MIDI Manufacturers Testing New High Definition MIDI Protocol

midi-30th-anniversaryAt the 2013 NAMM Show, being held Jan 24-27 in Anaheim, California, the MIDI Manufacturers Association plans to meet and review a proposed High Definition MIDI Protocol:

Members of the HD Protocol Working Group will provide a private demonstration of prototype hardware and software using a working draft of the HD Protocol Specification.

Various devices will be connected via wired and wireless Ethernet, to demonstrate the plug-and-play connection and session management capabilities built into the HD Protocol, as well as features such as higher resolution controls, more throughput, and MIDI device compatibility.

The purpose of the demonstration is to encourage more companies to participate in completing the HD Protocol Specification.

Among the features proposed for High Definition MIDI:

  • Support for more MIDI Channels and Controllers
  • Greater resolution in data values
  • New messages that were not practical with the MIDI 1.0 protocol
  • The draft proposal allows HD senders to specify a direct pitch, rather than a Note Number. The Direct Pitch field sets the base pitch of the note, overriding the base pitch that would otherwise be selected by the note number, allowing easy implementation of alternate tuning systems.
  • In addition to Note On and Note Off, the draft includes a Note Update message that allows modification of parameters or controllers during the lifetime of a note.

The High Definition MIDI specification has been under discussion at the annual MMA meeting since 2006. See the MIDI site for details.

via macmusic

24 thoughts on “MIDI Manufacturers Testing New High Definition MIDI Protocol”

  1. This is good news for MIDI and music in general. I think they did a fantastic job with the original MIDI spec. Seems like they are addressing many issues in this new protocol.

    2. OSC and MIDI do not exclude each other!

      If you are a computer scientist, think of MIDI as HTML, and OSC as XML. If you’re not, completely ignore my comparison 😀

      While MIDI, old and new, has a fixed schema, e.g. of notes on/off, controllers, aftertouch, etc, OSC does not, instead, each message contains its schema and is self-descriptive.

      I think both can and should coexist, with MIDI 2.0 zero surely being fully mappable onto OSC when the need arises.

  6. Two things:

    1) timestamping, for the love of all that’s good and holy – the world does -not- need another bunch of poorly-supported, single-DAW-only USB MIDI interfaces
    2) about bloody time

  9. I am really hoping, considering they are bothering to keep the name, that the standard builds on but also incorporates support for, the current standard. it would be terrible to have to go out and start again in building a seperate rig that can never play in sync with my current midi setup.

    I have faith in the involvment of the original innovators that they will do their upmost to preserve both the past and to facilitate the future.

  10. I sure hope it blows MIDI out of the water! I’ve never used it personally, but from what I’ve learned and seen, it can be a finicky thing! Just to toss ideas into the wind, how about incorporating something with Control Voltages or maybe even making it all open source? Maybe having an integrated filter section for real time filtering of tracks directly within the MIDI file instead of a DAW?

    Just running my mouth…

    1. Is it really worth slating somethimg you’ve never used? Uninformed, and unformed opinions can often come across as being ignorant..

  12. I want to send 100 midi messages from my DAW at the exact same time and receive them on my hardware on the exact same time without jitter or delay!

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