WARBL Forum

Hi all,

As the title suggests, FluidSynth won't work for me on my Samsung Galaxy and I'm looking for an alternative app that will play Andrew's SoundFont on Android v13. Not a huge issue, as I currently run WARBL through my laptop, I just had some an extra male/male micro-USB to USBC kicking around and thought I'd give using my phone a try as a more portable option.

Thanks!
-Jason

Unfortunately, the MIDI app selection for Android is very limited, and I don't know of a good alternative to FluidSynth. Out of curiosity, why isn't it working on your device?

Hi Andrew,

In the Play Store, it tells me I cannot download because FluidSynth was made for an older version of Android. I've since read some forum posts which indicated that the MIDI api for Android got broken in Android 11, and subsequently fixed for android 12 and 13, but the backwards compatibility is still messed up for a bunch of older apps. And indeed, finding apps in the Play Store which handle MIDI at all in Android 13 is very limited, and I've not found any of those few MIDI apps that specifically mention being able to use SoundFonts.

I have a couple older Android tablets kicking around, as well as an ancient iPad. I'll play around on those, see if I cannot cobble together a portable solution that works in lieu of using my primary phone.

Thanks,
-Jason

Sorry to hear about the issue with FluidSynth-- I didn't realize that was the case. Maybe I'll reach out to the developer. I know he has been open to suggestions in the past.

Your iPad could be a good option if it can still be updated to iOS 13 or later (that's needed to run the WARBL app and most MIDI apps). Some people end up buying a used iPhone as a portable option.

Bummer; the only reason I even have this iPad is because it was an older model from ca 2014 we used for work until about 2 years ago, but it's too antiquated to utilize ESRI's Field Maps, which needs iOS 12, I believe. Being obsolete for work purposes, the company just let me keep it. But the iPad is maxed out at iOS 10, so that doesn't sound like it'll be a viable option.

No big deal. As I said, I have WARBL running on the computer which is my primary mode of use, and I have some older Android tablets to try still for a more portable solution for when using the computer is less convenient.

Thanks again,
-Jason

Hi,

I would recommend you to download Fluidsynth Android from some alternative App store. Google enforced a policy to prevent users from Android 13+ of downloading certain apps if their codebase is older than 2 years. Blame Google and their practices, this is not a developer issue. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/755 ... 1#75515891

Some trustable alternative stores:
- APKPure, it mirrors Google Play: https://m.apkpure.com/
- Aurora Store, uses Google Play without sharing much information to Google: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVSdOrm2pqo

Edit: Looks like developer made an update in Jun 19, 2023. Does it work for you now?

FluidSynth's most recent update is currently Sept 30th, 2023(this post being on Oct 16th, 2023). It is working on my Google Pixel 7 running Android 14. And by working I mean I can open it and it doesn't do anything weird but my Warbl is supposed to ship tomorrow so I can't test it yet. It installed the soundfont from the link below fine.

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=307

-Sparkles

FluidSynth works ok for me on Google Pixel, but for other options,

I would look at one of the cross-platform DAWs that runs on Android, such as ZenBeats or Audio Evolution. These have virtual synths and MIDI CC control. With some tweaking I suspect either of these could be made to work.