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MIDI, a standard for digital music since 1981, has been updated to MIDI 2.0. New MIDI 2.0 is not dependent on any particular hardware implementation such as USB or Ethernet. Some of the main goals of the new protocol are to provide higher resolution, more channels, and improved performance and expressiveness. Another change is a move from a byte stream to data packets.
MIDI 2.0 is designed to "deliver an unprecedented level of nuanced musical and artistic expressiveness," and leans on three key design decisions to do so. Firstly its new 32-bit resolution makes for smoother, continuous, analogue feel - if you want that. Controllers will be easy to use and there will be more of them. Lastly major timing advances are present in the standard.
Also at the MIDI Association's press release, Details about MIDI 2.0™, MIDI-CI, Profiles and Property Exchange.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday January 31 2020, @10:32PM (2 children)
This will probably be good for electronic performers performing in large venues. The latency of the original MIDI was a problem in many such cases and caused "flamming" with multiple connected and synchronized instruments. Flamming is a common drum technique in which the drummer hits the same drum with both sticks, but spaces out the timing of the hits to make a single, albeit thicker-sounding, hit. When your keyboard and drum machine are flamming with each other in a large venue, the effect is usually undesirable. One of the workarounds to the live situation was to use faster protocols/transmission lines like ethernet found on the mid/high-end gear.
The article desrcibes MIDI 2 as being bidirectional, but I'm anxious to see what advantage that will have over dedicated input/output or MIDI over USB which are both functionally bidirectional. The only reason why I would upgrade my audio gear being a home recorder casual is to knock down that latency. Maybe going back to Cubase 5 and dual-booting Win98SE over the bloated crap out now would solve that problem.
(Score: 2, Informative) by fustakrakich on Friday January 31 2020, @10:43PM
Timing? I want my parallel port back!
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 01 2020, @12:16AM
MIDI is, at best, half-duplex. To have two-way communication, you actually have to have two different MIDI devices in the same physical device and devices may not be able to be 100% sure they are the same physical device. In addition, only one message can be on the wire at a time. Together, you end up with a half-duplex type situation. This limitation exists regardless of your hardware transport or the extensions in use. By explicitly allowing bidirectional communication, you don't have to do the two device hack and go full-duplex. They also lift the restriction on one recipient per message and byte stream situation. Coupled with the jitter resolution they added, timing problems could be a thing of the past with proper latency measurements. And some of those latency measurements can be more easily enabled thanks to the bidirectional nature of MIDI 2.0.