I recently switched from Apple Audio MIDI setup to Bome at my church to control various aspects of automation in our Sunday services. I have four devices that are networked as follows:
ProPresenter Mac receives MIDI from MultiTracks Mac
ProPrenseter Mac sends MIDI to Lightkey Mac
ProPresenter Mac sends MIDI to Backstage ProPresenter Mac
Three weeks ago, I installed Bome Network, c/w Network Pro license, with almost zero configuration (except for re-selecting the correct midi in/out ports in the various pieces of software); Bome was flawless. I felt like I had finally solved my MIDI connecting/disconnecting issues.
The last two weeks, however, have been back to the usual nightmare of disconnecting/reconnecting MIDI devices in apps, restarting apps, and generally not knowing if MIDI is even being transmitted between the computers.
A possible conflict/point of confusion for Bome is that the MultiTracks and main ProPresenter computers both have secondary ethernet adapters to send Dante audio out from each device. I’ve gone into the network settings section of Bome and excluded the Dante networks.
ProPresenter Mac (built-in eth: primary LAN connection to our network, USB-C eth adapter: Dante network, wifi: disabled)
MultiTracks Mac (wifi: primary LAN connection to our network, USB eth adapter: Dante network)
Lightkey Mac (built-in eth: primary LAN connection to our network, wifi: disabled)
Backstage ProPresenter Mac (built-in eth: primary LAN connection to our network, wifi: disabled)
We run Unifi Network hardware, and the Wi-Fi signal is strong on the MultiTracks Mac. (The AP is right above the stage.)
Have I missed a step during setup? Was it just a fluke it worked great the first week?
I would be grateful if someone could review my setup to see if I’ve missed something.
Let me know if you need any more information. I’m losing my hair on this one.
Oh no, this is horrible. Hopefully we can get this straightened out quickly.
Do you have an idea where the connection is dropping? It looks like the weakest link would be between MultiTracks Mac and ProPresenter Mac since it is wireless and even though you have a strong signal, there could be enough WiFi traffic in your venue that could cause network congestion. I know the signal is strong but any device within the venue could be competing with WiFi bandwidth even if not on the same network.
As far as Dante Network. I’m assuming it is on a completely different network and not just a different set of devices on the same network. Excluding them in Bome Network is a good idea.
I’m assuming you are running the latest version of Bome Network. Also I usually have these settings checked so that ports are not created and deleted as connections drop or resume as creating and deleting virtual ports takes time.
Based on your description, I would also recommend that you do not have MIDI Network connections directly between, MultiTracks Mac and either Lightkey Mac and Backstage ProPresenter Mac as from your description, these connections would not be necessary.
I would make sure you have Auto-accept connections without confirmation on set on ProPresentor Mac, Lightkey Mac and Backstage ProPresenter Mac for the hosts that are feeding them only. Do not have this set between Lightkey Mack and MultiTracks Mac or between Backstage ProPresenter Mac and MultiTracks Mac.
If you have Unlimited Named MIDI ports running on ProPresenter Mac, you can create a route to a MIDI monitor to one of these ports to see if MIDI is coming in. You could monitor the virtual MIDI port with any MIDI monitoring tool.
Other than that, maybe looking at the settings files of each device would probably be helpful. The file locations can be found here.
Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care
Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz
Thanks for the quick reply!! Here are some responses to your questions.
Do you have an idea where the connection is dropping?
Sadly, no! This is part of my issue. Your suggestion at the end of your reply about using MIDI monitoring tools is a good idea! Is the unlimited named ports addon the recommended way of doing this? Or do you suggest another tool?
It looks like the weakest link would be between MultiTracks Mac and ProPresenter Mac since it is wireless and even though you have a strong signal, there could be enough WiFi traffic in your venue that could cause network congestion. I know the signal is strong but any device within the venue could be competing with WiFi bandwidth even if not on the same network.
I agree the MultiTracks and ProPresenter link via Wifi is likely the weakest link. This machine is an M1 MBP, would another ethernet adapter help make this more solid or just confuse things more?
As far as Dante Network. I’m assuming it is on a completely different network and not just a different set of devices on the same network. Excluding them in Bome Network is a good idea.
Correct, completely different network, unrelated to our LAN, dedicated to Dante. Not using Unifi hardware.
I’m assuming you are running the latest version of Bome Network. Also I usually have these settings checked so that ports are not created and deleted as connections drop or resume as creating and deleting virtual ports takes time.
Correct, 1.5.0. I will test out these settings on each machine, I assume based on the description in the app that I should set a prefix or suffix (but not both)?
Based on your description, I would also recommend that you do not have MIDI Network connections directly between, MultiTracks Mac and either Lightkey Mac and Backstage ProPresenter Mac as from your description, these connections would not be necessary.
Confirmed only the connections that need to be connected are connected.
I would make sure you have Auto-accept connections without confirmation on set on ProPresentor Mac, Lightkey Mac and Backstage ProPresenter Mac for the hosts that are feeding them only. Do not have this set between Lightkey Mack and MultiTracks Mac or between Backstage ProPresenter Mac and MultiTracks Mac.
Confirmed this is also set.
I’ll do some more testing this week with the hope to resolve this sooner than later!
I don’t set either prefix or suffix in my configuration. If you are using Remote Direct MIDI, then you will see the Hostname of the remote port as a prefix and that should be enough.
This is the tool that I use and then I send the split output to Bome MIDI Translator Pro for monitoring but you could also use a free tool. I think Mac has something called MIDI Monitor or such. On Windows a port can only be accessed by one application or device at a time. I don’t think this is the case with Mac, so you might just want to use MIDI Monitor to look at the port directly.
I’ve alerted Florian in case he has any other ideas.
Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care
Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz
I just noticed the Bome has release a new version of Bome Network. ( Version 1.6.0.)You might check it out to see if it helps stabilize your setup. It also has a built in MIDI monitor function.
The following bugfixes caught my eye.
bugfix: improved recovery on unstable network conditions
bugfix: under specific conditions, pending Direct Remote MIDI ports are not correctly displayed as pending
bugfix: more robust handling of connect/disconnect race conditions
Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care
Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz
