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MIDI 2.0 Prototyping announced
- kensai 8y agoWhy it is important in one paragraph: “The MIDI 2.0 initiative updates MIDI with auto-configuration, new DAW/web integrations, extended resolution, increased expressiveness, and tighter timing -- all while maintaining a high priority on backward compatibility. This major update of MIDI paves the way for a new generation of advanced interconnected MIDI devices, while still preserving interoperability with the millions of existing MIDI 1.0 devices. One of the core goals of the MIDI 2.0 initiative is to also enhance the MIDI 1.0 feature set whenever possible.”
- mastazi 8y agoThis is fantastic news, I can’t wait to have CC parameters with more than 128 levels. Does anyone know what the new resolution for CCs will be?
- shagrath 8y agoThey wrote 32 bits on the website (against 7 in the current spec)
- phkahler 8y ago32 seems excessive.
- mastazi 8y agoI know right? I was expecting 16 bit tops for CC.
- boomlinde 8y agoPlenty of potential applications of control change messages where 16 bits would be insufficient, for example precision seeking through recorded audio.
- mastazi 8y agoInteresting, you're right for this type of things "MIDI" controllers usually had to resort to HID (e.g. platters on most DJ controllers), I'm curious to see how people will use MIDI 2
- peterlk 8y agoThen you're not being creative enough. Digital turntables are extremely precise. I once hooked up my ns7 (1) to an old windows laptop, spun the turntable, and crashed the computer. I think that highly precise applications like this could find valid uses for 32 bit control
- lightedman 8y agoWait until you start applying pitch shifting/note bending. You'll want that 32-bit resolution.
- filoeleven 8y agoWith this spec, my LFO can be on a separate device and spit MIDI to modulate sample-accurate playback of an entire season of a TV show (assuming that it can be loaded into memory) recorded at 96000k. Talk about future proofing. No complaints here.
- lightedman 8y agoPitch shifting of any waveform introduces audible problems. You need very high resolution and sample rate, about 350x your highest sampled frequency.
- TheRealPomax 8y agoWhy? 64 bit chips are dirt cheap these days, if anything it's surprising they went for 32 bit instead of just going for 64 to buy the protocol one or more decades of "no one's going to run into the limitations of that". Don't design it for what humans expect, design it for what the machines that need to talk to each other operate on. In that sense, 32 bits is the bare minimum you want in a new spec.
- chillingeffect 8y agobecause the intent of a CC is to emulate a knob on a synth . A synth knob turns a little less than 360 degrees. While 7 bits doesn't give quite enough resolution to have one degree per code, 32 bits would give 11 million codes per degree. Even a thousand codes per degree would suffice... but 11 million? There would also be no analog to digital converter that could measure much more than 24 bits with any accuracy whatsoever. And if you were to use your proposal of "just going to 64" it would multiply the space between the existing 11 million values between every degree on a knob by 4 billion. That would have 44 trillion variations of knob control. No one can sense that. if the knob was used to modulate e.g. LFO speed, it could send changes that wouldn't even be heard for millions of years.
- boomlinde 8y ago> because the intent of a CC is to emulate a knob on a synth . The intent of CC is to facilitate control changes. Higher range means greater flexibility in what exactly this means. Just off the top of my head I can think of at least one realistic application where 360000 discrete steps simply wouldn't suffice but a higher range control protocol would be useful: precision audio seeking, because recorded audio used in music is often longer than 360000 samples.
- phkahler 8y agoBecause MIDI has very low bandwidth. People in complex environments doing complex things saturate it already. The new version may somehow allow higher bandwidth but it wants backward compatibility as well. We'll see, I'm sure this version will be better and I hope it becomes more popular again.
- aasasd 8y agoOpen Sound Control has that, but support for the format is very selective.
- mastazi 8y agoGood point, OSC is pretty good I should invest some time looking into it
- jcelerier 8y agoif you want to check out a nice OSC project I invite you to test https://ossia.io https://ossia.io the OSC sequencer I'm developping
- PascLeRasc 8y agoIf you're looking for information on OSC, I'm currently in a computer music class and we have a section on it: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~music/cmsip/slides/06-networks.pdf http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~music/cmsip/slides/06-networks.pdf
- leoc 8y agoAny chance there'll be a way to get a few channels of audio into the same container stream as MIDI 2.0, or at least down the same cable?
- atoav 8y agoMPE (Multi Polyphonic Expression) would be nice to have.
- vbuwivbiu 8y agowhy aren't all input devices, including mice, (text) keyboards, gamepads etc MIDI devices ?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- enqk 8y agoMIDI produces great value with encoding a domain specific mapping. It's one of the differences with OSC which, by being too open-ended, provides no standard interpretation..
- diegoperini 8y agoI'm not an expert so I might be wrong but probably because one solution that fits for all can be a bad idea. Driver complexity is one of the reasons most devices are not compatible with all existing OSs by default.
- jabl 8y agoI sometimes wonder whether the ongoing USB-C trainwreck is partly due do trying to be everything for everybody. Leading to complex and flaky HW and SW.
- TheRealPomax 8y agoI'm not sure I understand your comment. USB-C is still just USB, which was already a universal messaging transport solution. Driver complexity hasn't gone up just because a new physical plug got invented, so presumably you're thinking of the increased number of devices that now use USB, with a C connector, but the fact that it can do "even more device types!" now makes literally zero difference when the spec was already designed to allow all devices: the only difference is that HW/SW is now finally capable of transmitting reliably enough to handle the massive loads those now-supported devices require (hdmi, ethernet, etc.)
- 8y ago
- bjoli 8y agoIs the midi connector the oldest one still in active use? It is my prime example of getting things right at the first (or at least first-ish) try.
- jchw 8y agoDepending on what you'd consider a 'connector,' the headphone jack has quite a long lineage. I believe the 3.5mm headphone jack was originally created in the '50s. Of course, on the very distant planet that phone vendors live in, the headphone jack is not in active use, because people there were apparently absolutely begging for phones that were fractions of a millimeter thinner. In any case, if you count the larger variants, it's been around for a fair bit longer than that, even.
- sandov 8y agoI think the 3.5mm will still be widely used 20 years from now. In the wired realm, it doesn't get much better than the 3.5mm jack from a user convenience point of view.
- TheRealPomax 8y agoExcept maybe the 1/4" TRS jack.
- TheRealPomax 8y agoInteresting that you went with the 3.5mm jack, and not the 1/4" jack, which predate the 20th century and will be in use until analog electric signals become impossible, rather than being tied to whether or not "cabled portable audio devices" stay a thing or whether we give up on those.
- jchw 8y agoI mentioned them, but ordinary people don't use 1/4" jacks. In fact, I don't know who still uses 1/4" jacks. Audio professionals seem to use XLR, though I am not one myself. I know 3.5mm connectors are still in active use by the general public.
- ermir 8y agoWill it allow me to poll the state of the knobs on my keyboard? Many instruments have MIDI extensions to allow you to check the state of the controls, but having one built in to the language would be great, especially for WebMIDI.
- gcb0 8y agonope.
- kristiandupont 8y agoI think it's quite astonishing how solid the MIDI standard feels -- it's embraced by the entire industry and even though it's nearly 40 years old, it has worked very well for many types of instruments and software that couldn't even have been imagined at the time.
- fit2rule 8y agoMusicians don't throw instruments away like other markets throw their gadgets away. I have a room full of 30-year old synths that still work the same as they did the day I bought them, and they're still awesome - I will never 'upgrade'. They're instruments. It'd be great if the other realms of electronic gadgetry could accomplish the same degree of uptake as electronic musical instruments - however, the anti-patterns that make modern consumer gadgets so appealing to the people who market and sell them, are a smell to musicians who have very little patience for designed obsolescence. Musicians don't tolerate that much .. anyone attempting to induce it in a product intended for music-making will find that they won't get far in this industry.
- stfwn 8y agoHm, I don't agree fully. There is zero hardware innovation for digital keyboards at least. Some old electronic instruments are 'vintage'; what makes a Moog is the vintage Moog sound, so yes, you can't upgrade from there. But most digital tools are not instruments in that sense and definitely have the corporate gadget-marketing schemes going on. - Yamaha's Motif XS has some sounds that were adopted as signature sounds for some subgenres of funk, soul and gospel, but these are just samples that the upgraded versions XF, MX, MOXF have as well for this reason, and I don't see anyone with the XS anymore. - Nord clearly limits the features, storage and processing power of each keyboard they release so that they can upgrade it slightly the following year (the latest 2018 flagship model has 480MB of sample memory vs. the preceding 2015 model's 380MB). - Korg rereleased the Kronos with an SSD instead of a HDD and marketed it as a new machine. You could open it up and DIY for 80 bucks and save yourself ~$1.5k+ upgrade costs. - Roland still slaps the Juno brand name on random iterations of digital instruments that just have an extra button for this or that function that could have been added with a software update if they wanted to. New digital keyboards these days are just software updates that model familiar sounds slightly better, packaged in "new" hardware. The $3.5k pricetag for flagship keyboards that have barely changed in size/shape/material for years is a clear sign. I wonder why no manufacturer has just come out and said "this is our flagship keyboard until 2030, buy it for $2k and subscribe to software updates for $10/month" or "new software verson at $100 every year". That way what buyer's pay for would be much more closely connected to what they are actually getting.
