MID vs MOD - WAS : Re: [linux-audio-dev] ".mid" files playing in Linux games

[Dave Phillips]

Dominic Genest wrote:

>>>It's a bit
>>>like the difference between LaTeX and Word. Midi files describe the
>>>intention of the composer, not the extension. The one who listens to the
>>>music will choose to pay or not for a quality playback. And he might even
>>>be able to make it sound better than the composer has ever heard it.
>>>      
>>>
>>I'm not sure MIDI or MOD makes any difference to the composer's
>>intention, [...]
>>    
>>
>
>I'm not sure we're using the same the meaning of the word "intention".
>Extension :  The state of a work that is more directly interpretable by human 
>senses.
>Intension : A state in which the word is rather closer to the idea behind, and 
>which still needs to be processed before one can have the sensible 
>experience.
>
>Example #1 :
>"The musical scores of J.S. Bach's well tempered clavier" are more 
>INTENTION-oriented. One of many possible extensions of this could be "Glen 
>Gould's CD record of J.S Bach's well tempered clavier".
>
>Example #2 :
>Intention : The text : "An apple" (.TXT file) .
>Extension : The drawing of an apple in GIF format.
>
I think perhaps a better terminology might be "ideation" and 
"realization". But again, ideation has nothing to do with a file format.

>Thus, I would not say that MOD is the right choice if you need to have quality 
>playback. I would rather say that MOD is the right choice if you need to be 
>in total control of how it will sound everywhere.
>
Agreed. Quality of playback is a dependent issue. A MOD might sound 
every bit as good as a MIDI file rendered by my synths, and vice-versa, 
but in both instances they are dependent on where the data is headed, 
i.e., the means utilized to realize the data into sound. The MOD depends 
upon the quality of the sounds used within the MOD file, a MIDI file 
depends upon the quality of the sounds utilized outside of the MIDI file 
(which of course has no sounds within itself).

Best,

dp