[LAU] An atrocity committed with PD (MIDI Spec)

[david]

Steve McConville wrote:
>> I am curious - has there been any move to modernize the MIDI
>> connectivity standards to include USB or Ethernet?
> 
> There has been - there is a midi over usb standard.
> 
> Midi is a poor starting point for modernisation not just beacause of
> the pragmatic compromises mentioned above but also because it is
> wholly unlayered (the spec covers everything from the physical up to
> the presentational layer),

That could be separated fairly easily, I'd think.

> and has it's expansion room squeezed into
> the SysEx ghetto.

That's a big problem.

> Midi over ethernet would be even less pleasant, and
> less logical, than doing RS-232 over ethernet.

Only reason I mentioned Ethernet is that there are analog musical 
instruments around already that can transmit their audio via Ethernet 
(instead of analog audio cables).

> OSC has fixed these problems and should have been built into
> everything since the mid-90s but so many people have invested time in
> learning MIDI that they wouldn't countenance working with anything
> else. It looks like RESTful web services may eventually replace both,
> however.

I suspect that MIDI won't be budged. It is a standard in the music 
world, and I doubt that many musicians care about it's limitations. They 
may not even be aware of them. MIDI certainly keeps time in a lot finer 
increments than I'm able to play - that's why sequencer programs have 
quantization functions!

-- 
David
gnome at hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community