- inam1990 8y agoTRON Price predictions 2019 and review http://icoviral.today/2019/01/19/tron-price-predictions-2019-and-review/ http://icoviral.today/2019/01/19/tron-price-predictions-2019...
- tyteen4a03 8y agoI wonder if they will also support USB-C just like Thunderbolt 3 got tacked onto the USB-C connector?
- seba_dos1 8y agoMIDI is already well-supported over USB, I don't see why MIDI 2.0 should be any different.
- TheRealPomax 8y agoMIDI is just a protocol, it doesn't care which cable it gets sent over, as long as both ends of the cable know which message transport system if being used. As such, pretty much every modern MIDI device can already do MIDI over USB (including the ones that have dedicated MIDI ports on the back).
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- boomlinde 8y ago> MIDI is just a protocol, it doesn't care which cable it gets sent over, as long as both ends of the cable know which message transport system if being used. Strictly speaking, no. MIDI also specifies the mechanical and electrical connections. There is a MIDI USB device class specification, but that's not an implementation of the MIDI 1.0 standard and just roughly corresponds to its packet protocol.
- TheRealPomax 8y agoAh, I did not know this. Thanks.
- S_A_P 8y agoI recently read the biography (for lack of a better term) of sequential circuits. Dave Smith(the founder who still makes awesome synthesizers today) was a primary stakeholder in pushing the standard though. What essentially happened was All companies had a data/sync standard for electronic instruments. Then Oberheim released a system that many manufacturers saw as a threat to their business. Dave Smith convinced Roland to just adopt something and that momentum of sequential and Roland would turn adoption in their favor. That pretty much worked. Iirc the midi association then made Tom Oberheim president.
- rgreasons 8y agoMind sharing which book/article you're referencing? Sounds interesting.
- troydavis 8y agoI’m not OP, but I suspect it was “The Prophet from Silicon Valley: The Complete Story of Sequential Circuits,” for which Dave Smith wrote the foreword.
- S_A_P 8y agoThats it- thanks. https://www.amazon.com/Prophet-Silicon-Valley-Complete-Sequential/dp/1512198323 https://www.amazon.com/Prophet-Silicon-Valley-Complete-Seque... link to the book.
- chillingeffect 8y agointeresting how there is a new version of $40 and two used for >$1000 ! out-of-control algorithm ?!
- cyberferret 8y agoI'm currently saving my pennies for a Prophet 6 synth from Dave Smith Instruments (which I believe has now been re-renamed back to Sequential Circuits). I grew up with the classic sound of the Prophet 5 through all the music I listened to in the 80s. From memory, Yamaha, who owned the Sequential brand were magnanimous enough to give Dave back all his IP some years ago to allow him to build the next generation of synthesisers based on his old ones, and it looks like they have given him back his original company name now too!
- IAmGraydon 8y agoGood news for those of us with steppy filters.
- nightcracker 8y agoOnly semi related, but I still have to share. The guys at Roland are genius. I have a somewhat old Roland RD-150 digital keyboard. While searching online for the user manual, I found a 'firmware update' on the official site. I was curious. My keyboard is pretty old school, it doesn't have USB or anything like that. I downloaded the firmware update and opened the zip file. It contained a readme... and a .midi file. It sort of blew my mind. They were sending firmware updates over MIDI! You had to press a certain key combination on the keyboard and play back the MIDI file into the MIDI in, and the firmware update would be complete. True hackers.
- terramex 8y agoSimilar, you can save and load synth presets using MIDI on microKORG. Surprisingly, it doesn't work with cheaper MIDI cables.
- TheRealPomax 8y agoThat's not Roland being genius, though. That's kind of literally one of the things sysex messages were added to the MIDI 1.0 spec. It's also why it's taking so effing long for webmidi to become a standard, because allowing sysex would mean your browser could in theory tell your midi device to brick itself.
