6 ms·

MIDI 2.0 Specifications Available for Download

107 points by dmoreno 7y ago

hjanssen 7y ago
MIDI is such an interesting standard. Anyone who has anything to do with music equipment can attest that it is literally everywhere. Every (decent) synth nowadays has at least a midi input. You can sync practically everything with MIDIs clock function (which was VERY painful to do beforehand, especially if you tried to sync multiple synths). Its interesting to see if MIDI 2.0 can follow up with that. Certainly, MIDI is here to stay and i cant wait to see what cool things people are going to create with it!
- tannhaeuser 7y ago
  > Every (decent) synth nowadays has at least a midi input Well that sentence could've been straight from a music/computer mag from early/mid 1980s - that's how old MIDI is, using DIN jackets and all. Source: owned an Atari ST using Steinberg 24 track sequencing software to control Yamaha DX-7 (every New Wave band had one of those on stage), early digital drum machines, digital reverbs/echoes, and other devices around 1985.
  - croon 7y ago
    Cubase represent! My dad was a music teacher and a big proponent of getting the school to purchase Ataris for this reason. He in later years also decided to build an electric organ with complete foot pedals and all. MIDI never says die.
  - core-questions 7y ago
    You posted all that, and didn't link to any audio of what you made? Come on, man, we can never have enough DX-7.
- ptah 7y ago
  > Its interesting to see if MIDI 2.0 can follow up with that. there lies the rub. MIDI is quite simple. if MIDI 2.0 is error-prone to implement, it will fail as literally no one has time for that
  - dmoreno 7y ago
    I have not checked the docs yet, but from what I read so far the protocol is actually easier, with clearer fixed size messages for usual operations, with much more information. But it is always required MIDI 1.0 compatibility, so if your device need the extra bits, it activate the MIDI 2.0 protocol. IIRC it is possible to use other parts of the MIDI 2.0 as MIDI CI with the old MIDI protocol. Also things like MPE I think are really improved, as current MPE is an ugly hack using channels. Time wise MIDI 2.0 should be easier to implement than MPE, IMHO. The most difficult part would be the MIDI CI (Capability Inquiry) to first set up the MIDI 2.0 protocol, and then to send information about current device. But the info about the current device is actually a JSON file, so not really difficult.
- nkozyra 7y ago
  While I won't deny that midi has been a great and long lasting standard, syncing clock via cv was always pretty straightforward, you just lacked thru so everything was daisy chained directly. CV being effectively monoplexed meant a lot of connections to control a lot of parameters on one or more instruments. Of course, the modular crowd is still happy to live in this world, but that's more an aesthetic choice, imo.
  - H1Supreme 7y ago
    > more an aesthetic choice What's the alternative?
    - squarefoot 7y ago
      Tunneling the analog control signal into digital packets would be easy, then it's just a matter of picking the best PHY interface to send them around. Don't worry about sound issues, though. Old hybrid synths (analog generators with digital control and parameters storage) were very recognizable from fully analog ones (purely CV controlled) just because say a pitch bend mapped to a 8 bit sampling of a potentiometer, which translates to 7 bit up and 7 bit down, wouldn't have the minimum quantization to let the listener perceive it as an analog control. Today cheap MCUs allow adding digital control to analog generators, filters, envelopes etc. to a granularity level (16+ bit) so that any realtime variation would be identical sound wise to a fully analog controlled synth. Latency wouldn'b an issue as we're talking about control and not sound generation: MCUs with no or minimal (realtime) OSes would never impose such higher latencies as in virtual instruments etc. Having an ADSR kick like two milliseconds after the key is pressed would hardly be a problem.
