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By MusicRadar Team ( Computer Music , Future Music , emusician ) published 18 August 22
Dump your DIN cables, there's a whole new musical instrument digital interface just around the corner
Great news. If you've been cursing the crude 128-step parameter resolution, congested daisy-chained data flow and reliance on 5-pin DIN plugs from (literally) another century, then your prayers have just been answered – The MIDI Association has released details of the ongoing, industry-wide initiative by over 50 MIDI Association companies to develop MIDI 2.0 products and services.
• The Yamaha Corporation has funded the development of the MIDI Workbench, a software tool for MIDI 2.0 testing and compliance developed by Australian Andrew Mee. • Mee has also updated firmware for the TB2 Groovesizer, an Open Source MIDI 2.0 hardware synthesizer developed by Jean Marais, a South African living in Taiwan.
• And Canadian-based company AmeNote, founded by industry veterans Mike Kent (Chair of the MIDI 2.0 Working Group) and Micheal Loh (founder of iConnectivity) has designed ProtoZOA, a flexible Raspberry Pico based prototyping tool for MIDI 2.0.
The first MIDI spec was proposed in 1981, allowing different instruments from different manufacturers to speak the same language for the same time. Prior to the advent of MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) every manufacturer used their own bespoke take on analogue tech (such as CV/Gate) to create sequencers that could control synthesizers, drum machines that would run in sync and so on.
The problem was that – much like today's Mac/PC and Android/iOS eco-systems – once you'd bought into one maker's gear you were pretty much land-locked and unable to use another's.
MIDI – spearheaded by Roland (appearing first on their Juno 106), Yamaha (appearing first on their DX7) and Dave Smith's Sequential Circuits (appearing first on their Prophet 600) – was revealed to the public at the NAMM show in 1983 when Smith magically controlled a Jupiter 6 with his Prophet and the world was never the same again.
The result was an explosion in the hi-tech gear industry as thousands of inter-connectable units found their way into ever more diverse and gear-strewn studios.
However, as pioneers pushed the tech, it wasn't long before the wheels began to fall off the MIDI train.
With just 128 possible settings per parameter (and an ever increasing number of parameters stretching the code to identify them ever further) creating smooth modulations of tone was impossible. And the limited speed and bandwidth meant that while keyboards could be 'daisy chained' together, the instructions reaching the synths at the end of the line would be delivered audibly later than the those at the front of the queue…
Finally there were the unreliable, chunky, impossible-to-plug-in-the-right-way-up MIDI cables used – the ages-old DIN audio standard got reborn in order save money on developing a new connector. It's resulted in countless chipped and scratched back panels over the years…
The creation of MIDI 2.0 was therefore a no-brainer being predicted as soon as the mid 80's, delivering faster throughput, boosted resolution for smoother control, more parameters and – who knows – one day even the possibility of passing digital audio through the cables too…
Then of course USB happened (and then USB2 and USB3 after that) and the quest for MIDI 2.0 (and a bespoke, new data system specifically for computer music) died a death. To many 'MIDI' these days simply means 'synth data' rather than being any kind of physical connection requiring a port and wires.
But we're delighted to see that the quest for a dedicated, made for musicians by musicians MIDI 2.0 lives on. Who knows? One day they might even release it.
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