10 ms·

I love that a protocol from 1983 is still in very active use. Either it was very well thought out, or the userbase has very limited needs. (actually a little o

I love that a protocol from 1983 is still in very active use. Either it was very well thought out, or the userbase has very limited needs. (actually a little of both.)

brudgers 4y ago
It is also the domain is limited. I mean a piano only has 88 keys and a few pedals and there are maybe 8 octaves or so in Common Practice. And MIDI also has SYSEX to handle arbitrary data.
- cramjabsyn 4y ago
  And CCs to handle faders and knobs. And PC to handle patch recall. And separate rx/tx busses. And ability to carry clock. And support for 16 simultaneous channels. Yeah it’s actually really well thought out I’d say
  - adw 4y ago
    Dave Smith, may he rest in peace, and Ikutaro Kakehashi deserve all of the flowers. https://www.grammy.com/news/technical-grammy-award-ikutaro-kakehashi-and-dave-smith https://www.grammy.com/news/technical-grammy-award-ikutaro-k... Dave was a brilliant designer, both analogue and digital, but not so great a businessperson; his company, Sequential, who made some of the most beloved electronic instruments - not least the Prophet series - went bankrupt and Yamaha bought the name. Dave went to work for Yamaha and Korg, and then Seer Systems, where he designed the first ever “soft synth” (professional-standard PC synthesiser plugin), Reality. He had all of the acclaim, and I’m sure he did OK, but he did not have the financial success the quality of his work deserved. Nevertheless, he then founded Dave Smith Instruments, maybe the start of the analogue synth revival (which is going gangbusters now; Eurorack is the coolest hardware hacking scene on the planet). DSi did pretty well, which was great, but here’s what really reveals how beloved Dave was; his old friend Ikutaro had a word with his friend, the president of Yamaha, and more or less asked; “we all love Dave. You’re not using the Sequential name. How about it?” and Yamaha went… “you, know, yeah” and gave him the Sequential name - which still had significant brand equity - for free. Seriously: https://www.sequential.com/2015/01/sequential-back/ https://www.sequential.com/2015/01/sequential-back/ > Instrumental in restoring the Sequential name was Roland’s Founder, Ikutaro Kakehashi, a longtime colleague and friend of Smith’s. “I feel that it’s important to get rid of unnecessary conflict among electronic musical instrument companies,” said Kakehashi. “That is exactly the spirit of MIDI. For this reason, I personally recommended that the President of Yamaha, Mr. Nakata, return the rights to the Sequential name to Dave Smith. And I’m glad to see such a wonderful result—a new product with the Sequential name.” And in 2021, he sold now-Sequential again under much happier circumstances; $24m to the well-regarded British gear manufacturer Focusrite. The music gear industry has more than its share of villains - google Uli Behringer sometime - but Dave and Ikutaro were real ones, and the best parts of the industry (including the big Japanese manufacturers, Korg, Roland/Boss, and Yamaha) move in their spirit. And a large part of that is because of the existence of MIDI.
- mjr00 4y ago
  > It is also the domain is limited. I mean a piano only has 88 keys and a few pedals and there are maybe 8 octaves or so in Common Practice. Yeah but MIDI works for so much more than a piano. People use MIDI to program drum VSTs, guitar VSTs, entire orchestras, guzheng VSTs... basically anything musical. That being said, it's serviceable but not great for a lot of these things, because originally it was meant just for keyboard-controlled synthesizers. The biggest flaw (IMO) is lack of standardization for individual instruments with more varied playing styles and articulations than the piano. As a basic example, for guitar VSTs, if you want to switch between sustain notes and palm mutes, you generally have to play an out-of-range note (a "keyswitch") to alter the articulation. However this keyswitch is different for Ample Sound, Shreddage, Native Instruments guitar libraries, etc. Similarly if you want to slide between notes, some VSTs just let you overlap the note while others make you use a slide keyswitch. Every VST has its own way of MIDI programming that isn't transferrable. It's like switching between programming languages, except you're building a single program where it uses multiple languages at once in the same file and you have to remember if the current language syntax you're writing uses `elif`, `else if` or is LISP. (I have reference manuals for most VSTs I own bookmarked for this reason.) The fact that MIDI continues to be used today is, more than anything, the result of "perfect is the enemy of done" IMO. You could redesign something better than MIDI from the ground up, but since everything already supports MIDI there's little motivation when it already works well enough.
  - brudgers 4y ago
    Sorry for not being clear, I used the number of piano keys as an example of how limited the domain is. MIDI wasn’t designed to express ranges with 100’s or 1000’s of values. Twelve tone equal temperament is good enough and technology is not going to extend human hearing another four octaves. What MIDI really got right is flexibility with regard to timbre. The standard was so open that General MIDI only came along later to establish some consistency for timbres.
    - klodolph 4y ago
      MIDI doesn’t force you to use 12TET anyway. You can use MTS. Support seems widespread, at least among the equipment and software I use, some of it dating back to the 1980s.
- ls15 4y ago
  Controllers should have a higher resolution. With only 128 values, filter sweeps have ugly gaps.
  - bzzzt 4y ago
    Your 'ugly gap' is another man's 'characterful sound'.
    - ls15 4y ago
      True, of course. :)
  - rewgs 4y ago
    This is not an issue. Source: I am a professional composer.
    - klodolph 4y ago
      Maybe you are not affected by it. I occasionally find it frustrating, in various scenarios… very slow sweeps by hand, or things like that. I only have problems with the limitation in certain scenarios with electronic sounds. It’s never a problem with sample libraries. MIDI has 14-value CCs anyway, it’s just that few controllers generate the messages. I don’t k ow how many synths respond to them.
    - ls15 4y ago
      Composers are not really affected by this. Sound engineers are. It is impossible to create smooth filter sweeps with regular CCs without further smoothing on the receiving end, because the human ear can differentiate between many more than 128 frequencies.
      - rewgs 4y ago
        Should have been more clear. Professional film/TV/game composer. By definition we are producers and audio engineers as well. And yes it truly isn’t a problem, as plugin developers have long since interpolated the 128 steps. If it were a problem, you’d be hearing choppy sweeps in every song and film score out there.
a9h74j 4y ago
If they had used a more common baud rate, I wonder if there would be so many poorly done "extensions" that it would not be in active use.
- SeanLuke 4y ago
  The baud rate chosen was extremely well thought out compared to the crazytalk that are standard serial port baud rates. Specifically, the rate was 31250 bps. Why? Because the huge majority of synthesizer processors at the time had clocks that ran at 1 MHz or integer multiples thereof. Indeed that is still the case forty years later. Ask yourself what 31250 * 32 is.
  - spookie 4y ago
    This is incredible
  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    1,000,000
malthaus 4y ago
It is on one hand but it's also a PITA that holds back innovation and troubles its users with work-arounds. It's time for a proper new standard using modern capabilities both for audio and control signal transport but it's a very heterogeneous market with tons of legacy, therefore almost impossible to achieve.

