HD Midi

Anything about hardware musical instruments.
RELATED
PRODUCTS

Post

Nantonos wrote:
justin3am wrote:The problem isn't MIDI.
I will disagree with that...(snip)
I was hoping someone would. This is a subject that I only know enough about to get my job done. I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong. :)

Post

AdmiralQuality wrote:A few other requests to anybody who'd like to send me some 14-bit MIDI controller recorded in .mid files.

- Let me know what controller hardware it is.

- Let me know what host you recorded it in.

- And please do complete knob movement, from 0% to 100% and back, several times. Both fast and slow. The number of knobs you do doesn't matter much, but mixing up a few different ones and particularly moving two at a time would be very helpful.

Thanks! Email to aq AT admiralquality.com
I will try to do some thing here for you with my Slim phatty, but no promises really I only used it as a synth, never as a MIDI controller before.

Post

S0lo wrote:
Sorry if I sounded like blaming MIDI, it's surly a great protocol. It's just too old, well it's literally more than 20 years old.
Actually, it turns 30 in January- MIDI was first demonstrated at the 1983 NAMM show.
Isn't it time for an upgrade? I mean why should the standard be 7bit and special features be 14bit. Why not let the standard go 14bit and special features go for 32bit?
http://www.midi.org/aboutus/projects.php

Or, instead of posting on a forum about what changes you'd like to see, join in on actually making the recommendations:

http://www.iasig.org/

ew
A spectral heretic...

Post

ew wrote:
S0lo wrote:
Sorry if I sounded like blaming MIDI, it's surly a great protocol. It's just too old, well it's literally more than 20 years old.
Actually, it turns 30 in January- MIDI was first demonstrated at the 1983 NAMM show.
It seems the Prophet 600 was first on the scene in late 1982 with MIDI, though before the spec was finalized. I've also been seeing various articles claiming that Dave Smith invented MIDI. (I could have sworn there was a consortium of many manufacturers, and a guy named J.L.Cooper who used to write a tech article for Keyboard Mag and who's company produced digital connectivity solutions at the time.)

Even my Roland JX-3P (early 1983) had a very minimal implementation of MIDI. I didn't know anybody with a Prophet 600, but when my friend got a Yamaha DX-7 later that year, I ran over to his place with my JX-3P for our first ever experience in polysynths from competing manufacturers actually communicating with each other. Believe it or not that was a huge deal back then.

Post

Why not use the 32bit Vst parameters, aka the current standard? Why do you need 14bit midi? Your puny little midi controller isn't going to support it anyway so why not just go for the modern solution?
www.mkdr.net

MophoEd - the BEST DSI Mopho Editor VSTi

Post

AdmiralQuality wrote: It seems the Prophet 600 was first on the scene in late 1982 with MIDI, though before the spec was finalized. I've also been seeing various articles claiming that Dave Smith invented MIDI. (I could have sworn there was a consortium of many manufacturers, and a guy named J.L.Cooper who used to write a tech article for Keyboard Mag and who's company produced digital connectivity solutions at the time.)
Yeah, the Prophet 600 was the first. However, I doubt that any actually shipped before 1983.
And yes, the Dave Smith claim is overinflated. He might have come up with the original idea, but Roland was the real force behind getting MIDI accepted as a standard. And yes, J. L. Cooper was definitely involved from the beginning; for example, he made the first MIDI merger/patchbay that I'm aware of, as well as the first dedicated controller box.
Even my Roland JX-3P (early 1983) had a very minimal implementation of MIDI. I didn't know anybody with a Prophet 600, but when my friend got a Yamaha DX-7 later that year, I ran over to his place with my JX-3P for our first ever experience in polysynths from competing manufacturers actually communicating with each other. Believe it or not that was a huge deal back then.
I remember those days really well. I remember the first time I hooked up my brand new Juno 106 with my CZ-101 and wondering how it could get any better than that... :lol:

ew
A spectral heretic...

Post

For the first few months, until my friend got the DX-7, all I could do with MIDI on the JX-3P was run the OUT into the IN for a free voice doubling feature! :D

What ever happened to J. L. Cooper, by the way? It was his articles in Keyboard that originally taught me the MIDI spec. (We didn't have any internet to look it up on.)

