The future of MIDI

[Tj Shredder]

Nobody has mentioned Open Sound Control yet

I did btw., and use it often. The main drawback is, that the setup of any connection isn't plug and play, its blocking ports at least on a mac (two applications can't communicate to the same port) which makes it tedious to have it as universal protocoll. Though it would be ideal, to controll synths and mixers, there is no standard name space etc...
With less amount of work you can map those unspecific Midi messages to whatever you need...
Simply, its too complicated but a good solution for technocrats... (I play that role sometimes just for fun...; - )

[phreaque]

I briefed about OSC. It is considered a part of wifi - instruction protocol, getting improved but slowly.

[zzz00m]

MIDI is alive and well.

MIDI Manufacturers Association
https://www.midi.org/

MIDI is an industry standard music technology protocol that connects products from many different companies including digital musical instruments, computers, tablets, and smartphones. MIDI is used every day around the world by musicians, DJs, producers, educators, artists, and hobbyists to create, perform, learn, and share music and artistic works. Nearly every hit album, film score, TV show, and theatrical production uses MIDI to connect and create.

MIDI-CI PRESS RELEASE

https://www.midi.org/articles/midi-manu ... cification

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MIDI Manufacturers Association (MMA) Adopts MIDI Capability Inquiry (MIDI-CI) Specification.

New Feature of MIDI Technology Paves the Way for Significant Future Expansion

Los Angeles, CA, January 28, 2018 - Today marks the MIDI Manufacturers Association's (MMA) ratification of an important new extension to MIDI, the MIDI Capability Inquiry (MIDI-CI) Specification. MIDI Capability Inquiry messages enable devices to automatically inquire and set features that improve compatibility and simplify configuration. The messages also enable future enhancements such as negotiating to use a next generation protocol, and provide a "fall back" mechanism, so if a device does not support a new feature it continues to work as defined by MIDI 1.0.

MIDI-CI enables 3 main areas of new functionality: Profile Configuration, Property Exchange, and Protocol Negotiation. Documents defining specific profiles, specific properties and values, and the new protocol are expected from MMA during 2018.

MIDI Manufacturers Association (MMA) Adopts New MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE) Enhancement to the MIDI Specification

https://www.midi.org/articles/midi-poly ... ession-mpe

Los Angeles, CA, January 28, 2018− Today marks the MIDI Manufacturers Association's (MMA) ratification of a new extension to MIDI, MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression). MPE enables electronic instruments such as synthesizers to provide a level of expressiveness typically possible only with acoustic instruments.

Prior to MPE, expressive gestures on synthesizers—such as pitch bending or adding vibrato—affected all notes being played. With MPE, every note a musician plays can be articulated individually for much greater expressiveness.

In MPE, each note is assigned its own MIDI Channel, so that Channel-wide expression messages can be applied to each note individually. Music making products (such as the ROLI Seaboard, Moog's Animoog, and Apple's Logic) take advantage of this so that musicians can apply multiple dimensions of finger movement control: left and right, forward and back, downward pressure, and more.

[phreaque]

That's one of my concerns. Back in the day I was so excited about midi v.2 and I got feeling that everything will be vastly changed. Several years passed, and nothing happened!

[Jace-BeOS]

MIDI is alive and USEABLE. I wouldn't call it "well". It has not progressed much at all. The MPE standard is just a formalization of a way to use existing MIDI differently for expressive controllers, so even that big news is minor.

[pettinhouse]

Probanly in future it will be enhanced but I don't think it will die.
It is impossible to get rid off MIDI, at least now and in the next 20 years i guess ( in the far future too in my opinion ). It is soooooo standardized that I can't imagine Studio one seems that doesn't need it around anymore.

Andrea

[xphen0m]

MIDI will never die.

[zzz00m]

MIDI is alive and USEABLE.

All that really matters!

[zzz00m]

It is soooooo standardized that I can't imagine Studio one seems that doesn't need it around anymore.

Studio One is still relatively young, compared to the old kids in the neighborhood, and they have been focused on lean, mean, audio production. So far, so good!

I took the Sonar shutdown crossgrade deal last year to Studio One Pro, and so far I have not run into any MIDI limitations. The MIDI editor works great, and the VST support and the multi-instrument plugin is excellent! Nice control surface support, and everything seems light, stable and reliable.

Many former Sonar users were split between Cubase and Studio One based on their requirements for MIDI support. Cubase is the big winner in that regard, with their legacy of MIDI support, so they came the closest to Cakewalk for that feature set on the Windows platform.

But then I have retired most of my hardware after many years, so MIDI hardware instrument support is not something I am looking for in a DAW at this point. But I think that PreSonus may be overlooking the group that needs this though. They should probably add that if they intend to be a leading, all around DAW.

I have also heard a bit of griping about Studio One not having a MIDI event editor. But that is something only a select few DAWs have. Probably something else that PreSonus should consider as the DAW matures.

[aMUSEd]

Still too few hosts and instruments that support OSC learn

[Tj Shredder]

Still too few hosts and instruments that support OSC learn

With OSC this should be the other way round, the controller needs to know what the receiver wants to hear. Usually OSC capable applications have their set of OSC paths which do make sense. More important would be a standardized set of paths. A mixer in a DAW could define the first fader to be "/Bitwig/mixer/fader/1/" for example, if all DAWs would have the same and only the application name is different, you would not need any learn, the controller would know it...

[zzz00m]

Found an interesting article on Open Sound Control (OSC).

An Introduction To OSC

https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/introduction-osc

The history of OSC begins with the history of MIDI ...

List of applications with OSC suppport:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Sound_Control

[Rommelaar]

Look up "Lindy effect", midi will be with us for quite some time, becoming better for each iteration.

[Kinh]

Wha-da-ell you people on about?

[zzz00m]

All DAWs I know go beyond Midi to a certain extend, but Midi is still valuable and alive. MPE was just recently added.
There are two ways to look at it. One is information retrieval, the other communication. Within a DAW you don't need to follow a standard, you can do the information retrieval as you like. The other is communication to hardware, other software or plug-ins. There you have to follow a standard. There are two standards you could implement: Midi and OSC. Though OSC isn't standardized in terms of common messages, its only the technical protocoll which is standardized, the setup of connections is a pain - too many points of failure...
Midi remains a +30 years standard which is still able to cover most use cases. As long as OSC isn't simplified and standardized we will use Midi pragmatically for another 30+ years...
I envision a track standard for DAWs, which would allow to carry audio, Midi, automation data and video in a shareable way, record in Ardour, pass the session to Bitwig and back...

+1 Best answer so far ^^^