
MIDI 2.0 Prototyping announced - kristiandupont
https://www.midi.org/articles-old/the-midi-manufacturers-association-mma-and-the-association-of-music-electronics-industry-amei-announce-midi-2-0tm-prototyping
======
nightcracker
Only semi related, but I still have to share.

The guys at Roland are genius. I have a somewhat old Roland RD-150 digital
keyboard. While searching online for the user manual, I found a 'firmware
update' on the official site.

I was curious. My keyboard is pretty old school, it doesn't have USB or
anything like that. I downloaded the firmware update and opened the zip file.

It contained a readme... and a .midi file. It sort of blew my mind. They were
sending firmware updates over MIDI! You had to press a certain key combination
on the keyboard and play back the MIDI file into the MIDI in, and the firmware
update would be complete.

True hackers.

~~~
TheRealPomax
That's not Roland being genius, though. That's kind of literally one of the
things sysex messages were added to the MIDI 1.0 spec. It's also why it's
taking so effing long for webmidi to become a standard, because allowing sysex
would mean your browser could in theory tell your midi device to brick itself.

~~~
jdietrich
In fairness, Roland founded the MMA and wrote most of the MIDI spec. The odds
are fairly good that Roland did invent SysEx.

~~~
jeffrom
I thought Dave Smith was primarily responsible? Just to put another notch in
Silicon Valley’s belt, I guess.

~~~
jdietrich
Dave Smith was the first to get on board with the project and made substantial
contributions to the design of MIDI, but it was Ikutaro Kakehashi who started
the whole endeavour. MIDI was heavily influenced by DCB, a proprietary
interface developed by Roland in 1981.

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kristiandupont
I think it's quite astonishing how solid the MIDI standard feels -- it's
embraced by the entire industry and even though it's nearly 40 years old, it
has worked very well for many types of instruments and software that couldn't
even have been imagined at the time.

~~~
jdietrich
We tolerate MIDI, but it's really pretty terrible. It's ubiquitous, but it's
_just barely good enough_ to have avoided being replaced.

The first major issue is simply the lack of bandwidth. The physical layer
operates at 3125 bytes per second, which just isn't enough for anything more
than a single instrument with relatively sparse control data. MIDI devices can
ostensibly be daisy-chained, but that's a really dumb thing to do because you
get horrible timing problems. Back when we still used a lot of hardware
synthesisers, it was the norm to have a large multi-port MIDI interface
connected to your computer, providing one interface per instrument. That still
doesn't solve your problems if you have a multitimbral module with lots of
polyphony - if you start sending control channel messages, the timing of your
note on/off messages will fall apart.

The second major issue is the lack of resolution. MIDI is an 8-bit standard,
which is generally acceptable for velocity but grossly inadequate for most
control channel messages. There are some pretty nasty workarounds being used
to avoid zipper noise when you adjust a control parameter; this is most
commonly an issue when sweeping a resonant filter. There are various hacks to
send 14-bit control change messages, but they're non-standard aside from
velocity and pitch bend.

MIDI is also built around the western scale, with no real accommodation for
other tuning systems. We're forced to use the crude bodge of sending a note on
message immediately followed by a pitch bend message; MIDI doesn't support
per-note pitch bend, so you can't have polyphony and microtimbrality on the
same channel. This is a fairly niche issue in the west, but it's a showstopper
in a lot of other musical traditions.

OpenSoundControl addressed these issues and more besides, but it lacks
widespread support because it was developed unilaterally rather than as an
industry-wide collaboration. The spec is very powerful, but it just isn't very
nice to work with. It's exciting to see that the MMA have a number of big
players involved with the development of MIDI 2.0. We've been talking about
fixing MIDI for a long time, but it seems like there's finally the traction to
get a new standard widely adopted.

~~~
rytis
> We tolerate MIDI, but it's really pretty terrible. It's ubiquitous, but it's
> just barely good enough to have avoided being replaced.

OK, what I'm going to say is not constructive, but, boy, how I hate this type
of comments. Where were you 40 years ago? Why did you not prevent it from
being terrible? What did you do to replace it with something better?

Yes, it may be "suboptimal" by the 2019 "standards", but back then, I'm pretty
sure, people put a lot of thought in to it and tried to make it as good as
possible. Just because it looks childish on the current hardware does not make
it "pretty terrible".

