Scaler iOS: receiving midi input when the app is running in the background

Hello,

I am running Scaler standalone on an iPad. I have it configured so that it receives Midi from my keyboard and sends the corrected notes according to the chosen scale to NanoStudio2. It all works fine as long as the Scaler app is in the foreground. However, if I bring up NanoStudio in the foreground, Scaler seems to stop receiving Midi from the keyboard, so no Midi is sent to NanoStudio. Is there a setting that I am missing or is Scaler only able to receive Midi from external sources when it’s in the foreground?

Thanks for any help!

Anyone? Is there a way to contact support directly or do we just need to pray for someone to answer in the forum?

Welcome to the forum @GioKan Sorry we try our best to get to most posts but if we don’t have an answer or can’t get to an answer for whatever reason we won’t respond until we can. We don’t use NanoStudio2 so can’t really answer this but we have no problem with Cubasis or running in AUM / AudioBus.

Thanks for the reply. This is not just a NanoStudio problem. It happens with other apps as well. You can try it with Animoog. Scaler receives midi from the keyboard and sends the corrected notes to Animoog as long as the Scaler app is in the foreground. As soon as you bring Animoog at the front, Scaler stops working.

More generally, it seems that in standalone, Scaler can only send MIDI if it’s at the front. As soon as you bring another app to the front, it stops sending midi. I have tried this with different apps using the internal Scaler sequencer (so no midi from external keyboards) and the issue is the same.

I am aware that things work within AUM and Audiobus, but I want to use Scaler standalone. It’s in this case that Scaler is not working as expected.

Thanks @GioKan @Tristan could you have a look at this please and confirm/compare to other apps. I can’t recall from memory if this is the expected behaviour. Maybe @James can remind us when he’s back. Otherwise we can chat with the devs to see whether this behaviour can be changed for 2.9.

Hi folks,

Apologies for not jumping in here sooner. I can confirm that the Scaler iPad app does indeed stop receiving MIDI input when running in the background. It appears that other music apps are capable of receiving MIDI input when running in the background so this should be possible to implement in Scaler. @davide Would definitely be worth talking to the devs about addressing in a future update.

Hi Tristan,

Thanks for the confirmation. Just wanted to point out that the Scaler iPad app stops receiving AND sending MIDI when in the background (e.g. when using the internal Scaler sequencer to play chords on another app via its virtual MIDI input port).

Cheers

Hi @GioKan, OK that’s good to clarify.

Thanks!

Hello, Is this something that will be fix? Thank you.

Hi @Djwilmer107 welcome to the forum. It’s on our list and we are looking into this.

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