16 million channels

Something to keep an eye on:
http://standards.ieee.org/announcements/p1639app.html
the next version of MIDI.

Manuel

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Manuel Op de Coul"
<manuel.op.de.coul@e...> wrote:
>
> Something to keep an eye on:
> http://standards.ieee.org/announcements/p1639app.html
> the next version of MIDI.

Wow; all I was hoping for was 128 channels. Will anyone actually
write software supporting 16 million channels, I wonder? I don't
think you could render a midi file with that many channels, even if
you managed to write one.

It's not 16 million *channels*. The article says:

> provided 16 channels for devices. DMIDI will allow for nearly 16 million
> devices, each retaining the existing 16-channel MIDI structure

It's meant to be a "gee-whiz number", and probably meaningless in real
life. What it probably means in practice is that you can hook "a lot of
devices" together, essentially without dumb limits like 16. But each of
those *devices* is still a plain old MIDI 16-channel device. I.e., it
sounds like they're not actually changing the MIDI *spec* in some sense.
They're embedding it in a higher level protocol.

Rick

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Manuel Op de Coul"
<manuel.op.de.coul@e...> wrote:
>
> Something to keep an eye on:
> http://standards.ieee.org/announcements/p1639app.html
> the next version of MIDI.
>
> Manuel

Here's an alternative that's been around for years:

http://www.cnmat.berkeley.edu/OpenSoundControl/

How many channels? I don't have time to do the math right now, but
it's based on a network model and uses a URL-style naming scheme.

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "paolovalladolid" <phv40@h...>
wrote:

> Here's an alternative that's been around for years:
>
> http://www.cnmat.berkeley.edu/OpenSoundControl/
>
> How many channels? I don't have time to do the math right now, but
> it's based on a network model and uses a URL-style naming scheme.

But does it give any control over tuning?

> > DMIDI will allow for nearly 16 million
> > devices, each retaining the existing 16-channel MIDI structure.

That's a real shame; now's the chance to make MIDI a whole lot better and all they're
basically going to do is keep the protocol the same. They ought to at least look at
MPDL (http://cnmat.cnmat.berkeley.edu/ZIPI/mpdl.html) which never caught on (I
can't really tell if it's now part of OpenSoundControl, is it?) but was very well thought
out...

Gene wrote:
>But does it give any control over tuning?

It will of course, but how hasn't been established yet as
far as I know.

Manuel

> They ought to at least look at MPDL (
http://cnmat.cnmat.berkeley.edu/ZIPI/mpdl.html)
>which never caught on (I can't really tell if it's now part of
OpenSoundControl, is
>it?) but was very well thought out...

But this seems a more general approach (not only control-in
and audio-out):
http://www.gmpi-plugins.org/gmpi/requirements.php

Manuel

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith"
<gwsmith@s...> wrote:
> --- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "paolovalladolid"
<phv40@h...>
> wrote:
>
> > Here's an alternative that's been around for years:
> >
> > http://www.cnmat.berkeley.edu/OpenSoundControl/
> But does it give any control over tuning?

My understanding is that OpenSoundControl is compatible with MIDI, so
you can just use MTS or whatever tuning you've been doing over MIDI.

Of course to fully benefit from OSC, you need something that can send
OSC messages and something that can receive it (e.g. a synth).
According to the list given on the above URL, Reaktor and Max/MSP are
the only commercial products that can receive it and Max/MSP is the
only one that can be used to send it.