EDIT: It's almost like complaining that 555 is absolute rubbish comparing to
8266 that can do sooo much more, and why just did they not come up with
something better back then.

~~~
jdietrich
_> OK, what I'm going to say is not constructive, but, boy, how I hate this
type of comments. Where were you 40 years ago? Why did you not prevent it from
being terrible? What did you do to replace it with something better?_

I'm not saying that they should have come up with something better. MIDI was
an incredible breakthrough in 1983, but it was designed in 1983. That's a
very, very long time in technology. We've known about and dealt with the
shortcomings of MIDI for decades, but it's difficult to replace a deeply-
entrenched standard. MIDI has been pushed as far as possible without breaking
backwards-compatibility, but it is now long overdue for the industry to move
in unison and create something fit for the 21st century.

Imagine if you dealt with lots of devices on a daily basis that had a 33kbaud
serial interface. Would that kind of annoy you? Would you say "this archaic
serial format is just great!". No, you'd be kind of cheesed off that you were
stuck with it.

MIDI 2.0 looks great. It's a really big deal for the electronic music
industry. You can only usefully say _why_ it's a big deal if you acknowledge
all of the crummy, annoying parts of MIDI 1.0.

------
kensai
Why it is important in one paragraph:

“The MIDI 2.0 initiative updates MIDI with auto-configuration, new DAW/web
integrations, extended resolution, increased expressiveness, and tighter
timing -- all while maintaining a high priority on backward compatibility.
This major update of MIDI paves the way for a new generation of advanced
interconnected MIDI devices, while still preserving interoperability with the
millions of existing MIDI 1.0 devices. One of the core goals of the MIDI 2.0
initiative is to also enhance the MIDI 1.0 feature set whenever possible.”

~~~
mastazi
This is fantastic news, I can’t wait to have CC parameters with more than 128
levels. Does anyone know what the new resolution for CCs will be?

~~~
aasasd
Open Sound Control has that, but support for the format is very selective.

~~~
mastazi
Good point, OSC is pretty good I should invest some time looking into it

~~~
PascLeRasc
If you're looking for information on OSC, I'm currently in a computer music
class and we have a section on it:
[http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~music/cmsip/slides/06-networks.pdf](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~music/cmsip/slides/06-networks.pdf)

------
S_A_P
I recently read the biography (for lack of a better term) of sequential
circuits. Dave Smith(the founder who still makes awesome synthesizers today)
was a primary stakeholder in pushing the standard though. What essentially
happened was All companies had a data/sync standard for electronic
instruments. Then Oberheim released a system that many manufacturers saw as a
threat to their business. Dave Smith convinced Roland to just adopt something
and that momentum of sequential and Roland would turn adoption in their favor.
That pretty much worked. Iirc the midi association then made Tom Oberheim
president.

~~~
rgreasons
Mind sharing which book/article you're referencing? Sounds interesting.

~~~
troydavis
I’m not OP, but I suspect it was “The Prophet from Silicon Valley: The
Complete Story of Sequential Circuits,” for which Dave Smith wrote the
foreword.

~~~
S_A_P
Thats it- thanks. [https://www.amazon.com/Prophet-Silicon-Valley-Complete-
Seque...](https://www.amazon.com/Prophet-Silicon-Valley-Complete-
Sequential/dp/1512198323)

link to the book.

~~~
chillingeffect
interesting how there is a new version of $40 and two used for >$1000 ! out-
of-control algorithm ?!

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Stenzel
MIDI is great, and I am so thankful that they had the foresight to require a
mandatory opto-coupler in the input to avoid ground loops of interconnected
gear. Even today, very few devices have a comparable insulation in their USB
connection.

~~~
exabrial
On my guitar pedalboard, I tried to be clever once and I hooked all of my
digital pedals with a usb hub to a main connector. Horrible ground loops and
digital noise was introduced. Does anyone make an electrically isolated usb
hub?

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ermir
Will it allow me to poll the state of the knobs on my keyboard? Many
instruments have MIDI extensions to allow you to check the state of the
controls, but having one built in to the language would be great, especially
for WebMIDI.

~~~
gcb0
nope.

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bjoli
Is the midi connector the oldest one still in active use? It is my prime
example of getting things right at the first (or at least first-ish) try.

~~~
jchw
Depending on what you'd consider a 'connector,' the headphone jack has quite a
long lineage. I believe the 3.5mm headphone jack was originally created in the
'50s. Of course, on the _very_ distant planet that phone vendors live in, the
headphone jack is not in active use, because people there were apparently
absolutely begging for phones that were fractions of a millimeter thinner. In
any case, if you count the larger variants, it's been around for a fair bit
longer than that, even.

~~~
TheRealPomax
Interesting that you went with the 3.5mm jack, and not the 1/4" jack, which
predate the 20th century and will be in use until analog electric signals
become impossible, rather than being tied to whether or not "cabled portable
audio devices" stay a thing or whether we give up on those.

~~~
jchw
I mentioned them, but ordinary people don't use 1/4" jacks. In fact, I don't
know who still uses 1/4" jacks. Audio professionals seem to use XLR, though I
am not one myself. I know 3.5mm connectors are still in active use by the
general public.

~~~
Unklejoe
> In fact, I don't know who still uses 1/4" jacks.

People with electric guitars, at least.

~~~
jchw
TIL.

Looks like there is at least a bit more variance on the 1/4" jack, with
multiple types that are in use. Meanwhile, virtually any consumer 3.5mm jack
is going to be TRS or TRRS, though admittedly there are definitely some less-
standard things there too.

