Ardour not sending MIDI data to external Hardware Synths

Getting Stuff Done How do I .... ?
#1

In a nutshell: Ardour doesn’t send MIDI data to external hardware Synth(s).

  • The MIDI Tracer can see track MIDI data on both “MIDI 1/midi_in 1” and “MIDI 1/midi_out 1”.
  • Routing can be done from within Ardour or via qpwgraph with same non-working result.
  • However, neither pw-mididump or the hardware synth receive any MIDI data.
  • I can route MIDI to bypass Ardour entirely and MIDI data is received by the hardware synth (or pw-mididump)

The issue I’ve encountered seems similar to this thread - but the thread was close with no resolution.

Ardour 8.12.0 “Sonora Portraits”
flatpak (Ardour org.ardour.Ardour 8.12.0)
pipewire
Compiled with libpipewire 1.2.6
Linked with libpipewire 1.2.6

I’m still new(ish) to Ardour so have spent weeks reading the fine manual; combing through various forums and trying to troubleshoot with no success.

What has confused me is that within Ardour MIDI Tracer does see “MIDI 1/midi_out 1” output - but the data cannot be seen outside of Ardour.

By any chance does anyone have any ideas of what I might have missed? or next steps? or what might be the cause?

#2

Please ask the flatpak maintainers for help if you get Ardour from them.

There are some known MIDI issues with specific versions of pipewire. Also using flatpak to sandbox/isolate a DAW is never a good idea to begin with.

If Ardour’s MIDI tracer shows the signal leaving Ardour, the issue happens later. I suggest to use some external MIDI tracer application with pipewire and follow the signal-path.

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#3

Robin is correct. Sand boxing Ardour within flatpak is not a good idea. Also, Pipewire versions below 1.2.9 are problematic with MIDI (among other things). I see you have 1.2.6 from your post.

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#4

Understood - will do. Will raise the issues with them.

Thanks - I’ll update Pipewire and see what happens.

I’ve been doing this with pipewire’s “pw-mididump”. Which shows me that MIDI data is being received from the keyboard/controller; but after Ardour not being received by pw-mididump or the external synth.

#5

Does the MIDI data get received by Ardour? Can you see notes being recorded in a MIDI region, or if you add a synth plugin does the plugin respond to the keyboard?

I saw a reference to Flatpak needing MIDI and audio pipewire ports enabled, but I don’t know if that is a per-application setting when creating the Flatpak, or a Flatpak runtime setting that applies to all applications.

But as pointed out above, you are making your life unnecessarily difficult by trying to use Ardour in a Flatpak. What Linux distribution are you running? Usually the order of preference would be Ardour from ardour.org, then Ardour built as a distribution package if you can’t or won’t use the ardour.org build, and then only as a last resort a third-party sandbox build (like Flatpak or AppImage). If you use Flatpak then expect also that most plugins will not work.

#6

MIDI data is being received and can be recorded by Ardour. I can see MIDI data with Ardour’s MIDI Tracer coming into “MIDI 1/midi_in 1” for example. The MIDI data recorded by Ardour can be played back via a software synth. I can attach a software synth to a MIDI track and it monitors/records/plays as normal. The only issue is that when configured to send MIDI external the MIDI data is not seen by anything outside of Ardour.

Thanks - I’ll look further.

It is a personal Frankenstein-distro. Initially based on KDE-NEON… So actually Ubuntu based.

Thanks - I’ll keep that in mind.

At least in the last three months (the time I’ve been using Ardour) - I’ve not experienced any issues with any of the plugins (or Softsynths) that I’ve tried to use. It has been pretty solid; which is why I found the external MIDI issue a head-scratcher.

Thanks for your insight.