Re: [LAD] Potential MIDI headaches?
On Sun, 20 Jan 2019 14:29:46 -0800 (PST), Len Ovens wrote: >I also wish I was 30 years younger with todays knowledge... In my opinion knowledge means less. More important IMO is the motivation, the skills to use free time. I wish I would be 30 years younger with the gear I own today. For example, Floyd Rose and active Humbuckers already existed when I was 30 years younger, but I didn't had the money to pay for it. I was young, highly motivated and a very good guitarist. Today I'm less motivated and as a consequence, in relation to back then, I'm a lousy guitarist today, but today I own this and other gear, some of what even didn't exist that time. For example, for some time the best synth "workstation" I owned was a Roland MT-32, fortunately with software to program it, but since it had only one MIDI in, data overflow that could cause a missing hi-hat now and then was a serious limitation. As for knowledge I could be 30 years younger, even without nowadays knowledge, since as a consequence of my highly motivation, I was very fast in learning. The issue today is motivation. I don't use my time as good as I was able to use it, when I was young. The young man was able to manage the time for women for a lot of friends for programming audio software for making music with a band for making music on his own to go to school or work The old man is unable to manage the time just for a few friends to make music on his own to go to school or work ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org https://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Potential MIDI headaches?
On Sun, 20 Jan 2019, Will J Godfrey wrote: More details https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDyXDeLbmeE Following on, I think our biggest problem is going to be actually getting the data into a computer. I can't imagine a practical way either ALSA or JACK can be modified to accept it. The video does not add to much of what I was aware of. Not too long ago, the MMA were much more open than they are now and I could browse (without login) where MIDI2 was at and the format of commands. I have forgotten the specifics :) and so the video was a good refresher. Jackd is a data pipe, so is alsa for that matter. Audio is 32 bit (float) MIDI 2 is 32 bit as well. ALSA (so far as I know) doesn't "mix" or combine MIDI. Jackd does and so it would still need to know event breaks. I would think the way forward for both ALSA and jackd would be to use MIDI 2 internally and convert to MIDI 1.0 at the port if needed. That is stream MIDI as 32bit words and let the applications deal with negotiations with the other end. 32bit midi works well with aes67 or avb as well, it is just a different data type. So even though aes3 streams are not included in the aes67 standard, many of the aes67 boxes will deal with them just fine. MIDI2 is bdirectional, jackd and alsa are not but they don't disalow it either. in both cases there would need to be two channels to handle that... but the reality for a lot of MIDI 1 applications has been bidirectional since day one. Even with my slightly pre midi 1, midi gear, there is the idea of the two talking with each other just with two cords (for speed more than anything). OSC would only work if the data source was sending it, otherwise you'd still need a translation level within the machine (in which case you might as well work with the protocol directly). The big synth names are not likely to put any effort into OSC support, as they have already thrown their hats in for MIDI 2. I was actually surprised that the MMA managed to get both Apple and Microsoft on board. OSC as in the video was not sold well to the manufactures... I would say the real reason is both OSCs strength and it's weakness... you can do anything with OSC, it is wide open. OSC did not from the start come with some standard ways of doing things (note on/off/etc. controllers) OSC has every single use is custom, there are no standards at all, each application has it's own standard. Quite the oposite to MIDI. I know of only two DAWs that share the same OSC map and that is Ardour and Mixbus ;) So there are no physical OSC control surfaces available and even the Glass counterparts like touchOSC are limited and still require someone to create a layout for everything they might control even though each application might have the very same controls. In many ways, if midi2 offers good standard ways of dealing with mixer control, lighting, transport control and other automation, OSC may just go away because MIDI 2 can offer more. It would be easy even now for me to create a Mackie control protocol to OSC converter... or almost any midi based controller out there. MIDI2 will only make this easier. MIDI2 is also more compact by virtue of being streamed. While OSC may be self documenting, for most controllers, each message/event/command requires a whole network packet. I tried using "bundles" but found none of the control surfaces I was trying to support recognised them. The feedback stream from a daw is quite heavy, A bank change that the control surface sends as one message requires the daw to send back as many as 1000 messages each one as it's own packet... udp chokes and many messages never make it there unless a small delay is added between each message. There are ways around this: Bundles is one, if the surface understands those. The X32 points to another: each channel only sends one message with enough parameters for the whole channel... there goes self documenting messages. I am thinking of offering both as options in Ardour BTW. Then there is OCA https://www.ocaalliance.com/ (now aes70 I see) which is much more tightly defined and also interactive like MIDI2. It allows the surface to find out what the device controls are and create or asign controllers to those functions. The setup expects to deal with more than one device at a time. So for example an OCA surface might show an Ardour strip with a preamp control section at the top that controls the alsa device directly as if it was all one app being controled. Yes it is possible to do this with OSC, but the setup is all manual and not all OSC surfaces are willing to talk to more than one port. MIDI1.0 already supports more than one channel internally and MIDI2 expands on that while also offering control negotiation. There was work started on an OCA library for linux... but the dev seems to have gotten a life (job maybe?). I've now watched that vid. a second time (very much recommend looking at it if you haven't
Re: [LAD] Potential MIDI headaches?
