons]

@Emanuele if you can put your hands on Nvidia SHIELD tablet, go for it.

They have greate MIDI support and low latency.

[mario...@gmail.com]

On Friday, December 22, 2017 at 9:55:04 AM UTC, Philippe Simons wrote:

Yes and it's basically a lottery, it's very difficult to know if a device will meet the specs for good MIDI experience.

Android 6.0 is required, but it's not enough.

The device needs USB-OTG

MIDI API needs to be enabled at Android level.

and the sound device needs to achieve low latency.

I have found this as well.
It only works with USB-OTG, while the "other" way (direct USB)

This seems a very strange decision.
Is there a plan to support plain USB Midi Devices in the future?

The Linux kernel supports them out of the box with no problems. Why is Android insisting for this?

Andrea

[Phil Burk]

Hello Andrea,

An OTG adapter is needed with a MIDI peripheral because Android is normally a USB peripheral. The OTG adapter tells Android to act as a Host for the MIDI peripheral. It also converts from USB-A to micro USB or USB-C.

> Is there a plan to support plain USB Midi Devices in the future?

The Android OS can support plain USB MIDI devices since 6.0. But Android phone manufacturers are not required to support MIDI.  There are some kernel changes required for full support.  More details here:

https://source.android.com/devices/audio/midi

We are working with manufacturers to get more support for MIDI and also lower audio latency.

Thanks,

Phil Burk

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