      - core-questions 7y ago
        > Tunneling the analog control signal into digital packets would be easy Yeah, but at that point, you're already giving up the "analog purity" that analog synth fans love so much. Might as well just use midi; and then you might as well just use soft-synths; and then you might as well just use Propellerhead Reason, so you can have all the flexibility of gate/CV fully virtualized.
thomasfl 7y ago
The timing must be perfect for startups that create new kinds of MIDI input devices that can support the new expressiveness controls that MIDI 2.0 supports. Roli probably a head start with their seaboard "keyboard" made in neopren. The Osmose keyboard from Expressive E, also look promising. Osmose looks like a traditional keyboard, but detects vibration on the keys.
- atoav 7y ago
  As a (happy) owner of a Linnstrument I think supporting MPE would already be a great thing as it removes a lot of the problems I had with traditional midi (e.g. allows per finger pressure, pitchbend and mod instead of one pitchbend for all notes played). As I know Roger Linn however he is probably already in the process of writing Midi 2.0 support for the Linnstrument firmware
  - thomasfl 7y ago
    The Linnstrument looks awesome. I am the happy owner of a Roli Music block, that actually looks like a small and cute version of the Linnstrument.
- nkozyra 7y ago
  Osmose isn't the first to use horizontal key bend/pressure/direction and midi mpe already supported that and things like polyphonic aftertouch. I think it could mark a resurgence in midi guitars, where things like bends tend to quantize a bit too much.
  - nitrogen 7y ago
    Are there any synthesizers or virtual instruments that bend the fundamental+harmonics with the right stretch, and separarely from the formants/inharmonics for a more realistic bend? When I bend a guitar or violin (or piano) on my Korg workstation it sounds like a nasty digital resampling bend, and very unnatural.
K0SM0S 7y ago
> MIDI 2.0 delivers more nuanced expressiveness for electronic instruments. It’s now possible to convey the same kind of subtle expression normally associated with acoustic instruments, thanks to higher-resolution dynamics and control data, vastly extended controller options (including per-note controllers for exceptional articulation), and simplified controller assignments. This could be a musical revolution in the making, some 10-20 years from now. Huge, huge implications for the entire industry and craftmanship of "instruments". At the bottom of the market, this could be the proverbial end of the 'cheap' analog stuff for the masses, a world of fantastically sounding budget intruments). At the state of the art, a whole new category of instruments with potentially crazy original software-defined features. MIDI 2.0 would have been sci-fi not so long ago. It's fantastic that we are here.
- 72deluxe 7y ago
  But will anyone hear such subtlety with the over-handed compression applied to everything these days, and the low-quality streaming quality 99.9% of listeners are satisfied with?? It is indeed great news but I do not hear a lot of subtlety in most music, particularly electric genres that believe loud loud square and triangle waves are the future, given the amount I hear. I must be getting old.
  - derefr 7y ago
    > low streaming quality You mean AM radio? ;) Keep in mind, MIDI is also used for live performances—and not just in raucous club concert venues, but also in pin-drop quiet orchestral performance halls (if the genre isn’t classical.) Also, more than ever, people are releasing music in high-bitrate lossless formats, making even a compresssed soundstage not particularly lossy.
