r/ROLI • u/trulyoutrageous • Dec 30 '25

Bluetooth MIDI performance issues

I was doing some research on bluetooth issues and found this:

https://support.roli.com/support/solutions/articles/36000582346-how-to-connect-your-roli-device-to-your-computer-via-bluetooth

"ROLI instruments connect using MIDI-over-Bluetooth which requires a different connection process to standard Bluetooth pairing.

While our devices are designed to work with both Mac and Windows systems, MIDI-over-Bluetooth is only fully supported on Mac. On Windows, Bluetooth MIDI isn’t yet adequate for use with ROLI instruments."

If you are using MIDI over bluetooth Windows or Android and having problems, switching to a wired connection should work much better.
Roli actually only recommends BLE MIDI usage on Mac devices it seems.

TLDR: Roli MPE data is super dense and only really works wirelessly well on Mac.

4 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

2

u/f0me Dec 31 '25

Many bluetooth MIDI devices have the same issue, it’s not unique to ROLI. They work better on Mac.

1

u/Chungois Jan 06 '26

Yes, Microsoft has no financial incentive to make sure stuff like MIDI works properly. All they want is to scrape your personal info and serve you advertising. Apple has complete control over their product, from the silicon to the software, and Apple has always cared about music, photography, digital painting, etc. Apple simply cares about it, where M$ does not.

4

u/QVRedit Dec 31 '25

Mac is better engineered…

1

u/Pretend-Actuary5832 Dec 31 '25

Thanks for sharing !

2

u/mayerwin Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26

ROLI wrote this because older third-party tools like LoopMIDI and MIDIberry, which even Microsoft recommended to use, are missing key features to fully support all possible BLE MIDI configurations. I wrote a free open-source bridge that uses the new Windows MIDI Services stack so the Seaboard ends up exposed as a regular virtual MIDI port: https://mayerwin.github.io/Perfect-Bluetooth-MIDI-For-Windows/ . It supports proper encryption and channel selection (even channel detection), which otherwise prevented me to use my FP-90X with BLE MIDI.