Wireless MIDI over BLE
Your Woovebox supports MIDI in and out over BLE, allowing it to communicate with your DAW as well as the Wooveconnect service.
To start your Woovebox with BLE enabled, keep the 1/Cd key pressed while switching on the device. The display reads 'boot bt'.
Once your device has booted up, you can proceed to pair your Woovebox with another device, and use the Wireless MIDI and data transfer capabilities.
Please remember that your Woovebox can only connect to one device at a time; if you need to connect to a device, please make sure your Woovebox is disconnected from any other device first.
Pairing your Woovebox
After pairing with your computer, tablet or phone, your Woovebox can be used as a regular MIDI device within other applications, or can be managed through the WooveConnect app.
Your host device's BLE radio needs to be BLE 4.0 compatible, and please make sure that your Woovebox is not already accidentally connected to some other device; it can only handle one connection at a time and will not be visible to any other devices while it is already connected.
The stability of your MIDI over BLE connection is heavily dependent the quality of the drivers and quality operating system's BLE stack. Unfortunately this quality can be found lacking on various hardware/OS combinations from Microsoft as well as Apple. For a universal, rock solid plug & play solution that works on any machine, we recommend the WIDI Bud Pro solution by CME.
By far the easiest and most stable solution, is to use a WIDI Bud Pro USB adapter that was specifically designed to provide a rock-solid MIDI over BLE connection for musicians and performers.
Most modern Linux distros allow you to pair with your Woovebox, after which it can be used system-wide as an input and output MIDI device automatically.
PLEASE NOTE: MacOS Sequoia MIDI over BLE appears to be broken at the moment. Do not upgrade from Sonoma!
Though likely to work on many systems, Windows 10 and 11 are not officially supported by Woovebox due to dependency on third party drivers, and a number of severe OS-level bugs and omissions in the Bluetooth and MIDI handling in Windows.
- Download MIDI BLE Connect or Bluetooth MIDI Connect app from the Play store.
- Scan for a device called WOOVE and pair with it.
- Keep the app open in the background.
- You may need to enable Location Services and/or Bluetooth Scanning in your settings.
- You may need to disable/change your lock screen timeout in order for your browser not to go to sleep.
- Download MIDI BLE Connect or Bluetooth MIDI Connect app from the Play store.
Most iOS software will detect your Woovebox. For any apps that don't however, you can use a utility app like Bluetooth MIDI Connect to connect your Woovebox to these apps.
Enhancing connection stability
If your connection is suffering from packet loss (often in the form of transfers not completing such has "hanging" at 99 pct), there are a number of things you can do to improve the situation;
- Temporarily turn off WiFi after loading Wooveconnect, if your machine shares its BT antenna with the WiFi adapter. By far the biggest culprit is cheap/poorly designed hardware & drivers that try (and fail) to share a single antenna for both WiFi and BT (as found on many macs and Surface ultra portables). If you need to update the firmware, you can download the .SYX here before severing the Internet connection, and drag & drop it into Wooveconnect like any other .SYX file.
- Reduce radio traffic on the 2.4GHz band; temporarily disabling other Bluetooth or wireless devices with radios that operate in the 2.4GHz band (nearby phones, headphones, keyboards, mice). Refrain from using your microwave during transfers.
- Use the latest drivers and Bluetooth stack for your operating system.
- Reboot your system.
- Restart the application doing the transfer (in case of Wooveconnect, restart your browser by shutting it down and re-opening it).
- Move your Woovebox as close to your host's antenna as possible.
- (as of firmware build 2494) Try the alternative connection mode (hold 2/bS instead of 1/Cd while turning on your Woovebox).
- Turn off device mirroring ("Mirr dvcE" option in the Song mode's GLob page's context menu).
- Launch Wooveconnect in (slow) enhanced compatibility mode; https://connect.woovebox.com/?interval=90&chunksize=91&packetsizemultiplier=1
- Try a longer interval between messages. In case of Wooveconnect, try this link; https://connect.woovebox.com/?interval=100
- Try a smaller packet groups between messages. In case of Wooveconnect, try this link; https://connect.woovebox.com/?chunksize=38
- In the case of Wooveconnect, try smaller packet; try this link https://connect.woovebox.com/?packetsizemultiplier=4
- Acquire a dedicated MIDI over BLE adapter like the WIDI Bud Pro.
- If using Wooveconnect, try a different browser (Edge, Firefox, or Chrome).