Wireless MIDI in Linux

Talk about your MIDI interfaces, microphones, keyboards...

Moderators: MattKingUSA, khz

Post Reply
vth
Established Member
Posts: 17
Joined: Wed Jul 18, 2018 6:21 am

Wireless MIDI in Linux

Post by vth »

Has anyone successfully used any wireless MIDI transceiver such as the Yamaha MD-BT01 or the Quicco mi.1 in Linux? I have a device I'd like to occasionally sysex, but I'd like to avoid unnecessary cabling if possible.
Todd
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu May 30, 2019 5:34 pm

Re: Wireless MIDI in Linux

Post by Todd »

I'm also looking for any reports on getting this device to work on Linux. Thanks for any input!
Musicmaker
Established Member
Posts: 47
Joined: Sun Oct 19, 2014 2:34 pm
Been thanked: 5 times

Re: Wireless MIDI in Linux

Post by Musicmaker »

Sill having no luck on Ubuntu (19.04) with bluetooth. The Yamaha devices are detected but MIDi is not found in amidi or jackctrl. In windows (10) it works fine. It looks like the BLE MIDI stack in Linux is still not complete. A few years back the ALSA team mentioned something they did not look into BLE MIDI until it was stable. http://www.bluez.org/ Have not tried Bluz latest build but there wre no updates since 2018. maybe it merged in the kernel... Here is more stuff https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/view ... p?t=142364 https://github.com/oxesoft/rpi-midi-ble
vth
Established Member
Posts: 17
Joined: Wed Jul 18, 2018 6:21 am

Re: Wireless MIDI in Linux

Post by vth »

Took a while, but I finally got myself a Yamaha MD-BT01, and while it doesn't work out of the box in Ubuntu 18.04, all that is required to get it working is to recompile bluez with --enable-midi.
User avatar
Linuxmusician01
Established Member
Posts: 1524
Joined: Mon Feb 23, 2015 2:38 pm
Location: Holland
Has thanked: 756 times
Been thanked: 135 times

Re: Wireless MIDI in Linux

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

vth wrote: Took a while, but I finally got myself a Yamaha MD-BT01, and while it doesn't work out of the box in Ubuntu 18.04, all that is required to get it working is to recompile bluez with --enable-midi.
Thank you for that tip. How exactly did you do it? Did you uninstall bluez w/ your package manager first and then compile? I see on the bluez website that the kernel code cannot be downloaded from there. So I take it that you only compiled the user space part of bluez? Were there a lot of additional (dev) packages that you had to install because of dependencies? Or was "build-essential" enough?
vth
Established Member
Posts: 17
Joined: Wed Jul 18, 2018 6:21 am

Re: Wireless MIDI in Linux

Post by vth »

Linuxmusician01 wrote: How exactly did you do it?
For Ubuntu 18.04, this should work (provided you have source repositories enabled):

Code: Select all

BLUEZ_ORIG=bluez_5.48.orig.tar.xz
BLUEZ_UBUNTU=bluez_5.48-0ubuntu3.2.debian.tar.xz
BLUEZ_PATH=bluez-5.48

sudo apt-get build-dep bluez --yes
sudo apt-get install build-essential libasound2-dev --yes

wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/b/bluez/$BLUEZ_ORIG
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/b/bluez/$BLUEZ_UBUNTU

tar xJf $BLUEZ_ORIG
cd $BLUEZ_PATH
tar xJf ../$BLUEZ_UBUNTU
sed -i 's/\(--enable-usb\)/\1 --enable-midi/' debian/rules
dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -b
Then install the resulting bluez_5.48-0ubuntu3.2_amd64.deb and restart the bluetooth service.

Adapted from here.
User avatar
khz
Established Member
Posts: 1648
Joined: Thu Apr 17, 2008 6:29 am
Location: German
Has thanked: 42 times
Been thanked: 92 times

Re: Wireless MIDI in Linux

Post by khz »

How fast and above all how tight (https://www.innerclocksystems.com/litmus) is MIDI over wireless? Doesn't MIDI have to go through several processes until it comes from A to B, similar to USB through several layers?
. . . FZ - Does humor belongs in Music?
. . GNU/LINUX@AUDIO ~ /Wiki $ Howto.Info && GNU/Linux Debian installing >> Linux Audio Workstation LAW
  • I don't care about the freedom of speech because I have nothing to say.
User avatar
Linuxmusician01
Established Member
Posts: 1524
Joined: Mon Feb 23, 2015 2:38 pm
Location: Holland
Has thanked: 756 times
Been thanked: 135 times

Re: Wireless MIDI in Linux

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

@vth: thnks for the info. :)
theatomicdog
Established Member
Posts: 9
Joined: Mon May 27, 2019 10:00 pm
Been thanked: 1 time

Re: Wireless MIDI in Linux

Post by theatomicdog »

Just fond the thread looking for something else. In Debian Buster I have it working, but latency is way bigger than my iOS iPhone. I'm trying to debug a decent config so I can use it with the same proficiency than in Apple based OSes
voland62
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Apr 01, 2021 12:00 pm

Re: Wireless MIDI in Linux

Post by voland62 »

So is there a way to check that BT-MIDI works now after recompilation?
Thx.
Post Reply