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Pilot now connects to your VL3 or VL3 Extreme over Bluetooth MIDI. Pair the adapter once and the cable between the unit and your computer is gone.
Until now, editing your VL3 or VL3 Extreme in Pilot meant a USB cable running from the unit to the machine. That cable is what decides where the unit can live. This release adds Bluetooth MIDI, and with it the unit stays on the stand, or in the rack, or across the room at the back of the stage, while you work from wherever you actually are. Both models are covered, and the rest of this page writes them as VL3/X.
Pilot tells you which link you are on, in the status line, every session:
Everything the editor does over USB, it does over Bluetooth: the full 500 slot preset list, preset changes, parameter edits, saving to the device, steps. Firmware updates are the single exception, and there is a section on that below.
Edit from the front of house position instead of kneeling at the pedalboard. Rehearse with the laptop on a music stand and the unit out of reach. Work from a tablet in a room where running a cable is not practical.
The Yamaha MD-BT01 is the adapter Pilot is certified against. It plugs into the VL3/X MIDI IN and MIDI OUT sockets and takes its power from them, so there is no battery and nothing to charge.
Two consequences of that bus power are worth knowing before you start:
Other Bluetooth MIDI adapters are not supported. The MD-BT01 is the one that has been tested end to end with Pilot, and it works. If you are buying an adapter for this, buy that one.
Both platforms are confirmed working on real hardware, and they are set up differently. The difference is not cosmetic, so read your own platform's steps: the other platform's instructions will send you after an app you do not have.
Two things have to be true before Pilot can talk to the VL3/X wirelessly. Something has to hold the Bluetooth link and present the MD-BT01 as a MIDI port on the machine, and the browser you open Pilot in has to support Web MIDI. On macOS the system does the pairing and any Web MIDI browser does the rest. On iPadOS neither is available, so you install two apps that fill the two gaps.
| What is needed | macOS | iPadOS |
|---|---|---|
| Holds the Bluetooth link | The system, via Audio MIDI Setup | midimittr |
| Provides Web MIDI | Chrome or Edge | MIDIWeb |
| You open Pilot in | Chrome or Edge | MIDIWeb, not Safari |
| To install | A Web MIDI browser, if you do not have one | Two apps |
| Pairing screen | Audio MIDI Setup | None. iPadOS has no equivalent |
| Reconnect after a VL3/X power cycle | Audio MIDI Setup | midimittr |
No extra apps. Pairing is a system operation, and the Web MIDI browser you already run Pilot in does the rest.
System Settings › Bluetooth and Audio MIDI Setup are not the same operation. A generic pairing in System Settings can take the adapter and stop the MIDI pairing from succeeding, and the symptom is a device that looks paired but never turns up as a MIDI port.
Safari has no Web MIDI on any platform, so Pilot does not run in it. On the Mac that means Chrome or Edge, on the iPad it means MIDIWeb. That is unchanged by this release, and it applies on USB just as it does on Bluetooth.
Two apps, because iPadOS gives you neither piece. Audio MIDI Setup does not exist on iPadOS, so there is no system screen to pair Bluetooth MIDI from, and Safari provides no Web MIDI, so Pilot cannot run there at all. This is the setup confirmed on a 13 inch iPad Pro.
Your usual browser is not involved on the iPad. Open Pilot in Safari and it will report no MIDI support, and that is Safari, not the adapter and not your setup.
Read this part before you decide which link to use for a given job. Bluetooth is not a degraded connection. It is a correct connection with a lower ceiling, and Pilot is now paced for it rather than pretending it is USB.
Three factors, all measured on this hardware:
Measured over the MD-BT01 on the shipping build:
| Action | Over Bluetooth |
|---|---|
| Change preset | about 0.1 s |
| Read the preset list on connect (500 slot names) | 9 to 61 s |
| Save a single step preset | about 4 s |
| Rename and save a 7 step preset | about 14 s |
| Add a step to a 6 step preset | about 13 s |
| Build a preset from 1 step to 10 | about 102 s |
| Load a full 500 preset folder onto the unit | about 30 minutes |
Note the shape of those numbers. Anything that only changes what the device is playing is effectively instant. Anything that writes a preset into a slot pays the spacing and the confirmation. Bigger presets cost more, in a straight line, at roughly 2.5 seconds per additional step.
The two ends of that table are the ones to plan around. Reading the preset list is a once per session cost that runs while you can already see the editor. Loading a full 500 preset folder is the opposite: it overwrites every slot on the unit, so it pays the outbound spacing and a device confirmation 500 times over. One preset takes about 3.4 seconds to land and be confirmed, and a full folder is 500 of them back to back, which comes to about half an hour. A folder you have built yourself out of multi step presets takes proportionally longer, at roughly two and a half seconds more per extra step in each preset.
During a store, the top bar counts the frames as they go out: Saving preset 499: chunk 34 of 50. The count comes from frames that actually reached the port, so a stalled link shows a stalled count rather than a bar that keeps moving on its own.
Loading a full 500 preset folder is the longest thing Pilot asks your device to do, and it is the useful reference for the rest. A backup or a restore will not take longer than that, so half an hour is the figure to plan against for any of the three. Start them with the unit powered, the adapter connected, and time to spare, and do not power anything down part way through.
These are also the clearest case for reaching for the cable. Plug in for bulk work, go wireless for playing, editing and saving.
Pilot will not send a firmware update over Bluetooth. Connect the VL3/X with a USB cable and the firmware utility unlocks itself. On a Bluetooth link it is blocked at the door, before an Update button is ever offered:
The reason is the timing above. The firmware uploader sends its frames at a fixed 50 ms spacing, and the bootloader sends no acknowledgement per frame, only one at the end of the session. 50 ms is below the measured Bluetooth floor for this hardware, and with no per-frame handshake a frame that did not arrive cannot be detected. Firmware is also the one operation whose only undo is the backup you took beforehand.
This is a deliberate rule, enforced in two independent places so that a change to the interface cannot accidentally re-open it. It is not a claim that Bluetooth will damage your VL3/X. Plug in the cable, update, unplug, carry on wirelessly.
It says so plainly rather than sitting on a blank screen, and it names the step for the platform you are actually on.
This matters most after a power cycle. The MD-BT01 is powered by the VL3/X, so switching the unit off drops the link, and bringing it back is a manual step in a different place on each platform: Audio MIDI Setup on the Mac, midimittr on the iPad. Once the port is back, Pilot picks it up again by itself.
Bluetooth support was not shipped on the strength of "it connected once".
If something behaves differently on your rig, the useful details are: which platform, whether you were on USB or Bluetooth at the time (the status line says which), the preset slot, and how many steps it had. Bluetooth timing is sensitive to preset size, so step count matters more than it sounds like it should.