Let's Go Beyond Crowdfunding!
In essence crowd creation is our way to closely connect the development of new products with your needs. Therewith it is a step further than crowdfunding.
With crowd creation you have direct access to the development process. Also, it allows you to become part of the success of bringing innovative technology to the market.
This strategy consists of two parts. On the one hand it ensures that you can directly communicate with us about concepts and future projects. On the other hand it uses the power of the community to reach a better negotiation position towards suppliers, industry partners and manufacturers.
The purpose is to deliver you an improved product at the end of the process. With your active participation during the crowd creation process, you allow us to implement your feedback in the final product.
Take a look at the image underneath. It briefly explains how we created WIDI Master together with our community.
The Bigger Picture!
While we built better products together, we also grow the community. When we grow the number of supporters, we are able to place larger orders for manufacturing for instance WIDI family members.
Also, looking at the bigger picture, when we collaborate with you on growing the crowd, the relevance of Bluetooth MIDI within the music industry will increase. This will lead in a higher interest from industry partners.
The goal is to grow the number of applications for Bluetooth MIDI. This is more a long term target. The results are simple and effective. While we work together on creating a better product and growing our community, we will catch the interest of industry partners.
When they notice the increased interest for bluetooth MIDI. they will obviously want a piece of the pie. It is about nurturing the succes. The results are based on long term development of the bluetooth MIDI technology. When more devices implement bluetooth MIDI, your WIDI product becomes more relevant.
Take a look at this complete timeline as we created for our first crowd created project WIDI Master!
Jordan Rudess – CME Chief Music Officer
I’ve been looking forward my whole life to experience the joy of going completely wireless. And today Bluetooth MIDI has reached a whole other level with WIDI Master.
As taken from CME #REAP S01E02 (May, 2020)
How can you contribute to the crowd creation of WIDI?
There are multiple ways to join the community of WIDI enthusiasts. First and foremost you can order one of our WIDI products. Next, you can join our Facebook Group. This is for now our central place to communicate with our community and where you can share ideas and concerns with us.
Also you can simply follow one of our social media channels like Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn and start sharing your ideas in the comments. Furthermore, to get the full picture on what happened with WIDI Master, we suggest to read this blog post.
Another simple way to share your ideas and concerns is by using the comments section underneath any of our blog posts. Like below this one. Just scroll down and tell us what you think. We will gladly receive your feedback, both negative and positive, and will treat it with the fullest respect and reply as soon as we can.
For us the motto is: "We are in this together!"
I am really interested in the theme, I am dedicated to both hardware and software MIDI configurations.
And we know what it’s like to deal with cables and connectors,, and the more hardware there is, the more rolled it becomes.
I run a blog for producers and DJs so I have a stable group.
Count on me for your purposes ;=)
DJ SoMaR
Thank you for sharing this. Feel welcome to join our group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cmeprofans
Please make a device that can work with devices that have 5-Pin MIDI IN only. In the past you have mentioned that there would be some cable that could be attached to MIDI In only of WIDI Master, but that would then make it not wireless anymore. I think it would be great and convenient to have a device that is truly wireless that provides MIDI In only. In that case I think the WIDI device would need to have its own rechargeable battery. I picture something like your Xkey Air devices that you can recharge and can have a battery life that lasts hours of use. I have several hardware that only have MIDI IN and having a truly wireless WIDI device would be very convenient. Some examples of hardware I have with 5-pin MIDI IN only are Moog Mother 32, Subharmonicon, Moogerfoogers, Korg Volcas, Korg MS-20 (Mini or FS), and I’m sure there are others.
Thanks for sharing your idea with us. It is highly appreciated. In essence WIDI Jack is our first development following this request. It allows you to add a USB power supply, like a power bank to keep it wireless and therewith deliver the juice for unpowered MIDI ports such as the MIDI IN https://www.cme-pro.com/widi-jack/
We’ve considered adding battery options before. The complexity arrives from the fact that when we add rechargeable option we have toi raise the price heavily due to the international shipping policies of such devices.
That said, I will share this feedback with our development team. It is truly appreciated!
A wireless MIDI connector to eliminate the cables is great. I am very interested in the MIDI uHost.
How can latency be reduced so that we can play 1/16th and 1/32th notes?
Is USB 2.0 sufficient to reduce the latency?
Does USB 3.x improved it?
I think any little improvement will help. You can’t control what computer is being connected to and what software is being used but you can still control the connection between your two end points before the data to pass on to the other side.
Thanks for your comment. From my perspective you can already play 1/16th and 1/32th notes. We are not into USB 2.0 or 3.0, so I cannot give you exact numbers for this. I can tell you that we can reduce latency to 3ms between two WIDI devices. This is already lower than the internal latency of many MIDI devices and setups. Looking at jitter, we can have a stable latency between 4-6ms.
As you say, latency depends on the device you connect it with. With Bluetooth MIDI it can also depend on the environment. Bluetooth MIDI does not beat a cable when it comes to latency performance. The question is, besides the number, is it really audible in a blind test? That is why latency and the noticeability heavily depends on the person as well. https://www.cme-pro.com/midi-cable-widi-master/
If 2.0 or 3.0 is better, I cannot really answer this. It is too generic. As MIDI itself is not a really demanding protocol, oth USB 2 and 3 should be able to handle this perfectly. Latency always depends on the connected devices. In this case your operating system. Operating systems always have limitations. That is why we developed uHost. It bypasses those limitations and prioritise Bluetooth MIDI. That is how we can reduce latency. https://www.cme-pro.com/widi-uhost-what-can-it-do-for-you/
Hope this helps a bit! Thanks
If there could be a way to connect USB midi devices (like m-audio oxygen or Novation controllers) without wires that would be great. The issue would be delivering power to them as they are bus powered.
Hi Glenn, what about https://www.cme-pro.com/widi-uhost ?
This looks great. Thanks. How many devices can 1 u Host connect to?
At this point it is 1-to-1 but we are working on a new firmware upgrade that allows group connectivity. This way you can create 1-to-4 bidirectional communication with any WIDI product or Bluetooth MIDI equipped device like standard Bluetooth MIDI controllers, mobile devices and computers. You can have a peek at the test video of this firmware here: https://www.cme-pro.com/widi-master-music-china-award/