DAW stands for digital audio workstation and typically refers to advanced software used for producing & recording music. To sync a Soundbrenner wearable to a DAW, you need to connect it first to our mobile app The Metronome for iOS or Android.
Next, you need to establish a connection between our mobile app and your Mac or Windows PC. You can do this via MIDI using a USB cable, Bluetooth or WiFi. Via USB cable is the officially supported method and what works best.
If you want to sync to Ableton, you can alternatively also not use MIDI, and instead sync via Ableton Link using WiFi.
Setup guides:
Use MIDI via iOS device:
Use MIDI via Android device:
Use Ableton Link via either iOS or Android device:
What can you actually sync?
Our mobile app supports receiving the BPM from most DAWs and sending the BPM to some DAWs. To check your DAW’s compatibility check the compatibility table below. Information about time signature, subdivisions or accents can never be transmitted either way. That said, you can manually match the time signature and subdivision between your DAW and our mobile app.
MIDI support is in beta:
Whether the DAW integration works reliably depends if you use iOS/Android, Windows/macOS, and which particular DAW you use. At the moment we are not able to guarantee that all possible combinations of operating systems and DAWs work reliably, hence this feature is officially in beta.
You can test the reliability of your particular setup before purchasing a Soundbrenner wearable, since you can download our free app and already connect it to your DAW.
We encourage everyone to test the connection between their mobile device and DAW before making a wearable purchase for particular the DAW use case.
Compatibility table:
| USB MIDI connection* | Input** | Output*** | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cubase | Reliable | Not supported | Works well |
| Reaper | Reliable | Works sometimes | Works well |
| Studio one | Unreliable | Not supported | Works well |
| Pro Tools | Reliable | Not supported | Works well |
| Ableton | Reliable | Works sometimes | Works well |
| Cakewalk | Reliable | Not supported | Works well |
| FL Studio | Reliable | Not supported | Works well |
| Garage Band | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported |
* How stable the USB connection is. Reliable means the connection is good and usually will not break. Unreliable means the connection is unstable and will sometimes fail to connect.
** Using the Soundbrenner app and wearables to control the DAW. This usually does not work due to MIDI Clock limitations.
*** Using the DAW to control the Soundbrenner app and wearables. This works well and is supported on most DAWs.
More DAWs will be added to the compatibility table in the future.
Legacy option:
If you have a Soundbrenner Pulse and a desktop computer running macOS, and you only want to connect up to 1 Soundbrenner Pulse, there is an option to connect the Pulse directly to your Mac without using our mobile app in-between. In some cases this can work better than the solutions described above. You can give this a try via our legacy Mac application "Soundbrenner DAW Tools". We currently have no plans to update this application, e.g. to add support for the Soundbrenner Core or for connecting multiple Soundbrenner Pulse. This allows us to focus all our energy on improving the MIDI support of our mobile app and eventually taking it out of beta.
You can find the setup guide for the Pulse with Soundbrenner DAW Tools here:
