The future of MIDI

[Grizzellda]

Hey out there...

I felt like posting, and I have been thinking about this topic for awhile...

In the manual for Studio One, Presonus brags about going beyond MIDI! Well, like it is old fashioned, like they really don't need it around anymore...

Have you guys seen this? So what is the next step here?

[Aloysius]

...

Have you guys seen this? So what is the next step here?

No.

Sell Studio One.

[Tj Shredder]

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...

[Grizzellda]

No.

Sell Studio One.

Smart ass reply!!!

And I kinda like it...

[Aloysius]

[Grizzellda]

Sure MIDI is an old protocol, but very useful.

Say, hasn't there been talk of a MIDI 2.0 standard? What is up with that?

[lfm]

Studio One overcomplicated midi - in my view.
Running a trial with S1 v1.6 from a magazine to the v2.62 that I own as well.

All other daws had it more simply, like just attache midi port and done with it.
You have to go through setting up a device in S1 - and I felt at first attempt this was complicated approach.

Then you have to setup each port what is allowed and not - rather than just as default allow everything.

If something gets complicated it's often because developers don't understand it properly - and thereby try to look at in a condescending way.

So moving towards external gear - I abandoned S1 long ago.
They really took a wrong turn with v3.x in the way that Producer version had no VST support as standard, you had to buy addon for that - this is beyond anything I saw, to reject VST?????
So you had to go Professional to get VST as standard.

Midi is not going anywhere - but it might be 16-bit to extend it in future, don't know. But backwards compatible. And many things are double bytes but not all daws recognize RPN/NRPN automatically making it an entity.

The major base problem with midi is how clock is 24 ticks each quarternote, making it a bit strange going between beat signatures. That you in a daw rather use 12/8 than 4/4 triplets and similar.

If ticks were entirely time based it would simplify many things working in daws, as I see it. You can play drums freely improvising and just set any signature afterwords. Now you have to stretch recorded midi in various ways to fit a signature afterwords.

But Cubase 9.5 and Digital Performer has simplified that downside by letting you create your own metronome patterns. Really good move.

First time I encountered midi I was in London 1984 browsing all the music stores and was baffled over the built in sequencers in synths. I just had to get one of those - and still feel that way.

Midi is too awesome to be abandoned - S1 is not.

[jancivil]

The major base problem with midi is how clock is 24 ticks each quarternote, making it a bit strange going between beat signatures. That you in a daw rather use 12/8 than 4/4 triplets and similar.

If ticks were entirely time based it would simplify many things working in daws, as I see it. You can play drums freely improvising and just set any signature afterwords. Now you have to stretch recorded midi in various ways to fit a signature afterwords.

What?

I wonder how it is that I'm able to work absolutely freely with time.
Cubase. Which introduced Time Warp (just drag a barline or beat to wherever in your musical input or import or whatever makes sense to you) back in 2004 I think it was. So whatever I do 'live' I fit bars, and beats within the bars (key editor work) to it. I simply don't have a worry in the world here.

You're apparently applying 'MIDI clock' where it doesn't need apply. I have never used MIDI clock, for instance.
I set Cubase for 1000 PPQN.

[justin3am]

The MMA has discussed the specs for HD MIDI but I don't think they have made anything public yet. The MMA has a group discussion at Winter NAMM every year, where these topics are made public (or not).
I think it's mainly up to manufacturers and developers (members of MMA) to agree on how it should be implemented. But that is going to be a tough slog at the beginning. No one will want to implement anything until Roland and Yamaha show their cards on the subject. But progress is being made, MPE and MIDI-CI specs have been officially adopted and Yamaha even did some kind of MIDI-CI demonstration in January.

From my understanding, the next generation of MIDI will be backwards compatible. But who know how long it will be before a device comes out supporting HD MIDI.

