When will Midi be replaced?

[Ildon]

What about OSC?

They tried to replace MIDI with OSC, but it still failed. Too many people were used to MIDI, I guess.

I wouldn't say failed... it's seems like it's starting to gain a following. Reaktor 5 supports it as well as a touchscreen controller that had a thread here a while back.

Oh, cool.

[james0tucson]

Music folks are coming late to the table, just now realizing how difficult it can be to replace a communication protocol when another protocol is already in widespread use - no matter how much better your improved ideas are.

It might be easier to develop a cradle-to-grave proprietary system and get people to adopt it, than it will be to replace the open system that is MIDI (for instance) with something else.

It might be good to separate the "instrument control and networking" protocol and physical layer, from the "representation of musical notes".

However, I do find MIDI to be "mostly" sufficient for representing musical notation. It would be nice to have a standardized format for metadata like meter, dynamics and phrasing.

As for connectivity, it's too bad the instruments and controllers can't have some kind of wireless interface and a much more flexible communication protocol by now.
I think of this every time something gets stuck because it didn't receive a note-off message. We should be thinking in terms of microsecond latency and error correction, which weren't workable ideas in 1983.