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

1 Feb 2004

On Feb 1, 2004, at 4:01 AM, linux-audio-dev-request(a)music.columbia.edu 
wrote:
...
  Ryan Underwood &lt;nemesis-lists(a)icequake.net&gt;
wrote:

 Module files are usually a reasonable compromise between quality and
 size for soundtracks.  The disadvantage of tracker files compared to
 MIDI is that they are larger since they contain the samples.  The
 advantage is that you know they will sound identical no matter where
 they are played and whether or not the end user has MIDI hardware or 
 not. 
MPEG 4 Structured Audio (SA) was designed to solve this problem, in 
that its
normative (sounds the same everywhere), but if you have algorithmic
synthesis techniques you like, there's no need for samples, and so the
files can be very small. SA been through a few Corrigenda (i.e.
bug-fixes to the standard), so its a pretty stable standard now. See:

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~lazzaro/sa/index.html

Note: I'm not an MPEG member, the paragraph below is my own
personal opinion, and doesn't reflect MPEG's view on the topic:

    I'm starting to think that what could help SA find its way into
    applications is a strict sub-setting of the language -- pick a simple
    to implement subset of keywords and opcodes that solve a lot
    of useful problems, and code up interpreters and compilers that
    accept only the subset.  The content would be upward-compatible
    with full SA decoders (like sfront), but if the subset was well 
chosen,
    the complexity of implementing SA would shrink to the point where
    a motivated undergrad could do it as a senior project.  The hope
    would be that once there was momentum, the people-power to
    do full implementations would appear, or the will to standardize
    the subset in MPEG would appear.

---
John Lazzaro
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~lazzaro
lazzaro [at] cs [dot] berkeley [dot] edu
---