  - unlinked_dll 7y ago
    The difference between 7 bit control changes and continuous floating point automation is night and day, and neither dynamic range compression nor lossy compression affects that. EDM in particular is full of sonic subtleties that MIDI 1.0 did not really support. I don't think you're really listening to it if you think it's all triangle waves, those aren't even particularly popular in contemporary sound design.
polyterative 7y ago
does midi 2 suffer from MIDI timing jitter? Using modular (eurorack) now and that issue made midi unusable for me
- dmoreno 7y ago
  It has a mechanism to reduce it, quite probably adding some latency. But better always 8ms of latency than random jitter between 1ms to 8ms. This will also help with WiFi + rtpmidi and bluetooth. From the (oldish) midi.org article[1]: > The Universal MIDI Packet format adds a Jitter Reduction Timestamp mechanism. A Timestamp can be prepended to any MIDI 1.0 Protocol message or MIDI 2.0 Protocol message for improved timing accuracy. 1: https://www.midi.org/articles-old/details-about-midi-2-0-midi-ci-profiles-and-property-exchange https://www.midi.org/articles-old/details-about-midi-2-0-mid...
- hootbootscoot 7y ago
  Well, there should be a sample timestamp in there, so that's ONE benefit a high-level async protocol provides. The delivery timing does not correlate to the playback timing, and so this will reduce the need for real-time determinacy of the data-streams transport. make sense?
dacohenii 7y ago
I'm glad to see the MIDI spec is available for download! It was my understanding that the only way to get the specification for MIDI 1.0 was to buy a hard copy of the spec, and that sales of the book were the only way the MIDI association made money. Looks like now both are free. I think I had heard that from an interesting youtube lecture on how MIDI works, which I'll link to just in case anyone is interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPteB_LpHoM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPteB_LpHoM
lioeters 7y ago
I've been following the development of MIDI 2.0 specs ¹ with interest (just personal, not for work). In the past year, I got fairly deep into Open Sound Control ², which has so much fun potential and can practically be a superset of MIDI. In fact, I implemented encode/decode from OSC <-> MIDI in C++ and Node.js for a hobby project. So I wonder, could MIDI and OSC converge in the future? It seems to me that the latter being a generic protocol for any kind of message, including musical data, that it could supercede depending on industry adoption (like MIDI+OSC instruments).. --- ¹ https://www.midi.org/articles-old/details-about-midi-2-0-midi-ci-profiles-and-property-exchange https://www.midi.org/articles-old/details-about-midi-2-0-mid... ² http://opensoundcontrol.org/ http://opensoundcontrol.org/
FraKtus 7y ago
When can we expect to see it in macOS / Windows? Any big actor did already commit to it (Abelton, Cubase)?
hootbootscoot 7y ago
yeah, great... "protocol negotiation" lol... this wants to be OSC 2.0 or maybe just everything to everyone? See, MIDI has an elegant simplicity in that you can connect 1 stupid wire (either pin 2 or 3, IIRC) to your micro-controller and before you can even say "debounce" you can be triggering envelopes... MIDI, as in normal old-assed MIDI is low-level. Look, I get it! if ONLY we had the full 8 bits for CC's instead of only 7, etc... The temptation to "improve and update everything" results in the crap 2020 software engineering artifacts that we leave as our legacy: firmly reminding eternity about just how far we believed that modern trendy habits are always the best for everyone always in everything... I would have joked about making your "profiles" in XML, but then as we know it's 2020 so that would be JSON, lol...

