So the consensus to date is there’s nothing out there that works well for live performance?
We’re almost in 2020 and nobody had adequately met this need?
I am going to have to start a new biz. 
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I use an Alesis Vortex 2 and I’m very happy with it. It’s proved reliable and capable.
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That all looks like re-badged CME offerings (of which I have the WIDI Bud Pro and a clutch of WIDI Masters, and am suitably impressed with).
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Yes I have CME widi master too.
It works great with win 10 and cantabile.
I made an axiom pro 25 totaly free with a simple CME widi.
Latency is quite weak and it’s payable.
If someone interested I can make a video.
David
Which Bluetooth adapter can you advise
Hi,
No special… Just the widi master on the keyboard. And native blutooth on my pc…
But I’m eager to know how It would work with a widi bud pro on PC. Surely less Latency…
As soon I get one, I’ll let you know.
Last night we first began using a pair of CME WIDI Buds to link two of our rigs, such that changing Song/State on one laptop changes the other to save the other player having to do it himself - and also change in sync with the Timeline.
All worked perfectly.
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Hi everyone.
I would like to ask a question since I am interested in the topic of wireless MIDI.
I currently use cables for my two keyboards whose latency I think is quite low.
The question: could you tell me how the latency of my two MIDI-USB cables could be displayed? I have always been curious about these values and would like to know if there is a tool, a way, to know the actual latency of my two cables.
I am considering for this reason the usefulness of possibly replacing the cables (which always break…) with these Wireless MIDI devices.
Any ideas, suggestions?
Sergio
Do you mean that you connect your synths directly via USB cables or do you mean simple USB-MIDI interfaces like this here:
These are essentially “classic” serial MIDI interfaces with cables attached.
Since the MIDI baud rate is 31250, one byte takes 320 microseconds to transmit (8 bits plus start/stop). So roughly one millisecond transmission time per note - so chords are actually millisecond arpeggios 
: when you play a three-note chord, it takes three milliseconds for all three notes to arrive and be played. Compared this serial protocol latency, all other USB driver and interface processing is pretty much neglegible.
When you connect your synths directly via USB cables, there’s no slow serial MIDI inbetween, so things can be much faster (as long as the receiving device is able to process at that speed).
Cheers,
Torsten
Torsten, hi.
The question is also whether my MIDI-USB cables would be less fast if I used a Widi Bud Pro. If so, I would be inclined to purchase.
I formulate the question better:
MIDI-USB cable
&
WIDI Flex + Bluetooth USB Stick
Which one has less latency?
Sergio
Hey Sergio,
you haven’t answered my question yet: is it correct that you are using “USB-to-MIDI” cables as I described? That’s relevant.
WIDI latency can be as low as 3 ms between WIDI devices, while the technical latency of a classic MIDI cable is around 1 ms - that’s for sending one note. So a classic MIDI cable (including the USB adapter) should have less latency based on pure technical specs.
With Bluetooth speeds a lot faster than 31250 baud, WIDI should actually be “faster” in terms of throughput (notes transmitted per second). So once you start playing chords or moving controllers, things should even out between WIDI and classic MIDI (assuming WIDI latency is constant). EDIT: incorrect - the WIDI plug has to serialize the data with 31250 baud before putting it through to the synth, so no higher throughput…
Note: I wouldn’t use a generic Bluetooth USB stick for a WIDI solution - WIDI Bud Pro is optimized for latency within a WIDI setup.
Overall, if WIDI manages to deliver true 3 ms latency, things should feel pretty similar between classic MIDI and WIDI. Best is to actually go and test - technical specs only go so far…
Cheers,
Torsten
BTW: if your MIDI cables “always break”, you are definitely mistreating them. I have MIDI cables in my setup that are over 20 years old and still work perfectly…
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My keyboards have midi In and midi Out. So my cables have two Din 5 on one side and USB connector on the other.
The cables do not “break”, the translator has translated badly … I meant that cables in general are always annoying when they are too many !!
OK, so it is as I guessed. This is essentially a tiny USB MIDI interface, combined with MIDI cables. So as I wrote above, this connection will have a latency of around 1 ms.
Thinking about this some more: Since the WIDI plug in your synths will again transmit the MIDI data serially to your synth, the actual plug will have the same latency as a classic MIDI cable. Now we add to that the 3 ms latency, and you will have an overall latency of 4 ms for the WIDI solution as compared to 1 ms for cable. No way around the WIDI solution having a bit more latency…
Cheers,
Torsten
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I did some tests, and found MIDI over USB to be only very marginally faster than MIDI over Serial lines.
In my tests, USB performed with 0.25 msec lower latency and 0.29 msec lower jitter than Serial (DIN) MIDI. However, these differences in average latency were not statistically significant (p=0.22). Also, the USB line was a dedicated line with no other traffic and handled single, isolated MIDI events, so this is not a “real world test”.
** The Details **
I did latency testing using sound and MIDI produced by hitting Middle C on a Yamaha S08. Sound and MIDI were routed by various paths through an RME Babyface Pro FS on Host A (a Win10x64, i7-6gen, 2-core, 16GB, 2016 PC laptop) and recorded on a second Host (a Win10x64, i7-11gen, 8-core, 64GB, 2022 PC laptop) with an RME UCX II.
I recorded sound directly from the keyboard’s phones port, from the audio out ports through Host A using TotalMix Direct Monitoring as well as going through Cantabile (a DAW) on Host A, and also the audio generated from MIDI input to Kontakt running a full-featured sound library (The Grandeur). The Serial (DIN) MIDI cable was also tapped to produce and audio signature to mark the start and end of MIDI events as issued by the keyboard.
The major differences between the three tests (19A, 19B, and 19C) were sample rates (44.1kHz vs 48kHz) and USB MIDI vs Serial (DIN) MIDI.
I recorded all sounds simultaneously into multi-track WAV files and analyzed them in Reaper.
I repeated tests 10 times to get averages, jitter (min to max), and other statistics.
The USB vs MIDI test was a comparison between tests 19B and 19C. Here’s the signal path diagram:
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Interesting - looks like the internal processing of the MIDI commands received via USB is still pretty much old-school serial MIDI, so not really taking advantage of the superior transmission speed of the USB protocol. So it looks like the internal processing then becomes the bottleneck. Doesn’t really matter if data comes in on a faster connection if internally it gets fed into a “classic-midi-speed” processing chain…
So it’s probably as I suspected:
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“Sad” is my main feeling on this.
My original assumption was that MIDI would have been implemented using an interrupt model to provide high-priority speed. Then I found out about baud rate, then about how MIDI is packed into the buffered audio input, and now how USB does not help vs. Serial. Sigh.
Still, despite it’s 1980’s feel, MIDI has served pretty well …