Is MIDI outdated?

[Dave Bryce]

...and if so, why?

 

What improvements would you like to see?

 

dB

[hiraga]

Whatever, make it a SINGLE cable, and NOT those @£$@£$"#3"! DIN plugs!!

[Dave Bryce]

Originally posted by hiraga:

Whatever, make it a SINGLE cable, and NOT those @£$@£$"#3"! DIN plugs!!

 

 

You mean something like a USB connector, right? Not a single cable like the serial interfaces that are on the back of a lot of synths that carry both the in/out signal...that would suck if they replaced DIN jacks totally with those - suppose you wanted the in coming from one source and the out going to another?

 

Just out of curiosity, what bums you out about the DIN connectors?

 

dB

[steadyb]

I don't think it's outdated. But it would be great to improve the speed (if possible) and evenness of multi-port and multitimbral setups.

Something where if you've got several multitimbral units going at once (10 to 100 MIDI tracks or more) you're able to maintain the same smooth flow of data as you would with a single one on one setup.

steadyb

[hiraga]

Yarz, bi-directional, like USB, FireWire(?)..

 

DIN plugs? Too large variation between different manufactures, no lock (you can get 'em with lock, but I've never ever seen any MIDI piece with it), annoying to solder (compared to XLR), mostly plastic parts, few of them can accept 8mm cable. It's just a cheap part that have failed me too many times compared to other plugs.

 

My own MIDI patchbay is all 5-pole XLR connectors for this reason..

[hiraga]

I don't think MIDI sucks or is outdated though.. it's one of the FEW standards that actually work great in this industry. Compability between various manufactures/pieces of gear, has always been very high, imo.

 

Works much better than say, sync/clock sources, S/P-DIF, T-DIF and other digiblah..

 

I just hate those ancient DIN plugs.. grrr.. Use XLR instead, and I'm happy!

[marino]

More than outdated, I'd say MIDI is inadequate. It was from the first day: Everybody knew it was too *slow* for complex music applications (many channels, lots of controller data, etc.). But at the time, a more efficient system would have been too expensive. Today is not so anymore, but MIDI has become such an universal standard that it is very risky to touch it.

Think about it: MIDI is a miracle. In no other industry there is such a widespread, accepted standard. It has saved lots of musician's money, and it has opened incredible doors.

What I would like to see in the next future is a kind of superset of MIDI, maybe based upon Firewire/mLAN. The best thing such a system could do is make MIDI parallel, that is, having many individual virtual (serial) MIDI cables running at the same time - on the same cable. New instruments could have both MIDI and mLAN ports, to ensure backward compatibility. Half of the instruments I use are not in production anymore, and I have no intention of retire them because they "only" have MIDI...But I think such a *fast* system would be overdue. I experience MIDI lateness all the time, especially with something like 15 channels of breath control at the same time... http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/smile.gif and I'm forced to go to audio; it would be nice to have the choice!

 

marino

[marino]

Almost forgot: Keep the DIN cables! I have more than 50 MIDI cables in my studio, can you imagine the expense of changing them all with XLRs?!? (Of course, with mLAN this problem would become irrelevant)

Yeah, they're difficult to solder, but cheap enough to keep spares around and just substitute the bad ones. As for locking, I've played thousand of concerts with MIDI rigs and never once I had a MIDI cable unplugged (touch wood). Just keep cables short and out of reach for the other guys!

The only time I had mounted a MIDI XLR cable is on my Casio AZ1 strap-on... But I rarely used it.

[dansouth]

Originally posted by marino:

More than outdated, I'd say MIDI is inadequate. It was from the first day

 

Inadequate for what? MIDI has its faults, and I'd love to see a faster implementation, but even in its current state MIDI has been sufficiently equipped to (a) produce a ton of great music, and (b) revolutionize music production. Sure, enough bandwidth to transmit multiple channels of continuous controllers would open up some creative options, but that sort of control is absolutely unnecessary for most projects. Onboard envelopes and other modulators can create similar effects if programmed properly.

 

Don't forget that MIDI is not ALWAYS the bottleneck. How many 64- and 128-voice synthesizers and samplers can sound all voices simultaneously without any inherent delay? Create a patch with three or four layers of snare drums and play ten keys simultaneously (by hand) if you don't believe me.

[synthetic]

I think a faster, better feeling MIDI update is way overdue. You could either keep the current plugs and make a faster protocol, or abandon those plugs for USB or Firewire. I like the latter solution - instead of buying a MIDI interface you buy an off-the-shelf hub and plug all of your gear into it. It's also bi-directional, fast enough to transfer samples and ample clock on, and fast enough to transfer the synth audio back to the computer for mixing.

 

Imagine, each synth could have just one Firewire cable running to it and no other cables (not even power!). You could mix everything in your computer sequencer with EQs and plug-ins, and bounce it down to a 24-bit audio file. Hopefully Firewire hardware will start getting cheaper now that drivers are built into Windows. -jl

[Gus Lozada]

Hello...

 

MIDI is still a great thing.

 

I do fully agree with the comment about MIDI being a Miracle. The single fact about that many manufacturers adopting a standard for almost 20 years now, is amazing.

 

Of course, I 'd like it to be a little bit faster (just by the specs, I don't like to think my mouse port is faster than my MIDI port), to carry more than 16 channels per cable... and of course, it should allow longer cables on stage without missing a bit of the signal. I actually designed an Optical MIDI cable by myself to solve this.

 

Remember: MIDI is a communications protocol between MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS.

 

Let USB and Firewire technologies (even SCSI or mLAN) to carry on everything for sending data to a computer from a MIDI/Audio/etc interface, or getting Audio data for your samplers from hard disks, then use those external devices to send MIDI (an updated one) to your synths to drive them remotely by a sequencer.

 

I guess the "all in one" communication solution the most of the people is asking for is not the best thing to do. Let MIDI be just better than it is now and create another protocol for communicating the rest of the signals.

 

How about that?

[d-kay]

well, I say YES! it's definately outdated. I'm a computergeek. I use software. Why put stuff outside the computer?. Cables are always slower than the main systembus of a computer. So use PCI-cards instead (I mean, most synth's are digital and just simulate analog synth (?) eh right?). And buy separate midi-controllers instead,(like knobs, keyboards) to use when recording.

 

other comments:

*no ability to slide separate notes on the same channel.

 

*resolution of control signals is only 1/128!, compared to the pitch which has roughly 1/16000!.

 

*It's ONLY realtime. No support for non-realtime controllers, like non-causal instruments or effects (which basically means that the instruments has to know what note is going to be played next when it plays the current note)