McLaren Labs' rtpmidi software has been around for a few years now. It reliably sends and receives MIDI events and properly implements error correction. The software is robust and has been used in very many different environments by an enormous number of users.

On Linux systems, Bonjour is implemented by the "Avahi" service. This is what McLaren Labs' rtpmidi program uses to find Apple MIDI services on your network when you set it up. Usually rtpmidi can find the iPhones and iPads on your network, but sometimes things do not go smoothly. That's when you need to do some network debugging. One of the tools that you can use to learn about Bonjour services on your network is avahi-browse.

This month McLaren Labs releases rtpmidi version 0.5.0 for Ubuntu and Raspberry Pi. This release brings some great new features, and also provides a few performance and installation improvements.

Network MIDI was invented sometime around 2004 to send MIDI messages over an IP network. To handle network loss, a protocol known as RTP-MIDI was created and documented as RFC-4695. Network MIDI is built into OSX computers and iOS devices. Apple music creators think nothing of connecting MIDI equipment using Ethernet and WiFi, instead of MIDI cables.

Remote musical MIDI collaboration has been an interesting academic research area for years, but has not been explored by many casual musicians. One reason is that the complexity of software that brings MIDI and Networking together makes it a little bit of a daunting endeavor. We think it's time to open exploration to more people and make remote MIDI collaboration as easy as joining a Hangout.