107 points by dmoreno 7y ago

MIDI is such an interesting standard. Anyone who has anything to do with music equipment can attest that it is literally everywhere. Every (decent) synth nowadays has at least a midi input. You can sync practically everything with MIDIs clock function (which was VERY painful to do beforehand, especially if you tried to sync multiple synths). Its interesting to see if MIDI 2.0 can follow up with that. Certainly, MIDI is here to stay and i cant wait to see what cool things people are going to create with it!

tannhaeuser 7y ago
> Every (decent) synth nowadays has at least a midi input Well that sentence could've been straight from a music/computer mag from early/mid 1980s - that's how old MIDI is, using DIN jackets and all. Source: owned an Atari ST using Steinberg 24 track sequencing software to control Yamaha DX-7 (every New Wave band had one of those on stage), early digital drum machines, digital reverbs/echoes, and other devices around 1985.
- croon 7y ago
  Cubase represent! My dad was a music teacher and a big proponent of getting the school to purchase Ataris for this reason. He in later years also decided to build an electric organ with complete foot pedals and all. MIDI never says die.
- core-questions 7y ago
  You posted all that, and didn't link to any audio of what you made? Come on, man, we can never have enough DX-7.
ptah 7y ago
> Its interesting to see if MIDI 2.0 can follow up with that. there lies the rub. MIDI is quite simple. if MIDI 2.0 is error-prone to implement, it will fail as literally no one has time for that
- dmoreno 7y ago
  I have not checked the docs yet, but from what I read so far the protocol is actually easier, with clearer fixed size messages for usual operations, with much more information. But it is always required MIDI 1.0 compatibility, so if your device need the extra bits, it activate the MIDI 2.0 protocol. IIRC it is possible to use other parts of the MIDI 2.0 as MIDI CI with the old MIDI protocol. Also things like MPE I think are really improved, as current MPE is an ugly hack using channels. Time wise MIDI 2.0 should be easier to implement than MPE, IMHO. The most difficult part would be the MIDI CI (Capability Inquiry) to first set up the MIDI 2.0 protocol, and then to send information about current device. But the info about the current device is actually a JSON file, so not really difficult.
nkozyra 7y ago
While I won't deny that midi has been a great and long lasting standard, syncing clock via cv was always pretty straightforward, you just lacked thru so everything was daisy chained directly. CV being effectively monoplexed meant a lot of connections to control a lot of parameters on one or more instruments. Of course, the modular crowd is still happy to live in this world, but that's more an aesthetic choice, imo.
- H1Supreme 7y ago
  > more an aesthetic choice What's the alternative?
  - squarefoot 7y ago
    Tunneling the analog control signal into digital packets would be easy, then it's just a matter of picking the best PHY interface to send them around. Don't worry about sound issues, though. Old hybrid synths (analog generators with digital control and parameters storage) were very recognizable from fully analog ones (purely CV controlled) just because say a pitch bend mapped to a 8 bit sampling of a potentiometer, which translates to 7 bit up and 7 bit down, wouldn't have the minimum quantization to let the listener perceive it as an analog control. Today cheap MCUs allow adding digital control to analog generators, filters, envelopes etc. to a granularity level (16+ bit) so that any realtime variation would be identical sound wise to a fully analog controlled synth. Latency wouldn'b an issue as we're talking about control and not sound generation: MCUs with no or minimal (realtime) OSes would never impose such higher latencies as in virtual instruments etc. Having an ADSR kick like two milliseconds after the key is pressed would hardly be a problem.
    - core-questions 7y ago
      > Tunneling the analog control signal into digital packets would be easy Yeah, but at that point, you're already giving up the "analog purity" that analog synth fans love so much. Might as well just use midi; and then you might as well just use soft-synths; and then you might as well just use Propellerhead Reason, so you can have all the flexibility of gate/CV fully virtualized.

thomasfl 7y ago

The timing must be perfect for startups that create new kinds of MIDI input devices that can support the new expressiveness controls that MIDI 2.0 supports. Roli probably a head start with their seaboard "keyboard" made in neopren. The Osmose keyboard from Expressive E, also look promising. Osmose looks like a traditional keyboard, but detects vibration on the keys.

atoav 7y ago
As a (happy) owner of a Linnstrument I think supporting MPE would already be a great thing as it removes a lot of the problems I had with traditional midi (e.g. allows per finger pressure, pitchbend and mod instead of one pitchbend for all notes played). As I know Roger Linn however he is probably already in the process of writing Midi 2.0 support for the Linnstrument firmware
- thomasfl 7y ago
  The Linnstrument looks awesome. I am the happy owner of a Roli Music block, that actually looks like a small and cute version of the Linnstrument.
nkozyra 7y ago
Osmose isn't the first to use horizontal key bend/pressure/direction and midi mpe already supported that and things like polyphonic aftertouch. I think it could mark a resurgence in midi guitars, where things like bends tend to quantize a bit too much.
- nitrogen 7y ago
  Are there any synthesizers or virtual instruments that bend the fundamental+harmonics with the right stretch, and separarely from the formants/inharmonics for a more realistic bend? When I bend a guitar or violin (or piano) on my Korg workstation it sounds like a nasty digital resampling bend, and very unnatural.

K0SM0S 7y ago

> MIDI 2.0 delivers more nuanced expressiveness for electronic instruments. It’s now possible to convey the same kind of subtle expression normally associated with acoustic instruments, thanks to higher-resolution dynamics and control data, vastly extended controller options (including per-note controllers for exceptional articulation), and simplified controller assignments. This could be a musical revolution in the making, some 10-20 years from now. Huge, huge implications for the entire industry and craftmanship of "instruments". At the bottom of the market, this could be the proverbial end of the 'cheap' analog stuff for the masses, a world of fantastically sounding budget intruments). At the state of the art, a whole new category of instruments with potentially crazy original software-defined features. MIDI 2.0 would have been sci-fi not so long ago. It's fantastic that we are here.