On Sat, 19 Jan 2019 21:39:59 + Will J Godfrey wrote: >On Sat, 19 Jan 2019 13:26:55 -0800 (PST) >Len Ovens wrote: > >>In fact MIDI 2 seems to be a thing mostly for non-kb instruments or computer >>generated material (most of which is probably using CV instead of MIDI >>anyway). >> >>MIDI 1 was huge, My DX7 supported MIDI before the spec was complete. It is >>easy >>to show off in the music store and sell. I expect the switch to MIDI 2 will >>be >>a much longer road, very hard to show off from a keyboard. >> >>Well thats my opinion anyway. >> >>-- >>Len Ovens >>www.ovenwerks.net > >More details >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDyXDeLbmeE > >I watched this earlier. It seems the MMA have indeed done their homework. MIDI >1.0 is definitely not going away. The new system will be fully backward >compatible, and will negotiate for the improvements, falling back to 1.0 if no >response is seen. > Following on, I think our biggest problem is going to be actually getting the data into a computer. I can't imagine a practical way either ALSA or JACK can be modified to accept it. OSC would only work if the data source was sending it, otherwise you'd still need a translation level within the machine (in which case you might as well work with the protocol directly). The big synth names are not likely to put any effort into OSC support, as they have already thrown their hats in for MIDI 2. I was actually surprised that the MMA managed to get both Apple and Microsoft on board. I've now watched that vid. a second time (very much recommend looking at it if you haven't already) and I'm even more impressed with the way they've designed the new extensions. Also, to some degree they've split the more 'engineering' aspects away from the more musician/performance focused ones. My guess is we've got about 2 years to get up to speed before source instruments become mainstream. Although I'd like to be involved myself, I really don't think I've the skills to add anything useful :( -- It wasn't me! (Well actually, it probably was) ... the hard part is not dodging what life throws at you, but trying to catch the good bits. ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org https://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Potential MIDI headaches?
PS regarding robot pianos:
A workaround for one issue would be to select different velocity curves
by a CC message, to fit to different parts of a song played by a piano
master class. Software even could transmit measuring probe data from
the robot piano to the software via MIDI 1 to determine an appropriate
velocity curve. Even within the limits of MIDI 1 the problem with
robots is that robots need a completely different approach. A better
MIDI standard would improve the situation for robots, too, but never
ever does solve the robot problem.
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Re: [LAD] Potential MIDI headaches?
On Sat, 19 Jan 2019 18:31:29 -0800 (PST), Len Ovens wrote:
>Being able to pitch change each note separately. Having many more CCs.
>Just to name a few. Guitar to MIDI can make good use of it.
I'm playing a Roland GR-55 guitar synth. It has got a MIDI input, but
it does not recognize note numbers. The rational for this might be
related to the way the synth is able to use the signals of the hex
pickup and that apart from the PCM tones, the patches could contain
modeling. Modeling doesn't just mean guitar and amp emulations, it's
also for modeling an analog synth. The MIDI output provides all MIDI
data, but that data can't compare to the data used by the synth. OTOH
the MIDI settings provide to turn chromatic output on and off, actually
it's turned off, but the output is chromatic, IOW I don't understand
this setting for the MIDI output. The chromatic switch for the PCM
tones is interesting. The tones are played in chromatic steps, even if a
string is bend, the pitch will change in semitones, when turned on. If
it's turned off, the PCM tones follow the real pitch of each string.
This is very cool, but hardly usable, since each noise a string does
produce has got impact, when turned off. Even the most accurate guitar
player can't avoid e.g. fret noise of new strings. IOW if the
sensitivity settings of the hex pickup are chosen to track nuances of
the guitarists playing, it requires to turn chromatic on, since if it's
turned off, it's nearly impossible to avoid unwanted notes. The current
generation of guitar synth does not allow practicable usage of all
provided abilities.
