SMF (Standard MIDI Files) are structured data files, derived from IFF (Interchange Format Files), close but not fully compliant with the RIFF format. There is also a RMID format developed by Microsoft which is a true RIFF format and only prepends a 12 bytes header to the classic MIDs. I agree with you on the topic of SMF import/export code in most open source programs. My problem is that they usually mix policy and mechanism, making hard to reuse only the mechanism (read and write MIDI files), because each program has its own internal format (policy) to represent the music. I like Tim Thomson's midifile library because it only provides a clean mechanism that you can reuse together with your own policy. It's plain C code and free: http://thompsonresidence.com/tjt/software.html#midifile Based on that code I wrote a SMF component for Kylix/Free Pascal, included in this package: http://perso.wanadoo.es/plcl/alsapas/midiobjects-0.2.tar.gz Regards, Pedro