Post

AdmiralQuality wrote:For the first few months, until my friend got the DX-7, all I could do with MIDI on the JX-3P was run the OUT into the IN for a free voice doubling feature! :D
With the occasional stuck note- an added bonus :)
What ever happened to J. L. Cooper, by the way? It was his articles in Keyboard that originally taught me the MIDI spec. (We didn't have any internet to look it up on.)
He's mostly focused on multimedia controllers for the commercial A/V industry these days:

http://www.jlcooper.com/_php/index.php

ew
A spectral heretic...

Post

ew wrote:Actually, it turns 30 in January- MIDI was first demonstrated at the 1983 NAMM show.
Thanks for correcting me.
ew wrote:http://www.midi.org/aboutus/projects.php

Or, instead of posting on a forum about what changes you'd like to see, join in on actually making the recommendations:

http://www.iasig.org/
From their website, seams like a bit of a commitment and there is payment. I'm not sure I'm into that level yet, Music is not what I do for a living, You might not believe that If you see my room, but it's true :)

Post

ew wrote:
AdmiralQuality wrote:For the first few months, until my friend got the DX-7, all I could do with MIDI on the JX-3P was run the OUT into the IN for a free voice doubling feature! :D
With the occasional stuck note- an added bonus :)
I don't think that ever happened, actually. There's much debate these days about what to do with duplicate note numbers, but the JX-3P just assigned voices to them and took them away as the note-ons and note-offs came in, regardless of note number.

Due to the DCOs you'd get a weird phasing sound that wasn't always the same, due to the slight timing differences in starting the sounds. (Hmmm, I wonder if the JX-3P's oscillators reset phase at note-on? Maybe.)

A bit like the Unison feature in the Juno-106, which would produce a random phase/flange effect every time you played a note, due to the subtle timing differences in starting each voice.
What ever happened to J. L. Cooper, by the way? It was his articles in Keyboard that originally taught me the MIDI spec. (We didn't have any internet to look it up on.)
He's mostly focused on multimedia controllers for the commercial A/V industry these days:

http://www.jlcooper.com/_php/index.php

ew
Oh! I had no idea they were still around. Good to know, thanks!

Post

mkdr wrote:Why not use the 32bit Vst parameters, aka the current standard? Why do you need 14bit midi?
Interesting idea.

What sort of transport would you use to communicate directly with a running VST? Would you need some way for a controller to discover which ones were running and to select between them?

Post

Nantonos wrote:
mkdr wrote:Why not use the 32bit Vst parameters, aka the current standard? Why do you need 14bit midi?
Interesting idea.

What sort of transport would you use to communicate directly with a running VST? Would you need some way for a controller to discover which ones were running and to select between them?
Unfortunately there's no mechanism for VST automation (the correct name for the communication standard you're referencing) to be communicated from any device, to your computer, and on to your host. (There are various "control surface" interfaces but they're all completely proprietary, with no common standard.) You can't even typically send automation events from one plug-in to another. (Some hosts may let you copy automation envelopes, after the fact, from one instrument or effect's track to another, but again this is a far cry from what MIDI offers us).

So sorry, but VST automation is not a substitute for MIDI. I can't buy a keyboard that sends VST automation. And in VST 3.x land, I can't buy a keyboard that sends "Note Events", even though it is Yamaha/Steinberg who are forcing that nonsense on us! :x (Sorry, a particularly large pet peeve.)
Last edited by AdmiralQuality on Mon Dec 10, 2012 11:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Post

Double post, deleted.

Post

For anyone who is interested, it appears that Ableton Live and U-he's Diva will respond correctly to 14bit absolute values. Diva also responds to inc/dec messages... one of the few instruments I know of that will, outside of Reaktor and such. Most DAWS will respond to inc/dec messages but it's unusual for an instrument to do that (probably because most plug-ins can't send parameter feedback directly to a controller via MIDI).

Post

justin3am wrote:For anyone who is interested, it appears that Ableton Live and U-he's Diva will respond correctly to 14bit absolute values. Diva also responds to inc/dec messages... one of the few instruments I know of that will, outside of Reaktor and such. Most DAWS will respond to inc/dec messages but it's unusual for an instrument to do that (probably because most plug-ins can't send parameter feedback directly to a controller via MIDI).
Well, also, what does inc/dec mean with 32 bit floating point resolution? How much is an increment?

Post Reply

Return to “Hardware (Instruments and Effects)”