While MIDI 2 might be able to transmit the real data that is produced
when chromatic is turned off, it's not much usable and regarding
modeling MIDI anyway is the wrong interface.
To replace my keyboard by the guitar, MIDI 1 already does the job. At
the moment I play synth most of the times via a 12.9" touch screen,
usually just to produce regular MIDI 1 data. A touch screen could also
produce MIDI 1 incompatible data, but it's very seldom useful.
The MIDI we know has got several pitfalls and indeed some
improvements are very good, but all in all it already does everything a
musician does need. Yes, to control a mechanical monstrosity, such as a
robot piano MIDI isn't an adequate interface and I doubt that this
would change by a new MIDI standard.
A guitar synth does use the guitar as an input device, via a hex
pickup. It isn't a robot guitar, there are no stepper motors picking,
slapping, muting etc. the strings for playback.
It's not the MIDI standard that fails to play a robot piano, the
designers are idiots, if they use MIDI to control this kind of robot.
MIDI 2 could be useful for guitar synth, especially for guitar synth of
the next generation. A new MIDI standard could also be useful to get
rid of a few pitfalls, but it unlikely will become a robot interface.
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Re: [LAD] Potential MIDI headaches?
On Sun, 20 Jan 2019, Ralf Mattes wrote: In terms of velocity vs. amplitude I would guess that 127 levels at 1db per level covers more than most ADC's would show. At .5db per level the range is still probably wider than the dynamic range available in a nice quiet studio/sound stage... so I would hope that the range of timbre differences makes a wider range of velocities worth while. I would like to see a blind AB test where the same performance is rendered by the same synth in both MIDI 1 and MIDI 2. Not what our piano teachers say ;-) I believe you... That is hardly blind AB testing though. Mr. young tells us that remastering to 24bits/192k will bring out things in his earlier recordings originally recorded on tape too. What I find interesting (funny) is that the one thing in MIDI 2 that would make the least difference to someone's performance is the one thing people want. The good things about MIDI2 in my mind are things like being able to have an untempered or variable scale. Being able to pitch change each note separately. Having many more CCs. Just to name a few. Guitar to MIDI can make good use of it. Some of the new stick like controllers might do well too. But keyboards? subtle at best I think. -- Len Ovens www.ovenwerks.net ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org https://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Potential MIDI headaches?
On Sat, 19 Jan 2019, Ralf Mattes wrote: Well, it all depends :-) I my world there's a group of users for whose field standard MIDI just does'nt work: teaching and researching professional piano playing. The main obstacle is (the missing) velocity/volume/attack speed resolution. So our teachers and researchers need to use the partly-proprietary Yamaha Disklavier. So,for them, a modern MIDI 2 is appreciated. Cool. I do wonder where the sample sets are that actually have 127 samples per note. Certainly Pianoteq might have a full range but most of the electric pianos I have heard sound more like in "Bennie" than anything that actually came from strings. I am talking about the people who walk into a music store and buy an electric piano or other stage keyboard. Now any of those people would prefer to sit down in front of an acoustic piano, but none of them can afford (or are willing to afford) an electric stage/home piano which actually sounds real. Remember that "most" people would never think about using a keyboard controller to get sound from their computer. In the case of keyboard synth combinations, where the signal path is kb->midi->internal synth. MIDI 2 may show some improvements that even the average person will notice. In time such an instrument may even be cheap enough for "most" people. However, it seems to me that the synth in the pianos I have seen does not even fully use the 128 velocity values available now. In terms of velocity vs. amplitude I would guess that 127 levels at 1db per level covers more than most ADC's would show. At .5db per level the range is still probably wider than the dynamic range available in a nice quiet studio/sound stage... so I would hope that the range of timbre differences makes a wider range of velocities worth while. I would like to see a blind AB test where the same performance is rendered by the same synth in both MIDI 1 and MIDI 2. -- Len Ovens www.ovenwerks.net ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org https://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Potential MIDI headaches?
On Sat, 19 Jan 2019 13:26:55 -0800 (PST) Len wrote: > While the 5pin din may be gone (not really, musicians like vintage > gear) i would not even denote the 5-pin DIN as "legacy" - it is still the de-facto standard by the fact that nothing else has replaced it within its niche (USB is a generic standard) - if you buy any of the cheap-o MIDI controllers from amazon, walmart, ebay, etc, (i just did) they come with a USB plug on one end of a 6-ft cord, and (2) 5-pin DINs (in and out) on the other end ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org https://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Potential MIDI headaches?