72deluxe 7y ago
But will anyone hear such subtlety with the over-handed compression applied to everything these days, and the low-quality streaming quality 99.9% of listeners are satisfied with?? It is indeed great news but I do not hear a lot of subtlety in most music, particularly electric genres that believe loud loud square and triangle waves are the future, given the amount I hear. I must be getting old.
- derefr 7y ago
  > low streaming quality You mean AM radio? ;) Keep in mind, MIDI is also used for live performances—and not just in raucous club concert venues, but also in pin-drop quiet orchestral performance halls (if the genre isn’t classical.) Also, more than ever, people are releasing music in high-bitrate lossless formats, making even a compresssed soundstage not particularly lossy.
- unlinked_dll 7y ago
  The difference between 7 bit control changes and continuous floating point automation is night and day, and neither dynamic range compression nor lossy compression affects that. EDM in particular is full of sonic subtleties that MIDI 1.0 did not really support. I don't think you're really listening to it if you think it's all triangle waves, those aren't even particularly popular in contemporary sound design.

polyterative 7y ago

does midi 2 suffer from MIDI timing jitter? Using modular (eurorack) now and that issue made midi unusable for me

dmoreno 7y ago
It has a mechanism to reduce it, quite probably adding some latency. But better always 8ms of latency than random jitter between 1ms to 8ms. This will also help with WiFi + rtpmidi and bluetooth. From the (oldish) midi.org article[1]: > The Universal MIDI Packet format adds a Jitter Reduction Timestamp mechanism. A Timestamp can be prepended to any MIDI 1.0 Protocol message or MIDI 2.0 Protocol message for improved timing accuracy. 1: https://www.midi.org/articles-old/details-about-midi-2-0-midi-ci-profiles-and-property-exchange https://www.midi.org/articles-old/details-about-midi-2-0-mid...
hootbootscoot 7y ago
Well, there should be a sample timestamp in there, so that's ONE benefit a high-level async protocol provides. The delivery timing does not correlate to the playback timing, and so this will reduce the need for real-time determinacy of the data-streams transport. make sense?

dacohenii 7y ago

I'm glad to see the MIDI spec is available for download! It was my understanding that the only way to get the specification for MIDI 1.0 was to buy a hard copy of the spec, and that sales of the book were the only way the MIDI association made money. Looks like now both are free. I think I had heard that from an interesting youtube lecture on how MIDI works, which I'll link to just in case anyone is interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPteB_LpHoM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPteB_LpHoM

lioeters 7y ago

I've been following the development of MIDI 2.0 specs ¹ with interest (just personal, not for work). In the past year, I got fairly deep into Open Sound Control ², which has so much fun potential and can practically be a superset of MIDI. In fact, I implemented encode/decode from OSC <-> MIDI in C++ and Node.js for a hobby project. So I wonder, could MIDI and OSC converge in the future? It seems to me that the latter being a generic protocol for any kind of message, including musical data, that it could supercede depending on industry adoption (like MIDI+OSC instruments).. --- ¹ https://www.midi.org/articles-old/details-about-midi-2-0-midi-ci-profiles-and-property-exchange https://www.midi.org/articles-old/details-about-midi-2-0-mid... ² http://opensoundcontrol.org/ http://opensoundcontrol.org/

FraKtus 7y ago

When can we expect to see it in macOS / Windows? Any big actor did already commit to it (Abelton, Cubase)?

hootbootscoot 7y ago

yeah, great... "protocol negotiation" lol... this wants to be OSC 2.0 or maybe just everything to everyone? See, MIDI has an elegant simplicity in that you can connect 1 stupid wire (either pin 2 or 3, IIRC) to your micro-controller and before you can even say "debounce" you can be triggering envelopes... MIDI, as in normal old-assed MIDI is low-level. Look, I get it! if ONLY we had the full 8 bits for CC's instead of only 7, etc... The temptation to "improve and update everything" results in the crap 2020 software engineering artifacts that we leave as our legacy: firmly reminding eternity about just how far we believed that modern trendy habits are always the best for everyone always in everything... I would have joked about making your "profiles" in XML, but then as we know it's 2020 so that would be JSON, lol...