A wireless solution for your average MIDI studio ..

[Jay Vaughan]

> how would this differ from the already existing midi over lan protocol?

Cheaper - each MIDI device could have its own wireless transmitter, so you could put all legacy MIDI devices on the network.  Also, ANT+ has much lower power requirements - so you'd replace the battery every 2 years or so.

> Would it be more flexible and easier to use?
> 

The only difficulty is in finding an ANT+ capable tablet - right now you can add ANT+ capabilities to the iPad with the Fisica key (Apple-approved accessory), or you can buy a Sony Ericsson phone from the XPeria product line, which has ANT+ capabilities already (its radio chip can do all wireless comm on the same chip).

It is predicted that these radio chips, capable of doing Wifi and Bluetooth and ANT as well, are on their way and will be saturating the market by Q1/2012.

> To me it just depends on the quality of software, so if you're bringing a
> really good ui to market and it does what you're saying, then yeah sign me
> up. I've been thinking about how to integrate a tablet into my setup for a
> while and since there's no dire reason to do so, I've held off.

Well, this is of course a serious issue, so the software would be quite serious - things like storing/loading patches (SYSEX), sending controller and normal MIDI note on/off messages, etc.  Plus, once the ANT+ side is working, we'd add services like ANT+ -> MIDI bridging, which would open the door to the pad servicing as a gateway for OSC and so on too ..

> Additionally, there's no reasonably priced patch management system ($400 for
> midi quest? that's the only "full-featured" midi software I've been exposed
> to). So, if you could give me patch management, midi control of existing
> devices (something like the latest iteration of ctrlr.org), and make it play
> nice with wireless, sign me up. $500 is a little more than i'd "want" to
> spend, but I'd probably do it anyway, since it'd be an immensely useful
> tool.

For $500 you'd get a bunch of ANT+/MIDI bridges for your gear, the software, and so on ..


;
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Jay Vaughan