So the 1/4" jack has been around a lot longer, but may be less 'standard' in
that sense. Of course, I also have no idea whether 3.5mm jacks have always
been as 'standard' as they are today.

~~~
danellis
They _are_ standardized, though: EIA RS-453/IEC 60603-11

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Olasson
I want to believe this will get decent adoption in my lifetime. MIDI has so
many historical limitations that have become ridiculous in a modern context,
like only having 16 channels per bus or the very low control precision. These
have lead to hacky solutions and compromises that often end up creating a poor
experience for users.

I've worked on plugins that require per-note tuning and pitch bend, and the
current best solution, MPE, is limiting. You're forced to use an entire MIDI
bus to control a single instrument. This is a huge hack, and it means you
can't create a MIDI plugin that controls multiple instruments.

Vendors are slow to adopt new standards in the audio world (as in many
domains), and I hope this will be followed up with good diplomacy. We can
learn from the non-adoption of Steinberg's VST3 standard as a path to avoid.

~~~
FigBug
Steinberg is no longer granting licenses for VST2, so legally there can be no
more new VST2 developers. But not all the hosts support VST3 yet and VST3 is
over 10 years old. It's a giant pain in the ass.

They are trying to force it, but people just don't want it.

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atoav
MPE (Multi Polyphonic Expression) would be nice to have.

~~~
enqk
Considering MPE is in MIDI 1.0 as an extension, you can bet it will be in MIDI
2.0

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FraKtus
There is better than MIDI for a long time; it's called OSC. It's a shame the
industry did never embrace it. I had some contact with Roland and the MMA, and
they explained to me that the industry did invest so much into MIDI in term of
hardware development that it will be tough to replace it.

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vbuwivbiu
why aren't all input devices, including mice, (text) keyboards, gamepads etc
MIDI devices ?

~~~
diegoperini
I'm not an expert so I might be wrong but probably because one solution that
fits for all can be a bad idea. Driver complexity is one of the reasons most
devices are not compatible with all existing OSs by default.

~~~
mhh__
MIDI is - and should be with future standards - simple, slow and reliable:
Musical Instruments don't need much/many volume/types of information, so
writing the drivers should be fairly simple.

Having said that, some midi to usb converters are still not up to full
compliance with the 80s MIDI 1 standard

~~~
gugagore
Does that mean that the converters implement the protocol themselves? I
expected them to be roughly FTDI USB UART chips, tied to the MIDI baudrate.

~~~
mhh__
I'm not entirely sure, but the fact that there are compatibility/compliance
issues leads me to believe it's a mixture of both.

Either way, the drivers may be the issue: Parsing the serial correctly etc.

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sbr464
Curious, what’s the best method currently for automatically mapping or
discovering controls of a connected midi instrument?

Especially if you don’t have a predefined midi map/template.

Or is manually activating controls and defining your map still the best way?

~~~
theon144
There's stuff like NI's NKS [0], but it's highly vendor specific and very
inflexible. I assume this will remain the case, given the relative variability
of MIDI controllers - the position and amount of control elements, not to
mention their implicit relationships (knobs that are directly above or below a
fader for instance); and their near-universal non-responsiveness - there is no
way to say, label a control for you to see physically.

Interesting issue to solve though, I'd bet my money on modular MIDI
controllers becoming more prominent in the future.

0 - [https://www.native-
instruments.com/en/specials/komplete/this...](https://www.native-
instruments.com/en/specials/komplete/this-is-nks/)

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filoeleven
> All companies that develop MIDI products are encouraged to join the MMA to
> participate in the future development of the specification

The good news: a new enhanced MIDI spec is in the works!

The bad news: you're gonna have to fight for it.

------
pier25
Good news!

Hopefully it will be as solid as the current version.

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IAmGraydon
Good news for those of us with steppy filters.

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exabrial
Please make the connector smaller!

~~~
djaychela
I'd have to disagree with this - I've had quite a few devices that have used
mini-dins, and they aren't anywhere near as robust. Maybe have options for
different sized connectors, but they should all be equal in terms of
functionality (a bit like USB-B connectors), and need to be as robust as the
current ones. I can think of many times where the simplicity and size of the
DIN connectors on MIDI gear has been the difference between 'no worries, I can
just about get my arm down the back of this rack and get the plug in' and 'no
chance, can't feel where this needs to go'. And DINs are strong enough that
you can rotate them to get them to the correct orientation without causing
damage.

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tyteen4a03
I wonder if they will also support USB-C just like Thunderbolt 3 got tacked
onto the USB-C connector?

~~~
TheRealPomax
MIDI is just a protocol, it doesn't care which cable it gets sent over, as
long as both ends of the cable know which message transport system if being
used.

As such, pretty much every modern MIDI device can already do MIDI over USB
(including the ones that have dedicated MIDI ports on the back).

~~~
boomlinde
_> MIDI is just a protocol, it doesn't care which cable it gets sent over, as
long as both ends of the cable know which message transport system if being
used._

Strictly speaking, no. MIDI also specifies the mechanical and electrical
connections. There is a MIDI USB device class specification, but that's not an
implementation of the MIDI 1.0 standard and just roughly corresponds to its
packet protocol.

~~~
TheRealPomax
Ah, I did not know this. Thanks.

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htor
when is the article from?

~~~
andyfleming
Friday, 18 January 2019