- jdietrich 8y agoIn fairness, Roland founded the MMA and wrote most of the MIDI spec. The odds are fairly good that Roland did invent SysEx.
- jeffrom 8y agoI thought Dave Smith was primarily responsible? Just to put another notch in Silicon Valley’s belt, I guess.
- jdietrich 8y agoDave Smith was the first to get on board with the project and made substantial contributions to the design of MIDI, but it was Ikutaro Kakehashi who started the whole endeavour. MIDI was heavily influenced by DCB, a proprietary interface developed by Roland in 1981.
- Stenzel 8y agoMIDI is great, and I am so thankful that they had the foresight to require a mandatory opto-coupler in the input to avoid ground loops of interconnected gear. Even today, very few devices have a comparable insulation in their USB connection.
- klodolph 8y agoA bit harder for USB, because of the power it supplies. USB is also not connected in loops, where MIDI will form loops with audio connections.
- exabrial 8y agoOn my guitar pedalboard, I tried to be clever once and I hooked all of my digital pedals with a usb hub to a main connector. Horrible ground loops and digital noise was introduced. Does anyone make an electrically isolated usb hub?
- exabrial 8y agoPlease make the connector smaller!
- b42 8y agoDone https://www.midi.org/articles-old/trs-specification-adopted-and-released https://www.midi.org/articles-old/trs-specification-adopted-...
- djaychela 8y agoI'd have to disagree with this - I've had quite a few devices that have used mini-dins, and they aren't anywhere near as robust. Maybe have options for different sized connectors, but they should all be equal in terms of functionality (a bit like USB-B connectors), and need to be as robust as the current ones. I can think of many times where the simplicity and size of the DIN connectors on MIDI gear has been the difference between 'no worries, I can just about get my arm down the back of this rack and get the plug in' and 'no chance, can't feel where this needs to go'. And DINs are strong enough that you can rotate them to get them to the correct orientation without causing damage.
- htor 8y agowhen is the article from?
- andyfleming 8y agoFriday, 18 January 2019
- Olasson 8y agoI want to believe this will get decent adoption in my lifetime. MIDI has so many historical limitations that have become ridiculous in a modern context, like only having 16 channels per bus or the very low control precision. These have lead to hacky solutions and compromises that often end up creating a poor experience for users. I've worked on plugins that require per-note tuning and pitch bend, and the current best solution, MPE, is limiting. You're forced to use an entire MIDI bus to control a single instrument. This is a huge hack, and it means you can't create a MIDI plugin that controls multiple instruments. Vendors are slow to adopt new standards in the audio world (as in many domains), and I hope this will be followed up with good diplomacy. We can learn from the non-adoption of Steinberg's VST3 standard as a path to avoid.
- FigBug 8y agoSteinberg is no longer granting licenses for VST2, so legally there can be no more new VST2 developers. But not all the hosts support VST3 yet and VST3 is over 10 years old. It's a giant pain in the ass. They are trying to force it, but people just don't want it.
- sbr464 8y agoCurious, what’s the best method currently for automatically mapping or discovering controls of a connected midi instrument? Especially if you don’t have a predefined midi map/template. Or is manually activating controls and defining your map still the best way?
- theon144 8y agoThere's stuff like NI's NKS [0], but it's highly vendor specific and very inflexible. I assume this will remain the case, given the relative variability of MIDI controllers - the position and amount of control elements, not to mention their implicit relationships (knobs that are directly above or below a fader for instance); and their near-universal non-responsiveness - there is no way to say, label a control for you to see physically. Interesting issue to solve though, I'd bet my money on modular MIDI controllers becoming more prominent in the future. 0 - https://www.native-instruments.com/en/specials/komplete/this-is-nks/ https://www.native-instruments.com/en/specials/komplete/this...
- pier25 8y agoGood news! Hopefully it will be as solid as the current version.
- FraKtus 8y agoThere is better than MIDI for a long time; it's called OSC. It's a shame the industry did never embrace it. I had some contact with Roland and the MMA, and they explained to me that the industry did invest so much into MIDI in term of hardware development that it will be tough to replace it.
- filoeleven 8y ago> All companies that develop MIDI products are encouraged to join the MMA to participate in the future development of the specification The good news: a new enhanced MIDI spec is in the works! The bad news: you're gonna have to fight for it.