When it comes to DAWs, I'm not sure if they are actually using MIDI, internally. Sure they have to receive MIDI from devices and they have to send MIDI to instruments and other compatible plug-ins/devices. But within the DAW itself, it probably makes more sense to handle the data in a different way. Particularly when sample accurate events are required. Automation, for example, the way it's handled in most DAWs has nothing to do with MIDI.

[Jace-BeOS]

HD-MIDI has been coming soon for decades, hasn't it? The manufacturers just won't all get on board.

[chk071]

All DAWs I know go beyond Midi to a certain extend, but Midi is still valuable and alive.

Yep. Also, the industry is very, very slow to adapt, and MIDI is so widespread that there's no end in sight.

[phreaque]

Midi is left behind indeed, although some serious concept designs introduced in the past like the extension protocol to general midi such as GS Midi, XG, new audio/midi protocols like mLan, RTP Midi and maybe one most interesting one is Wifi/Bluetooth Midi.

DAWs are using other approaches, that's fine, but non of them are 100% providing best integrated environment between s/w & h/w.

[lfm]

The major base problem with midi is how clock is 24 ticks each quarternote, making it a bit strange going between beat signatures. That you in a daw rather use 12/8 than 4/4 triplets and similar.

If ticks were entirely time based it would simplify many things working in daws, as I see it. You can play drums freely improvising and just set any signature afterwords. Now you have to stretch recorded midi in various ways to fit a signature afterwords.

What?

I wonder how it is that I'm able to work absolutely freely with time.
Cubase. Which introduced Time Warp (just drag a barline or beat to wherever in your musical input or import or whatever makes sense to you) back in 2004 I think it was. So whatever I do 'live' I fit bars, and beats within the bars (key editor work) to it. I simply don't have a worry in the world here.

You're apparently applying 'MIDI clock' where it doesn't need apply. I have never used MIDI clock, for instance.
I set Cubase for 1000 PPQN.

There is internal clock in daw that drives sequencer - always - and as soon as signature change you also get a different clock speed since constantly 24 ticks(or magnitude there of) each quarternote. If you have a plugin driven by tempo you will notice this and don't think plugin gets anything more than 24 each quarternote either way(but VST specs maybe allow to tell plugin, don't know).

So tempo and number of quarternotes each bar decide.

But common you do magnitudes of 24 ticks - so if any external gear you can get proper 24 midi clocks each quarternote.

If you run 1000 - you will problem with external gear, like an arpeggiator, if any - since not evenly divided by 24. So 960 or 480 are more common.

If 4/4 100 bpm and to get same tempo in 12/8 as an outside daw metronome you need to set daw tempo to 150. Each quaternote always get 24 ticks to external gear.

If I set 100 bpm metronome om edrum engine, and set blip at triplets it will match daw set at 12/8 and 150 bpm.

You can record freely of course, but once you try to apply the actual time signature - you change the clock. That was my reasoning.

Let's say you had strictly timebased midi clock - like sample rate - you would not recalculations like that and many strange stretch ratios and stuff.

I tried out of interest to have a proper grid in daw line up with a freely recorded intro - and it took hours to figure out how to do in Cubase. Both tempo and signature was different from when song actually began. But wanted to learn Midi Logical Editor so was a good lesson.

Anyway, one disadvantage of how midi timing is constructed. But it is what it is and always was for sequencing.

[Jace-BeOS]

Midi is left behind indeed, although some serious concept designs introduced in the past like the extension protocol to general midi such as GS Midi, XG, new audio/midi protocols like mLan...

Boy was mLan a piece of shit in execution. I bought into it and saw immediately how obviously stupidly engineered it was. It totally monopolized the FireWire bus, making it utterly useless for any other hardware. How in the hell did Yamaha allow it to ship like that?? It's utterly and absolutely the stupidest thing I've seen yet in "new standards". Talk about self-inflicted injuries... Some things deserve their failure.

[putoff]

Nobody has mentioned Open Sound Control yet. It could be the successor to MIDI, however it is actually a system for any kind of sound and multimedia communication, beyond music or instruments.

http://opensoundcontrol.org/introduction-osc