Been working out a PE Tracker based mobile setup for some upcoming travel while staying fairly minimal and with the ability to be fully battery powered at times. The tracker mini will of course minimize this even further but until then this will do quite well. Below is my setup. Curious to see what others have come up with.
Tracker powered by iPad Mini.
Bidirectional midi between tracker/ipad via usb.
Audio from iPad into input of Tracker.
Using Tracker to sync, sequence and sample a variety of iOS apps.
Tracker audio out to Bose S1 Pro Battery Powered PA Speaker or wired earbuds.
iPhone & Shure mic & little collapsible tripod for found sound sampling.
USB Micro SD Reader for loading found sound samples to Tracker’s SD card.
CME Widi Jack for those times I want to use the iPad as a wireless midi controller for the Tracker.
Battery bank with solar charging capability.
The key to this setup is really the CableCreation iPad hub that supports downstream power pass through so I can simultaneously power the tracker, have bidirectional midi and run audio out of the ipad into the tracker.
Nice mobile setup! Thank you for describing it here.
@ambivalence was mentioning the same gadget just a few days ago. I have never tried one but a combination with the Mini sounds logical. Are you happy about its latency?
The latency is inaudible and claimed to be about 5ms. Haven’t seen/heard any issues, they’ve made my life a lot easier. No brainer for portable devices. I guess, every newly released gear should have BT MIDI built-in by default, it’s 2023 for gods sake.
I’m pretty sure it’s Singapore, as well as MorningStar. The link you shared also states that cme-pro dot com is the manufacturer site. When I had a little chat with the support of both companies, there were some mentions that their relationships are pretty close because of that.
I’ve been using the WIDI Bud Pro for a while now on my PC. It’s how I connect a couple of MIDI Wind controllers I have to my PC so I can use them in Reaper. It works perfectly, and I haven’t noticed any significant latency.
So, when I saw the Play has 3.5mm MIDI jacks, I jumped on Amazon and bought the CME WIDI Jack too, with the 3.5mm cable option. I’ve already used it with the Bud to interface the Play’s MIDI tracks with Reaper, my favorite DAW. It’s truly wonderful, and it keeps the cable count down.
I just got the Play a couple of weeks ago, and it’s a total blast to work with. The CME products just make it easier and expands my capabilities. I don’t have a cool system like the one in this topic, but I do have my Play set up to operate mobile. The speaker I have is not as fancy as that Bose, it’s just a small Bluetooth/Aux speaker with really good sound. I have a power bank, but I don’t have one with as much solar charging input as the one in the picture. I’d have to use a standalone solar charging array that I have. It’s a larger array, so it’d charge the power bank faster.
I don’t currently have a nice tablet, but I do have a decent Chromebook. I have some MIDI software on it that’s Android based, and some that’s web based. This Chromebook is getting a bit long in the tooth, so I’ll probably have to flash it with an appropriate Linux distro. Then I’ll look at Linux based DAWs. But that’s a project for later. I’m still learning the Play!