On Sat, 19 Jan 2019 13:26:55 -0800 (PST) Len Ovens wrote: >In fact MIDI 2 seems to be a thing mostly for non-kb instruments or computer >generated material (most of which is probably using CV instead of MIDI anyway). > >MIDI 1 was huge, My DX7 supported MIDI before the spec was complete. It is >easy >to show off in the music store and sell. I expect the switch to MIDI 2 will be >a much longer road, very hard to show off from a keyboard. > >Well thats my opinion anyway. > >-- >Len Ovens >www.ovenwerks.net More details https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDyXDeLbmeE I watched this earlier. It seems the MMA have indeed done their homework. MIDI 1.0 is definitely not going away. The new system will be fully backward compatible, and will negotiate for the improvements, falling back to 1.0 if no response is seen. -- It wasn't me! (Well actually, it probably was) ... the hard part is not dodging what life throws at you, but trying to catch the good bits. ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org https://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Potential MIDI headaches?
On Sat, 19 Jan 2019, Will Godfrey wrote: I've just been told about this. https://www.midi.org/articles-old/the-midi-manufacturers-association-mma-and-the-association-of-music-electronics-industry-amei-announce-midi-2-0tm-prototyping?fbclid=IwAR3yojtbqXc52uTwrBV4uaUV7JdsMHMKIXA2NudhUH4mw8uPlmbxAPoDW3Q Looks like we might have quite a lot of work to do :/ While the 5pin din may be gone (not really, musicians like vintage gear), MIDI 1.0 is not dead. It apears it has taken a sledge hammer to get people to use VST3 and the MMA doesn't really have the same power. I think that MIDI 1.0 is going to be around for a long time yet and that all new controllers will have the abillity to send MIDI 1.0. In my experience as a musician, I meet a lot of piano players for whom the difference bewteen MIDI 1 and MIDI 2 is just a number (like 192k ADC) and would not affect their performance. However, I have not met very many keyboard artists aside from those who work from their bedroom and who's music I only hear on youtube, soundcloud, etc. I do not know how much difference MIDI 2 would make for most of these people either. Epecially concidering how many of them use either their qwerty kb to enter notes or a one or two octave unit without even velocity... In fact MIDI 2 seems to be a thing mostly for non-kb instruments or computer generated material (most of which is probably using CV instead of MIDI anyway). MIDI 1 was huge, My DX7 supported MIDI before the spec was complete. It is easy to show off in the music store and sell. I expect the switch to MIDI 2 will be a much longer road, very hard to show off from a keyboard. Well thats my opinion anyway. -- Len Ovens www.ovenwerks.net ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org https://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Potential MIDI headaches?
On Sat, 19 Jan 2019 12:20:23 +0100 Ralf wrote: > So if your app works well with the current MIDI, you don't need to > migrate to MIDI 2.0. oh, how true that resonates i am just amazed at how many people are obsessed with novelty and would disagree with that (perfectly reasonable and accurate) statement - to many, the mere fact that v.N+1 exists, automatically renders v.N as: "old cheese", with an imperative to discard it immediately (for no other reason), as to avoid being accused of falling behind the cool kids on the bleeding edge for people who think that way, the merits of backward-compatibility do not carry much weight in comparison to the sexier "disruptive" approach - in fact it is more likely to be seen as ridiculous or irresponsible to make use of any "old" thing that could potentially be replaced by some newer and shinier thing, regardless of compatibility or any true benefit (or lack thereof) in doing so because after all, '2' is clearly better (and much more awesome) than '1' :) ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org https://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Potential MIDI headaches?
On Sat, 19 Jan 2019 09:47:56 +, Will Godfrey wrote:
>I've just been told about this.
>https://www.midi.org/articles-old/the-midi-manufacturers-association-mma-and-the-association-of-music-electronics-industry-amei-announce-midi-2-0tm-prototyping?fbclid=IwAR3yojtbqXc52uTwrBV4uaUV7JdsMHMKIXA2NudhUH4mw8uPlmbxAPoDW3Q
>
>Looks like we might have quite a lot of work to do :/
"Backwards compatibility is a key requirement." -
https://www.midi.org/articles-old/midi-manufacturers-association-mma-adopts-midi-capability-inquiry-midi-ci-specification
So if your app works well with the current MIDI, you don't need to
migrate to MIDI 2.0.
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