Hi to all! I’ve been using BomeMidi for some time now and think it’s an awesome tool!
I have already synchronized to instances of ableton on two different computers as it is my intention to create a backup should one of the computers fail. It has never occurred till now, but as we make ample use of backing tracks and clicks, this can never happen!
I use Bome on a tablet which routes all midi data via Ethernet to both computers simultaneously, and as far as that goes, it’s successful.
My idea was to have the two computers with Ableton send continuous midi pulses (similar to Active Sending) to Bome and should one of the computers fail, it would activate the outputs of the other computer.
Is this at all possible?
Thankyou,
Michael Rodi
Is your tablet a surface pro running Bome MIDI Translator Pro? Your device used for disabling and enabling your routes will need Bome MIDI Translator Pro running to handle the logic using MIDI signals. If it is an iOS device, it will not run Bome MIDI Translator Pro . We did something similar with BomeBox.
Alternately if you have a Bome MIDI Translator Pro license on both computers, you could use Bome MIDI Translator Pro on each computer to simply enable or disable a route depending on whether it is receiving timing clock.
Licensing for Bome MIDI Translator Pro is based on computer. You should have licenses for any computer that you are running concurrently.
Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care
Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz
Hi Steve, thank you for replying.
Yes I have BomeMidi pro and I’m running it on Surface pro.
I saw the tutorial and will try it.
From what I’ve seen on the tutorial, I have to use BomeMidi on both computers. I was hoping to send the signals from Ableton on both computers, maybe I can work it out by modifying a couple of things?
The reason for wanting to send both signals from Ableton is because I would like to rule out any possibility of either the program hanging/ crashing and of course, the computers…
If you can gate/switch your message paths with a single device, that would be optimal.
I don’t think you want to have your devices receive from both instances of Ableton Live simultaneosly even if they are in complete sync. Your devices will see dual MIDI messages and would increase the risk of the receiving devices to misinterpret messages. Of course, separate timing clock would likely also confuse your devices. So it is better to have a gatekeeper receiving both signals and only send signals to the devices from the currently active source.
The trick will be how quicky you want to switch over when timing clock stops. How many missed clock messages before you switch? Although switching paths would be pretty quick, no matter what, it would probably not be instantaneous. You will miss at least one timing clock before the switch over. You might want to send a full timing message after the switch to have your receiving device determine where in the 24 clocks per quarter note you are). Maybe a missed beat will be noticable during failover when performing, maybe not. You may need to experiment a bit.
Also, you might want to determine what your “failback” strategy is. In most cases, you should probably not “failback” unless both the secondary path timing messages stop AND you also are seeing timing messages on your primary path. Of course if both of these are not true, that means you’ve lost connection on both sources so there would not be much you can do.
Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care
Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz
I agree! I will try as in the tutorial. When I was trying to implement the feature, I had already taken into account missing a few ticks, just so that not even a glitch would be interpreted as lost connection.
Meanwhile, thank you very much for your help, I don’t think BomeMidi would’ve been as popular without your valuable contribution!