I love that a protocol from 1983 is still in very active use. Either it was very well thought out, or the userbase has very limited needs. (actually a little of both.)

brudgers 4y ago

It is also the domain is limited. I mean a piano only has 88 keys and a few pedals and there are maybe 8 octaves or so in Common Practice. And MIDI also has SYSEX to handle arbitrary data.

cramjabsyn 4y ago
And CCs to handle faders and knobs. And PC to handle patch recall. And separate rx/tx busses. And ability to carry clock. And support for 16 simultaneous channels. Yeah it’s actually really well thought out I’d say
- adw 4y ago
  Dave Smith, may he rest in peace, and Ikutaro Kakehashi deserve all of the flowers. https://www.grammy.com/news/technical-grammy-award-ikutaro-kakehashi-and-dave-smith https://www.grammy.com/news/technical-grammy-award-ikutaro-k... Dave was a brilliant designer, both analogue and digital, but not so great a businessperson; his company, Sequential, who made some of the most beloved electronic instruments - not least the Prophet series - went bankrupt and Yamaha bought the name. Dave went to work for Yamaha and Korg, and then Seer Systems, where he designed the first ever “soft synth” (professional-standard PC synthesiser plugin), Reality. He had all of the acclaim, and I’m sure he did OK, but he did not have the financial success the quality of his work deserved. Nevertheless, he then founded Dave Smith Instruments, maybe the start of the analogue synth revival (which is going gangbusters now; Eurorack is the coolest hardware hacking scene on the planet). DSi did pretty well, which was great, but here’s what really reveals how beloved Dave was; his old friend Ikutaro had a word with his friend, the president of Yamaha, and more or less asked; “we all love Dave. You’re not using the Sequential name. How about it?” and Yamaha went… “you, know, yeah” and gave him the Sequential name - which still had significant brand equity - for free. Seriously: https://www.sequential.com/2015/01/sequential-back/ https://www.sequential.com/2015/01/sequential-back/ > Instrumental in restoring the Sequential name was Roland’s Founder, Ikutaro Kakehashi, a longtime colleague and friend of Smith’s. “I feel that it’s important to get rid of unnecessary conflict among electronic musical instrument companies,” said Kakehashi. “That is exactly the spirit of MIDI. For this reason, I personally recommended that the President of Yamaha, Mr. Nakata, return the rights to the Sequential name to Dave Smith. And I’m glad to see such a wonderful result—a new product with the Sequential name.” And in 2021, he sold now-Sequential again under much happier circumstances; $24m to the well-regarded British gear manufacturer Focusrite. The music gear industry has more than its share of villains - google Uli Behringer sometime - but Dave and Ikutaro were real ones, and the best parts of the industry (including the big Japanese manufacturers, Korg, Roland/Boss, and Yamaha) move in their spirit. And a large part of that is because of the existence of MIDI.
mjr00 4y ago
> It is also the domain is limited. I mean a piano only has 88 keys and a few pedals and there are maybe 8 octaves or so in Common Practice. Yeah but MIDI works for so much more than a piano. People use MIDI to program drum VSTs, guitar VSTs, entire orchestras, guzheng VSTs... basically anything musical. That being said, it's serviceable but not great for a lot of these things, because originally it was meant just for keyboard-controlled synthesizers. The biggest flaw (IMO) is lack of standardization for individual instruments with more varied playing styles and articulations than the piano. As a basic example, for guitar VSTs, if you want to switch between sustain notes and palm mutes, you generally have to play an out-of-range note (a "keyswitch") to alter the articulation. However this keyswitch is different for Ample Sound, Shreddage, Native Instruments guitar libraries, etc. Similarly if you want to slide between notes, some VSTs just let you overlap the note while others make you use a slide keyswitch. Every VST has its own way of MIDI programming that isn't transferrable. It's like switching between programming languages, except you're building a single program where it uses multiple languages at once in the same file and you have to remember if the current language syntax you're writing uses `elif`, `else if` or is LISP. (I have reference manuals for most VSTs I own bookmarked for this reason.) The fact that MIDI continues to be used today is, more than anything, the result of "perfect is the enemy of done" IMO. You could redesign something better than MIDI from the ground up, but since everything already supports MIDI there's little motivation when it already works well enough.
- brudgers 4y ago
  Sorry for not being clear, I used the number of piano keys as an example of how limited the domain is. MIDI wasn’t designed to express ranges with 100’s or 1000’s of values. Twelve tone equal temperament is good enough and technology is not going to extend human hearing another four octaves. What MIDI really got right is flexibility with regard to timbre. The standard was so open that General MIDI only came along later to establish some consistency for timbres.
  - klodolph 4y ago
    MIDI doesn’t force you to use 12TET anyway. You can use MTS. Support seems widespread, at least among the equipment and software I use, some of it dating back to the 1980s.
ls15 4y ago
Controllers should have a higher resolution. With only 128 values, filter sweeps have ugly gaps.
- bzzzt 4y ago
  Your 'ugly gap' is another man's 'characterful sound'.
  - ls15 4y ago
    True, of course. :)
- rewgs 4y ago
  This is not an issue. Source: I am a professional composer.
  - klodolph 4y ago
    Maybe you are not affected by it. I occasionally find it frustrating, in various scenarios… very slow sweeps by hand, or things like that. I only have problems with the limitation in certain scenarios with electronic sounds. It’s never a problem with sample libraries. MIDI has 14-value CCs anyway, it’s just that few controllers generate the messages. I don’t k ow how many synths respond to them.
  - ls15 4y ago
    Composers are not really affected by this. Sound engineers are. It is impossible to create smooth filter sweeps with regular CCs without further smoothing on the receiving end, because the human ear can differentiate between many more than 128 frequencies.
    - rewgs 4y ago
      Should have been more clear. Professional film/TV/game composer. By definition we are producers and audio engineers as well. And yes it truly isn’t a problem, as plugin developers have long since interpolated the 128 steps. If it were a problem, you’d be hearing choppy sweeps in every song and film score out there.

a9h74j 4y ago

If they had used a more common baud rate, I wonder if there would be so many poorly done "extensions" that it would not be in active use.

SeanLuke 4y ago
The baud rate chosen was extremely well thought out compared to the crazytalk that are standard serial port baud rates. Specifically, the rate was 31250 bps. Why? Because the huge majority of synthesizer processors at the time had clocks that ran at 1 MHz or integer multiples thereof. Indeed that is still the case forty years later. Ask yourself what 31250 * 32 is.
- spookie 4y ago
  This is incredible
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  1,000,000

malthaus 4y ago

It is on one hand but it's also a PITA that holds back innovation and troubles its users with work-arounds. It's time for a proper new standard using modern capabilities both for audio and control signal transport but it's a very heterogeneous market with tons of legacy, therefore almost impossible to achieve.