MIDI - What does it mean to you?

[RDR]

Hi.

for my first post as a moderator (Hi! BOA :) ) I would like to get back to the old skool.. specifically lets open a discussion about MIDI.

It seems to me that MIDI has become more integrated and less transparent into digital systems these days. However it remains a VERY important protocol, whether being delivered over cables or virtual routing inside your sequencer of choice.

So...

What is your opinion of MIDI? Tell us a few personal MIDI stories, horror and joy please!

Lets get this going, so we can focus on the basics and look towards the future.

/Chris

[tonyc2002]

Its perfect for vst's, and its tried and tested. ide be lost without it to be honest....when Live 4 introduced MIDI it instantly gained recognition for being a powerful sequencer. nuff said :cheese:

As for horror stories, the problems for me occur when using hardware or to be more exact the aincient proteus modules we have at college.

[auditory hallucinations]

Hey I don't mean to hi-jack your thread about midi, but in the spirit of getting back to basics how about a related discussion about cv / gate?

Midi is cool, I love it and pretty much nothing in my set-up would happen without it - but running say an arpeggiator over analog gate signal as opposed to midi...gate is much more fluid, no stepping

There are so many pedals and little bits of kit you can get nowadays that have cv / gate inputs...if you have a 303, use the outputs and you can create all sorts of madness. love it

midi is still indespensible, though

[TechMouse]

MIDI is a pretty impressive protocol, given that it was invented 24 years ago and hasn't changed much since. It "just works", and every man and his dog in the digital audio business builds it into their devices.

A true victory for open standards.

However, having got quite into the nuts and bolts of it (I wrote a software synth for my dissertation) it's a bit of a headfuck and has some rather severe limitations. I mean, the fact that you can only get 16 channels down a cable is pretty crap in this day and age!

Unfortunately part of it's strength is that it works on everything, and if you start trying to add extra functionality you'll break everyone's existing setups.

What would be interesting would be great would be if all the manufacturers could get together and agree on a new standard which was backwards compatible with MIDI but added the kind of functionality you might expect in an audio networking technology in 2007... that would be amazing.

There have been some efforts to do this kind of thing using TCP/IP as the protocol, which would be sick. Sadly it's nowhere near as ubiquitous as MIDI.

It's a double edged sword. It's great! Everyone uses it so it's everywhere and it works. But it's crap! You can't improve it because then it wouldn't work everywhere.

Good topic Chris ;)

[stjohn]

great topic !!

well midi is something that is overlooked totally in alot of software setups. of course a midi track is using midi, but only really a fraction. now with a semi hardware setup, ive been reading up and im amazed about how much depth the protocol has. channels, message types etc... ive since totally maximised the way my UC33 works by re configuring hte midi messages.

heres to more learning ....

[dirty_bass]

great topic !!

well midi is something that is overlooked totally in alot of software setups. of course a midi track is using midi, but only really a fraction. now with a semi hardware setup, ive been reading up and im amazed about how much depth the protocol has. channels, message types etc... ive since totally maximised the way my UC33 works by re configuring hte midi messages.

heres to more learning ....

Hate midi, but spent my life using it.
I heard there would be a new protocal, years ago.
It never happened, mores the pity.

[Farnesol]

What would be interesting would be great would be if all the manufacturers could get together and agree on a new standard which was backwards compatible with MIDI but added the kind of functionality you might expect in an audio networking technology in 2007... that would be amazing.

Well OSC is next generation MIDI imho. Its built for networking.

And you can wrap up MIDI within osc.

http://www.cnmat.berkeley.edu/ICMC97...ndControl.html
Its gonna open up a whole new world of sensor based instruments to boot.

[TechMouse]

Well OSC is next generation MIDI imho. Its built for networking.

And you can wrap up MIDI within osc.

http://www.cnmat.berkeley.edu/ICMC97...ndControl.html
Its gonna open up a whole new world of sensor based instruments to boot.

Yeah, I know.

There's Yamaha mLAN as well.

The problem is that everyone will probably just create their own little protocols and there will be no ubiquity.